Europeans Debate Leaked Afghanistan War Logs
The leaking of a massive cache of classified Pentagon documents on the war in Afghanistan has been on the front pages of newspapers and magazines across Europe. Although there have been many sensational headlines, the overall media reaction in Europe has been surprisingly subdued, especially considering that European media elites rarely miss an opportunity to criticize the United States.
To be sure, many European newspapers and magazines have published stories with strong anti-American undertones, and some European commentators are saying the leaked documents show that the United States is guilty of war crimes in Afghanistan.
But most European media outlets concede that the war logs contain few surprises, and commentators across the continent are divided over the actual significance of the documents. In any case, although European public opinion is overwhelmingly opposed to the Afghan war, the leaked documents are unlikely to cause America’s main European allies in Afghanistan to cut and run, as many European commentators are proposing.
What follows is a brief selection of media commentary from some of America’s main European allies in Afghanistan.
In Britain, the left-wing Guardian newspaper, in an opinion article titled “A History of Folly, From the Trojan Horse to Afghanistan“, writes that “by recording failure in meticulous detail, the leaked war logs bear devastating witness to our incompetence. … The logs are shot through with the arrogance of the hi-tech warrior and the glee taken in murdering leaders from the air. If enough Taliban are killed, says the machine, the enemy must surely run out of men.”
The Economist magazine, in an opinion article titled “Afghanistan War Logs: At Least They Know the War Isn’t Going Well,” writes: “What the documents show is that the military’s internal intelligence doesn’t make the war look any better than it looks to the press and other outsiders. This will likely widen the gap between the necessarily optimistic official pronouncements of military commanders and the Obama administration, and the public’s assumptions about what those officials are telling each other in private. In other words, it’s likely to create an increased impression of hypocrisy on the part of officials who continue to proclaim that the war is going well and that its challenges are manageable.”
The business daily Financial Times, in an article titled “Leaked Files Raise Fresh Doubts on War” writes that there are “clear signs that the documents, while not strikingly revelatory, could fuel doubts on Capitol Hill and elsewhere about whether Pakistan or Hamid Karzai’s government in Afghanistan can ever become reliable partners for the U.S.”
The left-wing tabloid Daily Mirror, in a commentary piece titled “WikiLeaks Exposes the Brutal Truth on Afghanistan,” writes: “Julian Assange is an oddball but he deserves a medal for exposing what’s really happening in Afghanistan. The 90,000 U.S. secret documents explode any lingering belief that modern warfare is like a giant computer game, smart bombs zapping the baddies. War is a dirty, nasty, grisly and degrading confrontation. … A deadline must be set to bring home British forces from an unwinnable £4billion mission. Not 2014 or 15 but the end of next year, when the Canadians go, or 2012 at the latest.”
The center-right tabloid Daily Mail, in an article titled “Washing the Dirty Linen of a Dirty Conflict in Public Could Actually Save Lives,” writes: “The only way forward is for President Obama to start a political process, involving the Taliban and its leader Mullah Omar, which gives our departure a figleaf of dignity. If he fails to do this, he will betray his responsibility to his own people, to his allies and especially Britain, and to the Afghans. … If we wait for military success before starting a political negotiation, a lot more good people will die uselessly. It is time to talk, and start packing.”
Many media outlets accuse the United States of covering up civilian deaths in Afghanistan. The Guardian, in an article titled “How U.S. Marines Sanitized Record of Bloodbath,” writes that “war logs show how Marines gave cleaned up accounts of incident in which they killed 19 civilians.”
The center-right Daily Telegraph, in an article titled “Wikileaks Afghanistan: Suggestions U.S. Tried to Cover up Civilian Casualties,” says “fresh evidence suggesting that U.S.-led forces attempted to cover up civilian casualties in Afghanistan has emerged through leaked military documents.”
The only surprises for me in these reactions are those of the Financial Times Deutschland and the Frankfurter Allgemeine, which have some adults on staff. The rest are catering to readers who would rather debate about angels on the head of a pin. The 68ers have raised generations of wannabe 68ers who love to protest but are incapable of offering real world proposals for any of today’s problems. Meanwhile radical imams are scouring the coverage for slogans to use in recruitment videos. All this was entirely predictable.
