Editorial: Afghan war logs
The leak of some 90,000 American military and diplomatic reports on the war in Afghanistan is doubly shocking.
First in what they reveal, notably the vast but unrecorded amount of civilian deaths, the incompetent way in which both military operations and aid programs were handled and the low quality of the Afghan military and, secondly, in the scale of the leakage. It is the biggest ever in US history.
The reports are certainly genuine. US National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones would not have called the leakage “irresponsible” or claimed it endangered the lives of American troops had they been forgeries. Whether the information contained within them is true is another matter. There have to be doubts about some, in particular those claiming Pakistan and Iran are helping the Taleban in Afghanistan.
In the case of Pakistan, this no longer rings true. The Taleban in Afghanistan and the Taleban in Pakistan are one and the same. The Pakistani Army is engaged in a bitter war with the local Taleban. American officials may believe that Pakistani intelligence services are actively colluding with the enemies of Pakistan but it does not make sense. The allegations say more about the skills and intentions of US intelligence officials than about their Pakistani counterparts.
The big question is why were the reports leaked, and why now?
For America’s friends and enemies alike worldwide they are a catalogue of arrogance and incompetence on a staggering scale — five years of war with nothing to show other than death, destruction and corruption. But those behind the leaks did not have international opinion in mind. The aim is quite simple — to tell the American public that the war in Afghanistan is cruel and unwinnable.
Given that, there are bound to be suspicions that the leakage on such a scale could not have happened without the connivance of somebody very deep within the Obama administration. The alternative, that US intelligence can be hacked into by anyone is too shocking to imagine. It would mean that US security does not exist.
The White House is certainly desperate for an exit strategy that allows it to leave Afghanistan on relatively secure moral grounds — and what better than saying the war is cruel and unwinnable? Furthermore, the leaks cover the period 2004-2009, before Barack Obama announced his new strategy in Afghanistan. Is this an attempt to blacken the Bush administration at a time when public support for Obama is at an all-time low and the Republicans are on the rise? The reaction from senior Democrats such as Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry will be taken as evidence, if not of Democrat collusion, then at least that it suits the Democrat agenda. He has said that despite their illegality, the reports spotlight the need to question US policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan.
They will do probably precisely that regardless of who was responsible, in particular toward the war in Afghanistan. The Afghan government says it is shocked by the revelations. But if it did not know of the scale of deaths or the failures against the Taleban, then what is its function? In American eyes its competence will be even more in question.
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JAMES DOWNEY
Jul 27, 2010 20:02
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Jul 27, 2010 23:51
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Jul 28, 2010 20:32
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