There's a Hole in the Junket

by Eric Martin

As I'm sure many readers are aware, Wikileaks released a massive trove of classified reports on the Afghan war effort over the weekend (see the Wikileaks report here, and media coverage here, here and here). 

The Wikileaks expose reveals a history of the conflict that often contradicts official Obama and Bush administration statements - with documented incidents of direct support for Taliban groups from Pakistani intelligence and military groups; accounts of the ineffectiveness, unpopularity and corruption of the Karzai administration; details regarding the the maintenance of black prison sites at Bagram and elsewhere (where the red cross is denied access, and allegations of torture abound); evidence of an uptick in paramilitary and military special operations raids that frequently result in civilian casualties; and other troubling details.

However, much of the progressive foreign policy community (and others) have reacted with a collective, if knowledgable, shrug.  Charli Carpenter's take is typical (not to single her out, as she is generally very good):

My initial reaction just from browsing the headlines: it’s news that between our accidents and the Taliban’s intentional terror campaigns, many civilians have died? That Bagram has become the new Guantanamo? That it is US policy to kill or capture Taliban leaders? That the Afghan government is corrupt? Or that the US is using drones to kill insurgents and sometimes these operations go awry? That elements within Pakistan have been funding and training the Taliban?

Either there’s not a lot of “there” in these 90,000+ documents, or the mainstream media is down-playing what’s actually ground-breaking in the reports.

There is too much nonchalance in this reaction, though, and it misses the significance of the leaked material.  On the one hand, it is true that for those closely watching events in Afghanistan, many of these "revelations" would merely confirm already-held suspicions, known facts or prior analysis.  However, that is a very, very small subset of the overall US population. 

Not to mention that many war supporters had previously dismissed media reports on these subjects that were, due to journalistic conventions, levened with the appropriate amount of ambiguity and uncertainty.  The Wikileaks dump removes the caveats and casts doubt on the doubters, helping to refine and clarify the establishment media narrative.

Further, regardless of one's orientation to the continuation of the war (supporter, opponent or some hybrid), the behind the scenes glimpse of the raw reports flies in the face of the Bush administration and, later, Obama administration accounts of events in this region.  Michael Cohen remarks about the Pakistan involvement angle:

Hmm, for something that everyone seemed to know was true, it's funny how President Obama didn't seem fit to mention it in his public remarks explaining why he was sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. And I'm genuinely curious if any of the various supporters of escalation felt urged to mention at the time that the American people were receiving a rather incomplete picture of the war their country was fighting in Afghanistan - and the role of Pakistan in prosecuting that conflict. 

This is very true.  At the time that influential think tanks like CNAS were selling the President, and the public, on implementing a costly counterinsurgency (COIN) campaign that could only succeed with a legitimate and popular central government (Karzai's was not that, and "everybody knew it") and no significant support and safe haven from foreign patrons (as "everybody knew," Pakistan was providing this), few COIN proponents were showing the proper level of concern over the resiliency and impact of these crucial obstacles.  While acknowledged in some instances, these fundamental impediments were soft pedaled and waved away far too easily.

In a similar sense, is there really widespread knowledge of special operations and CIA/paramilitary "dirty war" activity in Afghanistan?  How about torture and indefinite detention at Bagram?  On the contrary, it seems that there are more complaints about restrictive rules of engagement in Afghanistan than there are concerns over special ops run amok - at least from right wing critics.  

Those same right wing voices frequently chastise Obama for being soft on terror because he, ostensibly, no longer tortures detainees, while, inversely, Obama receives too much credit from some supporters for his supposed abandonment of this Bush administration vestige.  But revelations about Bagram challenge that narrative directly. 

Political leaders go to great lengths to put a positive spin on events associated with military conflict, and in this country, the media is often more complicit than adversarial.  Afghanistan has been no different.  The Wikileaks report has the potential to peel away a portion of the facade, which is significant even if many dedicated observers already knew about the truth beneath the veneer.  The sooner this country comes to grips with the fact that our mission in Afghanistan is overly ambitious, while excessively costly, the sooner there will be more and louder calls for disengagement.  Let's hope this turns up the volume.

[UPDATE: Two takes worth looking at are Jay Rosen's and Amy Davidson's]

Comments

[Jacob Davies]

I think the online left tends to think that what is commonplace here is commonplace everywhere, and to take the occasional, hesitant NYT story that mentions, say, possible Pakistan interference in Afghanistan as confirmation of a widespread understanding.

I'm always surprised when other people are surprised. But I think for a lot of people, reading a "maybe this, maybe that" story based on anonymous sources has no lasting effect. It takes sources and documents to make something impossible to ignore.

[Mike]

Well, the volume in this comments section has obviously been cranked up to deafening levels, so that's encouraging.

[elm]

Eric: I think your analysis is dead-on correct, which makes it hard to comment on.

The Yglesias and Carpenter pieces miss the forest for the trees. While the leaked documents may not reveal much never-before-reported material, they are a new independent and primary source of information which is nearly impossible to dismiss. Additionally, the press could use this leak and these documents to present a fact-based overview of the war onin Afghanistan.

While I (or Carpenter or Yglesias or Serwer) find reports from "human rights researchers and former detainees" persuasive, many people could dismiss them as hippies and criminals. Internal documents are a different type of evidence; they don't tell the whole story but they are strong in their own way and can support or refute other claims.

The people of the U.S. have often been presented with a patchwork of claims and counterclaims about the war. The press has repeated false claims from Pentagon spokespeople and has presented those claims as fact; they have not done much to emphasize the later corrections to these claims (i.e. Airstrike kill dozens of militants vs. Airstrike kills dozens of farmers, women, & lchildren or Taliban murders 2 pregnant women vs. U.S. Special Forces murder 2 pregnant women & cover it up . Most USians don't have a good grasp of what the military is doing and has done to the people of Afghanistan.

I'm not so naive as to think that the US people and press can't ignore this information -- the status quo is the most likely outcome. But this is also the best opportunity for the USian public (and press) to become better-informed about this war.