MOTHER JONES July 28, 2010 WHAT WE'RE FOLLOWING THIS WEEK The Truth About Wikileaks' Afghan Bombshell Afghanistan is truly an under-reported war—and, more important, an under-discussed and under-debated war. Last week, for instance, Andrew Breitbart must have received a thousand times the ink and hits that the war did, and even he might think that wasn't right. This conflict is costing the nation about $100 billion a year, at a time when our federal budget is under great pressure. The loss of American lives in Afghanistan has been increasing. Civilian casualties have created resentment against US and NATO forces. The US military and civilian agencies are involved in a tremendously complicated endeavor in a land very few Americans know anything about, and US success depends on collaborating with Afghan political and security institutions that are often inept and plagued with corruption. Yet this war receives little airtime in the United States. There is the occasional hearing on Capitol Hill, but no rousing debates. The media and public pay attention in spurts—such as when President Barack Obama conducted a review that led to increasing the number of US troops in Afghanistan, or when Gen. Stanley McChyrstal and his staff dumped on the White House while talking to a Rolling Stone freelancer. Yet these short bursts come and go—while the war slogs on, with much of the United States remaining detached from and ignorant of what is happening day to day in their name, with their tax dollars, in Afghanistan. BREAKING NEWS Afghan Forces: Fighting the Taliban or Each Other? Reading through the trove of documents released by WikiLeaks Sunday, one could come away with the impression that members of Afghanistan's discipline-challenged security forces spend more time fighting each other than they do the Taliban. Among the 92,000 documents released by the group are dozens of reports detailing so-called "green-on-green" incidents, the military's term for friendly fire episodes involving Afghan personnel. Here the phrase "friendly fire" (what the US military dubs "blue-on-blue" when it involves American or coalition service members) is a bit misleading. While some reported green-on-greens involved accidental shootings—like when a trio of police officers were engaging in "horseplay" and shot an official from Afghanistan's National Security Directorate and another man—many are the result of score-settling and disputes, occasionally drug-fueled, that turn violent. Many of these internecine conflicts pit members of the Afghan National Army (ANA) against the Afghan National Police (ANP). If even remotely representative of the professoinalism of the ANA and ANP, these incident reports make Hamid Karzai's goal of taking over primary control of security by 2014 seem like a pipe dream—and seriously call into question whether the Obama administration can deliver on its strategy. Here are some lowlights (spelling mistakes, etc. in the originals). —Dan Schulman [READ MORE] Can This Dem Defeat Congress' Tea Party Ambassador? When it comes to enraging liberals, few Republicans in Washington can compete with Rep. Michele Bachmann. Since grabbing headlines in 2008 for calling then-candidate Obama "very anti-American," the three-term Minnesota congresswoman has transformed herself from a back-bench newbie into Washington's official ambassador to the tea party masses. She's denounced the AmeriCorps public service program as "re-education camps for young people," called upon Americans "to slit our wrists" to stop the health care bill, and declared that Democratic rule had turned the US into "a nation of slaves"—an unending stream of outrageous soundbytes that have turned her into a political lightning rod, perhaps rivaled only by Sarah Palin. Follow the DC Bureau on Twitter
So when Wikileaks posts 92,000 classified US military reports detailing assorted aspects of the war, it is disheartening to see bloggers and commentators dismiss this document dump as not much that's new. I wonder if any of the journalists pooh-poohing this collection of documents would do so had he or she been the person to unearth this trove. Moreover, as theTimes (which, along with British newspaper the Guardian and German magazine Der Speigel, was granted early access to this archive by Wikileaks) writes, the records undercut the administration's claims about the war.
Know-it-all cynics can be dismissive and claim, "Well, it isn't big news to me that the war is not going as well as depicted by the Obama administration (and, prior to that, the Bush administration)." Yet when 92,000 military reports emerge supporting this point, it ought to be significant—even for the jaded. —David Corn [READ MORE]
But while Bachmann's telegenic rabble-rousing has turned her into an icon of the conservative base, it's also placed her squarely in the Democratic Party's sights. Meet the Dem who could unseat her. —Suzy Khimm [READ MORE]
Wednesday, 28 July 2010
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