The Wikileaks document dump changes nothing

Posted By Dov Zakheim Monday, July 26, 2010 - 11:10 PM Share

So what to make of the WikiLeaks story? First of all, it covers a period of several years; and there is no doubt that the United States and NATO didn't get everything right in all of those years, especially from 2004 to 2007. The two big stories -- ISI's fishing in troubled Afghan waters, and the deaths of civilians -- are not really news at all.

If the Department of Defense's leadership is to be believed -- and I for one, believe them -- Pakistan has put a lid on ISI. No doubt the Pakistani experience with its own Taliban gave the military and intelligence community something to think about. Equally, the Karzai government has gone out of its way to work with Islamabad, often to the chagrin of New Delhi. And no one denies that civilian loss of life, a by-product of every war ever fought, has diminished since General McChrystal issued new rules of engagement that themselves have frustrated many in the military (proving yet again that one cannot satisfy everyone -- would WikiLeaks have leaked disgruntlement with the new ROE's? I doubt it.)

The people behind WikiLeaks make no secret of their opposition to the Afghan war. Some would like to see American troops prosecuted as war criminals. WikiLeaks sees itself as providing the world with the Pentagon Papers Redux, though no one in his or her right mind could compare the Gulf of Tonkin incident that prompted the Vietnam War buildup with the destruction of the World Trade Center. That says more about the WikiLeaks crowd than about the sins their papers purport to reveal.

At the end of the day, the WikiLeaks papers will change few opinions. Those who want us out of Afghanistan will cite them ad nauseum; those who recognize the stakes for what they are -- the need to preclude that country from once again serving as a breeding ground for al Qaeda and their copycats -- will give them short shrift. What matters more is whether General Petraeus can affect the turnaround that made him a war hero in Iraq. If he does, the WikiLeaks papers will make good grist for historians' footnotes, and nothing more. 

Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

EXPLORE:AFGHANISTAN, MEDIA, U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
 

WILDTHING

12:49 AM ET

July 27, 2010

leakage

seems to be trying to point fingers at Iran and Pakistan and looks more like a plant to seeds of future special forces mischief in the places we do not belong and have causes ed ourselves with our '79 covert operation to lure the Soviets into a country used as a pawn for super power hijinks... which has admitedly been our experience too with Iran in '54... our hijinks may just become our jinx....

 

MARTY MARTEL

2:34 AM ET

July 27, 2010

US deserves to be screwed by Pakistan

After having poured billions of dollars in aid, US deserves to be treated with such contempt by Pakistani establishment (Pakistani Army, ISI and Government) since US has intentionally ignored Pakistani complicity in Afghan insurgency until now.

Files leaked by Wikileaks more or less corroborate ‘The sun in the sky’ report published by Harvard Professor Matt Waldman from London School of Economics on 6/13/2010.

That report states that “support for the Afghan Taliban is ‘official Pakistani ISI policy’ and is backed at the highest levels of Pakistan’s civilian administration. Pakistan appears to be playing a double game of astonishing magnitude. There is thus a strong case that the ISI orchestrates, sustains and shapes the overall insurgent campaign in Afghanistan.”

According to Afghan Taliban commanders’ interviews with Matt Waldman, the Pakistani ISI orchestrates, sustains and strongly influences the Taliban insurgency movement. The Afghan Taliban commanders also say that ISI gives sanctuary to both Taliban and Haqqani groups, and provides huge support in terms of training, funding, munitions, and supplies. In the words of these Afghan Taliban commanders, this is ‘as clear as the sun in the sky’.

The ISI is said to compensate families of suicide bombers to the tune of 200,000 Pakistani rupees, claims the report. Thus US AID TO BANKRUPT PAKISTAN FINANCES THE DEATH OF US/NATO SOLDIERS in Afghanistan. So in a way, US is financing the death of its OWN troops in Afghanistan.

Pakistani government issued its usual denials just as it had denied umpteen times the existence of Mullah Mohammed Omar’s ‘Quetta Shura Taliban (QST)’ in the provincial capital Quetta of Baluchistan. But General Stanley McChrystal called QST as the biggest threat to US Afghan mission in his report to President Obama in August, 2009.

Pakistan has denied presence of Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil umpteen times and just yesterday Adm Mike Mullen repeated in Islamabad that Osama is hiding in a very secure place in Pakistan.

