The archive is the second cache obtained by the independent organization WikiLeaks and made available to several news organizations. The Iraq documents shed new light on such fraught subjects as civilian deaths, detainee abuse and the involvement of Iran
“Look at those dead bastards,” one pilot says. “Nice,” the other responds.
Video game wars from Collateral Murder:
5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad — including two Reuters news staff.
Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.
The military did not reveal how the Reuters staff were killed, and stated that they did not know how the children were injured.
Via NYTimes.
The Shrine Down the Hall: a look at some of the bedrooms America’s war dead left behind. Link.
Yes, it’s coated in a kind of diplomatic double-speak, but listen to it:
“Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near term (next 12 months) — while Afghan security capacity matures — risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible,” General McChrystal writes.
This is an eight year war and the US’s top general is saying he doesn’t think the other side can be defeated without an emergency influx of more troops.
I’m a big fan of anything Morris does but his reflections are particularly useful since he made a fascinating documentary on McNamara a few years ago:
“How should we remember Robert McNamara? As an engaged public servant who participated in some of the most important decisions of the 20th century? A hawk who served as the chief architect of the war in Vietnam? A technocrat who never fully understood the moral implications of his policies? A hero who steadfastly worked to prevent the escalation of conventional war into thermonuclear conflict? All of the above?”
Quote: The same skepticism that conservatives like to train on bleeding-heart idealists might also help create a more critical and careful examination of wealth, power, the possibility of structural injustice, and the possibility that some enemies might even become friends—and at less expense than it would take to kill them. Both progressives and conservatives, unfortunately, get too caught up in their own identities, rather than using their philosophies as analytical disciplines and sources of inspiration. Checking to see if someone puts out the right cultural signals, shares the same visceral dislikes of certain politicians (“who makes you hear the dog whistle?”), and laughs at the usual stereotypical jokes about nutcases—all that builds false community, not true national security.
Military planners are talking about a 50 year war in the “Arc of Instability” that stretches across the Middle East. What would a 50 year peace plan look like?
Quote: In this perspective, Iraq is only an immediate front, with Afghanistan and Pakistan the expanding fronts, in a single larger war from the Middle East to South Asia. Instead of thinking of Iraq like Vietnam, a war that was definitively ended, it is better to think of Iraq as a setback, or better a stalemate, on a larger battlefield where victory or defeat are painfully hard to define over a timespan of five decades.
Martin’s commentary: With President Change just redistributing the wars, it certainly seems like there’s long-war thinking going on behind U.S. military involvement.
Hayden says the useful comparison might not be Vietnam but the Indian Wars: long, drawn out skirmishes across a wide field with irregular fighters and shifting alligiences. Good as far as it goes, but those wars ended with colonization, with more non-natives living in the West than Native Americans.
Perhaps more meanacing is the idea of the classic British counter-insurgency wars that attempt to break the spirit of the occupied country through long drawn out conflict. This war depends on being fought outside of camera range—a U.S. officer is quoted saying: “you want to whack bad guys quietly and cover your tracks with humanitarian aid projects.” Hayden says Abu Grahib-style prison is being expanded in Afghanistan and Pakistan is just as much of a powderkeg ready to explode.
Via JohanPDX
Yes, you shoot off enough guns, fire enough rockets and drop enough bombs and you’re going to end up killing civilians and alienating the locals.
“Dozens of Afghan civilians were killed in American air raids in western Afghanistan, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Wednesday. But Afghan officials gave far higher death tolls, ranging from 100 to 130 or more. The continuing toll in civilian casualties has been a principle factor in turning many Afghans against the fighting against the Taliban.”