I have been to support our troops when they have marched through our town on return from Afghanistan (and Iraq). Its just that I no longer understand the goal of their mission. It needs to be explained
in very specific detail with costs and an explanation of what success will look like. This is just not being done over here (U.K).That means saying exactly how many lives have been saved by the 324 deaths so far.
Also, why should there be a nation of Afghanistan at all? There is nothing that unites the different tribes and they have more ties with their fellow tribesmen in Pakistan, Tajikistan ,Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Maybe we should be dealing with them rather than the Taliban and Karzai?
“Also, why should there be a nation of Afghanistan at all? There is nothing that unites the different tribes…”
I’ve been wondering about that myself. I don’t like to see young soldiers die for nothing, no matter what country they come from. Yes, we have the right to defend ourselves from those sworn to destroy us, but I don’t see nation building in Afghanistan, no way that’s going to happen. There has to be a better way.
Leaks like these always seem to occur when wars drag on too long and when countries, like the United States, get sucked into “nation building.” If we had gone into Afghanistan with massive force at the beginning of this ordeal, perhaps with 200,000 or even 300,000 troops, cut off the escape of every al Qaeda and Taliban member we could find and stop them from scurrying into Pakistan, and then KILLED them on the field of battle (not arrest them or take them prsioner), we would have made our military point to both the Afghans and the surviving members of the Taliban. We then could have installed a provisional government with members of the Northern Alliance, the people who helped us get al Qaeda and the Taliban, and then we should have left.
That’s right, we should have just left after that. This was never a war about giving Afghan women the right to vote or turning Afghanistan into a democracy like Switzerland. The initial reason for going into Afghanistan was to KILL members of al Qaeda and the Taliban. Had we done that, and then made clear to the surviving Afghans that if they ever plotted to kill Americans again we would come back and decimate what was left of their country, I will bet you anything the Taliban and any other group in that area would have thought twice before supporting al Qaeda again. We could have kept our secret bases in Pakistan to launch attacks against surviving al Qaeda members along the border (as long as we kept bribing the ISI and members of the Pakistani government) and we could probably do this by only keeping a few thousand troops in the area. And what was best about this strategy is that we could have done it on our own, not having to be concerned with how allies would react or depending on how many troops our allies would contribute to this mission.
But no, we had to embark on nation building. With that went having to drag along NATO into this mess because we needed more troops to help subdue Afghanistan. Then came the costly and time-cosuming COIN policies that were needed to win over an elusive enemy like the Taliban. Then came the enormous amount of blood and treasure needed to implement the COIN strategy. And, almost NINE years into this and what do we have to show for it? A situation that isn’t that much different than it was in 2002 or 2003. So with the drawn-out war comes the inevitable leaks, the scandals, and then the condemnation from the very people who should be supporting us, our allies.
So, to quote General David Petraeus, “Tell me, how does this end?” My guess is that we will pull out most of our troops by July 2011 simply because Obama can’t politically support this war anymore with his base. The Afghans will give him some sort of fig leaf to declare “Peace with Honor” just to get rid of us, and then we’ll leave. The Taliban will then move in and probably take over, if not the whole country certainly most of the southern part of it. The best you could hope for is a partition between tribes that are friendly to the United States on one side, and the Taliban on the other side. The worst that can happen is that the Taliban take over the whole country, although that will be hard to do if we heavily arm the tribes that are loyal to us.
If we were smart, we would not fully pull out but build several permanent bases in friendly tribal areas from which to launch special operations against any al Qaeda elements that may remain in the area, which could help to at least discourage the more radical jihadists from trying to train and plot for another attack against the United States. Will that be costly? Sure, but we have bases all over the world so a few more won’t be that expensive. Heck, we still have a base in Kosovo and that war was over more than ten years ago. By maintaining a small presence in friendly areas of Afghanistan we could cause a major roadblock against al Qaeda, which was our original objective at the beginning of this war. We would also be able to keep an eye on the Afghan-Pakistani border, always a source of problems. This could be our best hope for salvaging a war that is not lost, but is not “winnable,” either.
