Few smoking guns in these leaks
David Blackburn 9:26am
Courtesy of WikiLeaks, the Guardian and The New York Times have obtained classified
documents pertaining to the killing of civilians in Afghanistan and the duplicity of Pakistani spies. The White House is furious,
condemning the leaks for ‘endangering US and allied servicemen’ on active duty – a statement that seems reasonable until the White House added that the documents pre-dated
President Obama’s assumption of office and that they ‘do not reflect current on-ground realities’. But that makes the allegations contained therein irrelevant or dated.
Judging by the two newspapers' coverage, the leaks are vague and certainly not novel. It’s obvious that Pakistan is an unwilling ally, and one which has its own ambitions in the region. The
New York Times makes the case for systemic Pakistan complicity in regional insurgency. What emerges from its report
is the existance of a rogue element, the ‘S Wing’ of the ISI, which has broad autonomy in Pakistan’s ungovernable tribal regions and the volatile border with India. The NYT
profiles Lt. Gen Hamid Gul (who must be a Pathan if name is anything to go by) who seems to liaise frequently with the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Waziristan, though it’s not clear to what
aim.
The Guardian has worked itself into a righteous fury about the death of civilians, and the suggestion
that NATO covers them up. First, such allegations are hardly new and rarely proved. Second, there is a difference between conducting a private investigation and not having one at all. Regrettable
though it is, civilian casualties are a fact of conflict, especially when the enemy uses civilians as a camouflage. Tactics have changed to meet that fact. Talk to anyone who has fought in
Afghanistan before and after the McCrystal plan’s implementation, and they will tell you that the infantryman’s playground has been replaced by a careful COINS strategy. (This is
important given that the leaks pre-date McCrystal.) Now, contact is kept to a minimum to protect civilians who might be in the area; if the engagement must escalate, then civilians are given enough
warning to evacuate – fighter jets strafe adjacent fields for example. Sadly, civilians are still killed. But in a struggle for hearts and minds, not widely publicising the tragic death of
civilians is often required, especially given that the Taliban use dead women and children as a propaganda tool. There is, of course, no mention of this in the Guardian.
Previous
TrevorsDen
July 26th, 2010 9:48am Report this commentThe Guardian should consider the fate of many French people who were inhabitants of Caen in June/July 1944.
TomTom
July 26th, 2010 10:09am Report this comment"The Guardian should consider the fate of many French people who were inhabitants of Caen in June/July 1944."
Or Dresden in 1945......but The Guardian is incoherent and ignores how many civilians are killed by Pathan terrorists who dress as "civilians" and carry guns only to have the guns disappear from the corpses.
Afghan soldiers aren't up to much - they wear a uniform to distinguish themselves from civilian-terrorists - but they act like terrorists in killing Westerners
Verityred
July 26th, 2010 10:11am Report this commentSince Labour lost the election, the Guardian had utterly lost it's grip. Whatever one's political views, a broadsheet like the Guardian should be better than this.
marc antony
July 26th, 2010 10:29am Report this commentObviously, this piece is a parody?
Frank P
July 26th, 2010 10:34am Report this commentCan anybody remember whether or not the Manchester Guardian was as inimical to the war effort 1939 - 45, against the Japs, Gerries and Ities, as its successor is to this war against Islamic Jihad? As for the NYT ....
Victor Southern
July 26th, 2010 11:06am Report this commentThe triumph of the terrorists movements is to persuade the left/liberal element in all Western countries that absolutely nobody is ever killed by Western forces except women, "children" and people in hospitals.
Children can mean all sorts of things to different people. When the "children" are throwing stones, molotov cocktails or firing guns they become combatants. When terrorists persuade some poor weak-minded young woman to act as a suicide bomber they are not concerned by her gender.
In war there is always collateral damage - it is unavoidable. Terrorist organisations deliberately use children and women as shields, hostage to misfortune. Islamists do, Hamas does, the Tamil Tigers did, Milosevic did; they are used in Chechnya.
However, the same terrorist organisations are not at all concerned about casualties amongst women and children when they bomb Omagh, the World Trade Centre, Bali, Peshawar, Tel Aviv and many others. There the aim is to create the maximum mayhem, the maximum fear, the maximum shock.
Mark Demmen
July 26th, 2010 12:01pm Report this commentDon't forget - it's not just The Guardian, but rather The Guardian acting in concert with the BBC. I wonder what Lord Reith would have made of the today's coverage on the BBC when British service personnel are fighting and dying.
We can only hope - probably in vain - that Jeremy Hunt won't try to be as sympathetic and understanding in future.
David Lindsay
July 26th, 2010 12:43pm Report this commentThere are no "Taliban" distinct from the Pashtun as a whole. So we are indeed at war with the schoolchildren, with the Police, with the wedding parties, with the pregnant women, with the deaf and dumb, with all of them. That is why we should not be at war at all in Afghanistan, a country wholly unrelated to the 9/11 attacks from Saudi Arabia.
davidk
July 26th, 2010 12:46pm Report this commentThe Spectator's mission statement:
"The Spectator's taste for controversy remains undiminished. There is no party line to which our writers are bound - originality of thought and elegance of expression are the sole editorial constraints."
