Summaries of US embassy diplomatic cables and situation assessments contained and distributed through the war logs offer firmer ground than some of the raw intelligence data, given that they are evidently written by American officials and represent an official record, or official evaluation, of high-level meetings.
Why should the "situation assessments" of ass-covering bureaucrats necessarily be "firmer" than the gossip and denunciations being retailed in the "humint" reports? Especially if they are telling Washington exactly what it wants to hear: the Iranians are behind our manifest failures, both militarily and politically. The Guardian:
Summaries of classified diplomatic cables produced by the US embassy in Kabul, contained in the war logs, reveal high-level concern about Tehran's growing political influence in Afghanistan. Senior US and Afghan officials appear at a loss over how to counter Iran's alleged bribery and manipulation of opposition parties and MPs whom Afghan government officials dismiss as Tehran's "puppets"....
"Over the past several months Iran has taken a series of steps to expand and deepen its influence," says a secret cable sourced to the US embassy in Kabul and written in May 2007 by CSTC-A DCG for Pol-Mil Affairs [combined security transition command deputy commanding general for political and military affairs]. The cable cites the creation of the opposition National Front and National Unity Council, which it claims are under Iranian influence.
Wow, that's heavy stuff, man. An apparatchik in the US embassy says that
the political opposition to America's man in Kabul is just Iranian
puppetry. Obviously, those Afghan ragheads couldn't possibly put
together an opposition by themselves. (It's just like that Civil Rights
stuff back in the day; it was all a Communist front. You know our docile
darkies would never have tried to get above their raising if the
Commies hadn't stirred them up.)
We see here a reflection of one of the enduring principles of the American power structure: that no one could ever have any reasonable objections
to the enlightened hegemony of our elites. Any opposition to their
dominance and privilege has to come from "outside agitators," sinister
troublemakers driven by motiveless evil to destroy all that's good and
holy in this world.
Occupation forces kill lots of civilians. But everybody already knew that -- and it's been obvious for years that nobody cares. How does this alter the prevailing conventional wisdom about the war?
Pakistan is pursuing its own strategic interests in the region:
interests that don't always mesh with those of the United States.
Again, this has been a constantly -- obsessively -- reported aspect of
the war since its earliest days. How does this alter the prevailing
conventional wisdom about the war?
The Afghan government installed by the occupation is corrupt and dysfunctional.
Again, this theme has been sounded at every level of the American
government -- including by two presidents -- for years. How does this
alter the prevailing conventional wisdom of the war?
There is often a dichotomy between official statements about the war's progress and the reality of the war on the ground. Again,
has there been a month in the last nine years that prominent stories
outlining this fact have not appeared in major mainstream publications?
Is this not a well-known phenomenon of every single military conflict in
human history? How does this alter the prevailing conventional wisdom
about the war?
Iran is evil and is helping bad guys kill Americans and should be stopped.
It goes without saying that this too has been a relentless drumbeat of
the American power structure for many years. The occupation forces in
Iraq began blaming Iran for the rise of the insurgency and the political
instability almost the moment after George W. Bush proclaimed "mission
accomplished" and all hell broke loose in the conquered land. The Obama
administration has "continued" -- and expanded -- the Bush Regime's
demonization of Iran, and its extensive military preparations for an
attack on that country. The current administration's "diplomatic effort"
is led by a woman who pledged to "obliterate" Iran -- that is, to kill
tens of millions of innocent people -- if Iran attacked Israel. The
American power structure has seized upon every single scrap of
Curveball-quality "intelligence" -- every rumor, every lie, every
exaggeration, every fabrication -- to convince the American people that
Iran is about to nuke downtown Omaha with burqa-clad atom bombs.
So once again, and for the last time, we ask the question: How does this alter the prevailing conventional wisdom about the war?
It doesn't, of course. These media "bombshells" will simply bounce off the hardened shell of American exceptionalism
-- which easily countenances the slaughter of civilians and "targeted
killings" and "indefinite detention" and any number of other atrocities
anyway. In fact, I predict the chief "takeaway" from the story will be
this:
American forces are doing their best to help the poor Afghans,
but the ungrateful natives are too weak and corrupt to be trusted, while
America's good intentions are also being thwarted by evil outsiders.
Getting this message out via "critical" stories in "liberal"
publications is much more effective than dishing up another serving of
patriotic hokum on Fox News or at a presidential press conference. In
fact, it is so much more effective that one almost begins to wonder
about the ultimate provenance of the leaks. Did some deep-delving
gamester allow these files to get out? Most likely not; but their ultimate effect does provoke the age-old question, cui bono?
The assumption is that these 92,000 files about the Afghan war were
obtained by an American private serving in Iraq, the unfortunate Bradley
Manning, who is now under arrest for the "crime" of leaking something
far more disturbing than any written document: a video showing the
slaughter of Iraqi civilians by American Apache helicopters in 2007.
Washington knows that a couple of moving pictures on the tee-vee have a
far greater potential to disturb the moral sleep of the American people
than tens of thousands of newspaper reports -- or leaked documents --
detailing similar killings. (That said, in the end the Apache video has
had zero effect on public perceptions of the Iraq War, which
most people believe is "over," or on public support for the murderous
machinations of the Terror War in general, which most people believe
needs to continue in one form or another, to "keep us safe.") The only
kind of grim truth attended to by anyone in America these days is that
which can be shown in moving pictures. (Although the number of people
who are upset even by that seems to be rapidly diminishing. That's why Manning had to be put away.
I don't question the bravery or sincerity of
Manning or of Julian Assanage in bringing the latest material to light.
And I suppose on balance it is better to have it than not to have it.
But I still question the usefulness of rolling out mountains of raw
"human intelligence" -- precisely the same kind of unfiltered junk that
was "stovepiped" to build the false case for the mass-murdering invasion
of Iraq -- about Iran, al Qaeda, Pakistan; even North Korea gets into
the mix. None of this can be checked -- but all of it will be extremely useful to those who want to build cases for more and more military action, death squads and covert actions around the world.
And it seems very odd that intelligence reports and bureaucratic
memos by forces carrying out a prolonged, brutal military occupation of
another country are now being treated by "liberal" media outlets as holy
writ which paints a "true" picture of the war -- a picture that omits
any reference to American war-related corruption, for instance,
not only in Afghanistan but more especially in Washington, or to
America's wider "Great Game" machinations in Central Asia, involving
pipelines, strategic bases and "containing China," etc.
If I believed anything would come of this document dump, if I believed
it would actually lead to, say, the prosecution of even one single
person for a war-related crime, or to a genuine debate over the morality
of the war in the political and media establishments, or even a 5 point
rise in public opposition to the Terror War project, then I would
rejoice, and embrace the flashy packages of the NYT, Guardian and Der
Spiegel at their own self-inflated valuation. (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
3
2
2