The most breath-taking part of this sordid saga is that US is NOT holding Pakistan responsible for sheltering, protecting and supporting Haqqani’s HQN network and Mullah Omar’s QST network all these years while those networks have been causing daily deaths of US/NATO soldiers ever since 2002 even though Pakistan was SUPPOSED to have joined US fight against same Taliban back in 2001!

Can American CIA not know what Matt Waldman knows? How come Obama administration is continuing Bush’s mollycoddling of Pakistan with such incriminating evidence against Pakistan’s double game? How can US mission in Afghanistan succeed if Obama administration continues to ignore such Pakistani duplicity like Bush had done it before Obama? How long will US continue to evade what is as obvious as a ’bright sun’ in the sky on a summer day?

 

COURTNEYME109

4:07 AM ET

July 27, 2010

Changing Opinions

Leaks of ancient intell on Land of the Pure’s ISI confirm that Pakistan (and by extension - India, China, Russia and Iran all) believe that Great Satan may indeed create an Afghanistan that can stand on its own, that ultimately is going to be able to secure its own territory, not provide a safe haven for terrorists, not drag down the security of the entire region.

 

ZATHRAS

5:31 AM ET

July 28, 2010

Reflex and Analysis

The point being, don't mistake one for the other.

Reflex, for American conservatives, is to blame unfortunate events on liberals. It almost doesn't matter what the event is, except that if liberals are directly associated with it in some way the reflex is easier to exercise. It was days after Hurricane Katrina before conservatives started complaining about the liberals.

I happen to agree with Zakheim's view of the motive behind the Wikileaks document dump, but he thinks the motive is what matters. It isn't. What matters is the reinforcement of public views about the Afghan views at a time when the public is already souring on the war. Are we really fighting al Qaeda or are we mostly blundering around with knuckle-dragging tribal types and killing people by mistake? Why are we trying to help a country -- Pakistan -- that is sponsoring the enemy? If the answer to those questions is anything like, "well, we did that for a while, but that stuff isn't happening any more. Mostly" we've got a problem. And that is pretty much the answer.

Public opinion on Vietnam was fixed for a long time. Public opinion on Afghanistan now is fluid (in the United States. Not to dwell on this, but we have to consider opinion in allied countries as well). That's the context for the Wikileaks business, and that's why it represents a serious problem for the war effort.

 

JAYDEE001

9:27 PM ET

July 28, 2010

Amen to your comment about the reinforcement of public views

It is very hard to argue that we are fighting al Qaeda, let alone defeating them - they are all secure in Pakistan (where they have been since 2002) and the only damage we have done is via the 'clandestine' drone strikes against selected target there. What the hell we are achieving in Afghanistan is a very important question. See the article by Andrew J Bacevich in The New Republic for a spot-on analysis of the question (from 'Leakistan: The New Insurgency' July 25, 2010):

"For months on end, Washington has fixated on this question: what, oh what, are we to do about Afghanistan? Implicit in the question are at least two assumptions: first, that something must be done; and, second, that if the United States and its allies can just devise the right approach (or assign the right general), then surely something can be done.

Both assumptions are highly dubious. To indulge them is to avoid the question that should rightly claim Washington’s attention: What exactly is the point of the Afghanistan war? The point cannot be to “prevent another 9/11,” since violent anti-Western jihadists are by no means confined to or even concentrated in Afghanistan. Even if we were to “win” in Afghanistan tomorrow, the jihadist threat would persist. If anything, staying in Afghanistan probably exacerbates that threat. So tell me again: why exactly are we there?

The real significance of the Wikileaks action is of a different character altogether: it shows how rapidly and drastically the notion of “information warfare” is changing. Rather than being defined as actions undertaken by a government to influence the perception of reality, information warfare now includes actions taken by disaffected functionaries within government to discredit the officially approved view of reality. This action is the handiwork of subversives, perhaps soldiers, perhaps civilians. Within our own national security apparatus, a second insurgent campaign may well have begun. Its purpose: bring America’s longest war to an end. Given the realities of the digital age, this second insurgency may well prove at least as difficult to suppress as the one that preoccupies General Petraeus in Kabul."

 

Shadow Government is a blog about U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration, written by experienced policy makers from the loyal opposition and curated by Peter D. Feaver and William Inboden.

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