Comment from David Blackburn:
"...not widely publicising the tragic death of civilians is often required, especially given that the Taliban use dead women and children as a propaganda tool."
No further comment required....
Rhoda Klapp
July 26th, 2010 12:52pm Report this commentWhat I'm wondering is why, if these details are of such import, our brave journalists did not seek out the truth before? If I can read it on Wikileaks, and the Guardian got it from wikileaks, what do we need the Guardian for?
(Oh, and do they know nothing of war at all? These thing go on in all wars.)
Ossi
July 26th, 2010 12:59pm Report this commentI am not sure I understand all this fuss against the Guardian. it is not the Guardian who is making any claims but rather US Service personel in the 000's of documents that mention some of the screw ups which led to civilian casualties.
No-one disagrees that there are casualties in any conflict, but to deliberately lie about it and then claim the moral high ground is despicable.
Zane
July 26th, 2010 1:58pm Report this commentYou dont know what the Taliban look like..they are no different to to any civilian Pashtun..so you do target the population on the whole, it is pure murder on a large scale.
So it is ok for soldiers to murder indiscriminately women and children yet at the same time we have to worry about those same soldiers safety who should not be in Afghanistan in the first place.
How can a barefoot army with AK47's take on and hold off 50 countries with the most advanced and devastating weapons, it doesnt make sense does it? Well..i will tell you.. GOD has a BIG part to play in it..Afghans are the most religious people on Earth..God will fight using his legions of angels to protect these people, think about it, they have NEVER lost a war and it is not happening this time either..why would we now want to TALK with the Taliban at this moment.
Frank P
July 26th, 2010 2:31pm Report this commentOssi (12.59pm)
In war the first casualty ....! Necessarily so. It's a devious and dirty old game, the oldest and dirtiest, in fact. Unless you're in it to win it, there's little point in it. Remember that the Gerries, the Japs and the I-ties have been our good friends for many decades now. I wonder why? The time for mercy and beneficence is in victory; and not just victory, but when the enemy sues - nay pleads - for peace and mercy , not truces, or treaties. Particularly when the war is retaliatory, as both the Iraq & Afghan wars are (and the forthcoming Iran war will be, unless we get our fingers out and pre-empt the mad bastards).
What would we have done without the 'D Notice' - '39 - '45. The willingness now of armchair pacifists and liberals to snipe at our tropps and those of our allies at the sharp end is utterly nauseating. Ungrateful shitz!
The moral high ground is always acquired by blood on the battlefields of the low ground (where there is noticeable shortage of liberal socialist philosophers, thank goodness).
porkbelly
July 26th, 2010 4:16pm Report this commentDavid Lindsay seems to have forgotten (and he is not alone in this) that a certain O. Bin Laden was operating from Afghanistan with the blessing of its Taliban government, and that is the reason for the war. What do the legion of hand-wringers and surrender simians imagine will happen in Afghanistan if we withdraw? We are in a war with Islam (not "Islamists", not "Radical Islam", just "Islam") and our retreat will mean their victory and will only inflame their dreams of worldwide caliphate further. Let us stop this endless rationalization of surrender by inches, or accept that we are finished as a culture.
Marcher Baron
July 26th, 2010 4:43pm Report this commentWar is nasty - you can't wage it without killing people. Whether we should be there or not (and my own view is that we shouldn't), because we are there we have to wage it with all means at our disposal, not with our troops' hands tied behind their back. The civilian population will inevitably get in the way - look at the Blitz, Coventry, Dresden and the bombing of French railway marshalling yards during WW2. This does not mean that civilians should be targeted, but there has to be an acceptance that with the best will in the world, there will be collateral damage.
Hysteria
July 26th, 2010 6:27pm Report this commentZane - "GOD has a BIG part to play in it..Afghans are the most religious people on Earth"
evidence for this wild assertion?
"..God will fight using his legions of angels to protect these people,""
WTF?
"think about it, they have NEVER lost a war"
not true - British won the Second Afghan War in a number of battles from 1878 to 1881
Hopalong
July 27th, 2010 7:10am Report this comment"We are in a war with Islam." [Porkbelly]
... and pointedly not in a war _against_ Islam. There is a war within Islam, and if recent history has taught us anything it is that we cannot be disinterested spectators in that war. That option was irretrievably lost to us one September morning in 2001.
maddy1
July 28th, 2010 5:43am Report this commentNot forgetting that it was helpful Western People who carefully explained to Saddam that we could not accept 10,000 dead! The same people have brainwashed Zane, here into believing that the Afghans, defeated the Russian Bear. Afghans have been defeated lots of times. The Afghans are not particularly good fighters, but the environment is a good fortress and they have always used women and children has hostages. The Victorians, bless them, drew a line at the Khyber and fought, really brave, world class Ashanti warriors for the best gold in the world! In short the Barren Wasteland did not have anything they wanted, at that time. "Carry on up the Khyber" released in 1967, has come back to haunt us only because of our weak willed leftist, dominated politicians.
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