I doubt that President Obama will use the WikiLeaks episode as a pivot that allows him to begin a pullout from Afghanistan. Remember, his "surge" is still under way. The question is what he does next July, when the surge is supposed to be over and a withdrawal is supposed to begin.
My colleague Mike Gerson wrote a good column this morning making just that point. But is that why we're in Afghanistan? We might decide that the liberation of women in that country from the oppression of the Talilban is worth sending troops to fight and die for, but we ought to have that debate -- and we ought to decide whether the current counterinsurgency strategy would be the right way to achieve that goal. But we shouldn't just let that be the reason to stay in Afghanistan because the other, original reasons no longer hold water -- at least not without a debate.
Is it conventional wisdom that we can't fight small cells of extremists by sending 100,000 US troops around the world for sure because we can't afford it and, likely, because it is not effective? So what is our long term strategy to deal with this issue? If it is more reliant upon intelligence and counter-terrorism don't we need the levels of intel spending and use of contractors laid out in the Post series? Can we afford these efforts and also support big ticket, nation state threat, weapons platforms like the F-35?
Thos are the right questions, and I wish I knew all the answers. I also wonder whether we can indefinitely spend as much on defense as the rest of the world combined.
Hi Gene, This story is just one more example of how the government uses the word "secret" when really it just means "embarrassing." I know this is not new, but it seems to have gotten worse in the Bush years and is now continuing in the Obama administration. Did you expect better?
The Obama administration has been at least as aggressive as the Bush administration -- arguably, more aggressive -- in going after leaks and leakers. I can see why any president would disapprove of the release of tons of raw data like the WikiLeaks "War Diary." But has the administration really lived up to its promise of transparency? I don't think so.
Several of the initial articles that I read on the wikileak story indicated that there was evidence in the documents of war crimes. I know (1) the amount of documents to digest in this leak are massive, and (2) if we learned anything last week, it's that we should probably cool our jets until we know the whole story. Given that, is there anything that's come to light yet that might indicate war crimes by this administration or the prior one?
I think that depends on how you define war crimes. I called this war "morally ambiguous" and intend to write more about the subject. There may be no "clean" way to fight this war, but the drone attacks and the hit squads are troubling. At least we're not waterboarding people anymore...
It would be a good idea to learn a bit about the history of Afghanistan before deciding to occupy and reshape it. That didn't work for Alexander the Great, it didn't work for the British, it didn't work for the Russians... and now it's supposed to work for us?
I'm a journalist, and journalists love sunshine. The only thing I'd say about WikiLeaks is that when you are presented with "secret" information you always have to consider the source -- and his or her motives. If I were a newspaper editor presented with a document dump from WikiLeaks or any other intermediary, I'd want to be assured that I was getting the whole thing, not excerpts culled to bolster a certain view. And I'd want to know as much as I could about the person who leaked the documents. It would be hard to turn away this kind of material, but it would make me uneasy.
Well, that's what I'm talking about. Look, I'm on record as opposing the escalation of this war and as calling for a withdrawal. But I would still want to make sure that the documents were passed along in a "neutral" way -- at least that they were not selectively edited to paint a certain picture, even if it's the same picture I'm inclined to paint.
Are you suggesting that the Post hasn't written about the Journolist flap? Because that would be untrue. (And I was never a member, by the way, so leave the conspiracy theories on the shelf.)
I don't think that's an apt analogy. In 1942, we were mobilizing the entire nation and its industrial might. Is that what we're doing now?
I really appreciated your take on the Sherrod case and the prominent promotion of fear of Black leadership. Breitbart was consciously manipulating this. What accountability does 'legitimate' news source like Fox News encumber by runnning with this? Particularly since they refuse to state a retraction? Essentially, who should 'regulate' journalists and hold them to a higher standard?
Journalists are accountable to the truth and to the public. The First Amendment is pretty definitive.
What's your opinion on Senator Webb's Op-Ed on race, class and privilege? I found the response by the Virginia NAACP to be disappointingly knee-jerk.
It was provicative and well-written piece -- he's a very good writer. I disagree with him on some points and agree on some others -- and it would take longer than we have today to parse the whole issue in detail. I hope to have the chance to chat with Sen. Webb soon about his piece, and then maybe I'll write a column. So stay tuned.
Because most Americans' lives are untouched by the war -- or, at least, that's been the case to this point. If the current elevated troop levels are maintained for a while, I think you'll see the war become more of an issue.
Tom Ricks is the gold standard, as far as I'm concerned, so I take everything he says seriously. But I doubt he was arguing that we fight this "holding action" indefinitely or even permanently. I don't think anyone realilstically believes the U.S. presence in the Af-Pak region can or should be reduced to zero anytime soon. But is the best solution to have 100,000 troops in Afghanistan battling the Taliban? Or should it be, say, 10,000 troops focused on hunting terrorists in the border region, with a big supporting base at Bagram?
I think the accounts of civilian casualties, in particular, make it more difficult for allied European governments to keep troops in Afghanistan, given that public opinion in those countries is already against the war. In Afghanistan itself, the reaction has been: "Look, see, we told you that Pakistan was aiding the Taliban."
That's basically what the White House said. I would note, however, that Obama's policy came with a July 2011 deadline. So are we being impatient, or is the policy itself impatient? In any event, it doesn't seem unreasonable, with just a year left, to look hard at what's being accomplished.
Alas, our deadline has arrived. That's all for today, folks. See you again next week.
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