I agree. Part of the problem is that Bush bought into “compassionate conservatism”, then extended the idea to foreign affairs, most importantly to our fight against islamic totalitarianism. It’s a muddled, confused idea that has only created huge problems for the US both on the domestic front and foreign front.
I agree that we should have gone in with overwhelming strength. It was not so much about nation building as it was that Afghanistan was of secondary importance to Bush’s Administration. They probably were already planning Iraq.
For Libertyship46…..
…..”If we were smart, we would not fully pull out but build several permanent bases in friendly tribal areas from which to launch special operations against any al Qaeda elements that may remain in the area, which could help to at least discourage the more radical jihadists from trying to train and plot for another attack against the United States.”
I tend to disagree with this “stronghold” concept. Air re-supply is too vulnerable from surface-to-air-missiles. Also, wasn’t this tried in South Viet Nam? We still had to get out of that miserable country via a very messy process.
Much is said about our announced withdrawal date simply indicating to the terrorists that they should assume the customary “squat position” right where they are and just wait. Or, we can announce that we’ll “stay for the duration”….but, sooner or later the “enemy squat position” will have to take place. I keep posting wherever I can the idea that any vacuum created by our inevitable withdrawal is simply a standing vacuum only waiting to be realized. Time in Asia means relatively little.
Also, these “friendlies” groups are just notoriously shifting sand dunes. All casualty lists are too long. Land warfare in Asia, any part of Asia, for the United States is simply a logistical nightmare with an endless drain from our Treasury. Sooner or later, “…we run out of other peoples’ money”….that’s from Margaret Thacher, the ultimate pragmatist.
We need her pragmatism right now. Our current “Popularity” and “Hearts and Minds” concepts are empty and unrealistic. Let’s come home now. UAV’s are proven to be effective. Let’s use more of these.
The Guardian writes: “by recording failure in meticulous detail, the leaked war logs bear devastating witness to our incompetence…”
We have placed our treasure in this hapless nation for almost 9 years now. In the meantime the Taliban has regrouped. We give billions of aid dollars to Pakistan and the Pakistani ISI is reported by these same leaks, to be actively aiding the Taliban. Incompetence seems like the proper description of our involvement there. Cut and Run, Soeren? Again, if not now, when? We had a good opportunity when we first entered that place many years ago, but the opportunity is lost. Again, please answer.
this leak is treason.the liberal wing of high government officials for eight years was leaking top secret,information,for political gain,putting our trooms in harms way. aiding&abeiting our enemies.gen.mcrystal was fired out of his frustration,of being forced to fighting”politically incorrect wars,going back to vietnam”when general petraeuus, won unanimous support even from the hypocrites who just recently called him a loser and aliar”general betray us”general petaeus basically conditioned his war in afghanistan.”no more politically correct wars”the presidents political credibility for looking out for our toops and america,s interest is zero.so he agreed.while behind closed doors scheming to put”political correctness,and social engineering polices in full force thatweakens our military’s resolve,and threatens america,s best interest and national security.not due to inexperience,as the cowardly lions in the republian party claim bowing to the alterof the politically correct,elite.but an intentional act of treason.anyone brave enough to demand answers as to wikipedia consulting with the whitehouse just3 weeks before releasing these documents regarding what documents to release.then democrats act outraged; don’t worry democrats;nothing will come of it.the g.o.p.has been bowing to your alter for decades,just as the d.n.c.has bowed to the alter of america’s enemies,for decades.patriots;america’s answers are not in d.c.they are in you,d.c.and the media,abandoned you years ago.face that fact,realize the problems we face is of our own doing,for putting spin&glitter,over trust&verify.free stuff,over freedom.
How is it possible that Obama knew about the release of Wikileaks information two weeks prior to the release?
Julian Assange said many weeks ago that he had in his possession State Dept. cables from Afghanistan. It was no suprise to me either when the cables were leaked several days ago. However this may interest you. Assange a Soros stooge?
http://mindbodypolitic.com/2010/06/09/wikileaks-role-in-julius-baer-case-linked-to-soros-sachs-israeli-intelligence/
(Even liberal trolls can be open minded)