WikiLeaks Publishes Afghan War Secrets

A number of readers submitted word on the massive WikiLeaks release of Afghanistan war documents. "The data is provided in CSV and SQL formats, sorted by months, and also was rendered into KML mapping data." WikiLeaks provided the documents in advance to the New York Times, Der Spiegel, and the UK's Guardian — the latter also has up a video tutorial on how to read the logs. From the Times: "A six-year archive of classified military documents... offers an unvarnished, ground-level picture of the war in Afghanistan that is in many respects more grim than the official portrayal. The secret documents... are a daily diary of an American-led force often starved for resources and attention as it struggled against an insurgency that grew larger, better coordinated and more deadly each year. The New York Times, the British newspaper The Guardian, and the German magazine Der Spiegel were given access to the voluminous records several weeks ago on the condition that they not report on the material before Sunday. The documents — some 92,000 reports spanning parts of two administrations from January 2004 through December 2009 — illustrate in mosaic detail why, after the United States has spent almost $300 billion on the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban are stronger than at any time since 2001."

Comments

US abuse

[SquarePixel]

Wikileaks is doing great work for the world. It sickens me that the country that is supposedly so open and about democracy abuses rest of the world like this and tries to hide it. I remember that last year the German and French population support for the war started dropping, so US started a project where they tried to think how to manipulate them. They made specific, independent plans for both countries how to give the war better PR so the general population would support it again.

US is also the only country in the world that is constantly in war with other countries, bullies them and has a history of supporting enemies of its enemies. You know, the exact same thing that US considers as helping terrorists. Funny thing is that because of this, US put itself into this war.

What about ACTA and other laws US tries to push to the rest of the world? No one comes to US and tries to tell them what to do. So leave rest of the world alone too.

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[Shakrai]

US is also the only country in the world that is constantly in war with other countries, bullies them and has a history of supporting enemies of its enemies

You realize that every country in the history of humanity has done the exact same things, right?

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[ColdWetDog]

Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst.

Heinlein, Starship troopers, 1959

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[ColdWetDog]

I pretty much agree with your point, but would like to point out that no other country is or has been involved in as many large scale, outright wars as we are, at the frequency we are.

Huh? Your view of history is pretty narrow. Perhaps in the 20th Century the US has been involved in more wars that others (often as a defensive position, ie, WWI, WW2, Korea) but the history of mankind has been that of war for thousands and thousands of years.

This is reality, not the Federation of Planets. Get used to it.

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[sbates]

Scale is relative. The British and Roman empires were waging at least as many as we are, and were just as ruthless. Granted, that shows you where we're headed, but your statement is still wrong.

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[Shakrai]

This is reality, not the Federation of Planets. Get used to it.

Even the Federation seemed to average a small war every decade or so......

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[ElrondHubbard]

Yes, but the U.S. is the first country in the history of balance-of-power politics to think that the failure of its main enemy (the USSR) entitles it to something like control of the entire world, forever. That was the goal of the Project for a New American Century that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice tried to enact for eight years, at a price that may yet cost the U.S. its pre-eminent position. And yet neoconservatives like William Kristol continue to promote this as though it were a good idea and facts recognized by the 'reality-based community' simply don't matter.

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[sbates]

Not recently, and there have been a push to make the world a non-corrupt and peaceful place.

Precious few, if any, governments have these goals at the top of their list or anywhere in their list -- ignore the rhetoric and watch what they do. Corruption is the nature of nearly all governments simply because it's how business is done. You'd be amazed at how much of your priviledge of owning a computer and having electricity is the result of bribes and blatantly unethical behavior. Nor is peace their goal. The only goal is economic stability. Whether that means a non-combatant posture today or a brutal attack on certain citizens the next, the goal is only stability for the economy and outside investment.

There is many countries that haven't had war in many many years now. It was different in the pre-modern times.

Besides, the issue is the hypocrisy and hiding it from the public. US has done over and over again the exact same things that they accuse the current terrorists and countries that support them doing.

I agree the US is guilty of the same atrocities they accuse terrorists of committing, but so are many countries. Your memory may be short, but history is quite long, and just because a few years have gone by without major war reporting doesn't mean they're suddenly pure and will never use weapons again.

So let's not be naive about anything here. Much of the criticism against the US is deserved, but it is not the only deserving country.

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[Shakrai]

since in those three wars combined only one single attack was ever made on the US.

So the murder of American civilians traveling on noncombatant ships doesn't count as an attack on the US? Attempting to get one of America's neighbors to join an alliance against her doesn't count as a hostile act?

The US had ample provocation to enter WW1. Ditto for WW2. Ditto for Korea. Hell, the peaceniks here should have loved the way Korea went down -- authorized by and conducted under the auspices of the UN in response to aggression against one of it's members.

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[Shakrai]

The British and Roman empires were waging at least as many as we are, and were just as ruthless.

No, they were far more ruthless than we are. The Romans would have conquered Afghanistan a long time ago -- it's much easier to pacify a population when you are willing to kill anyone capable of offering resistance and sell the survivors into slavery.

We aren't even as ruthless as we were just sixty years ago. Read up on how we conducted ourselves in the Pacific War against Japan. They refused to abide by the laws of war and we responded in kind.

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[digitalunity]

Strangely enough, I'm pretty sure the US and Russian stockpiles of nuclear weapons made the world safer overall. I can't say the same regarding North Korea or Iran having nukes. They might actually use them without fear of retaliation.

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[Shakrai]

Yeah, and look where it got them.

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[tacarat]

You realize that every country in the history of humanity has done the exact same things, right?

Not Tibet.

Tibet was a bunch of separate entities way back in the day. If and when it gets free of the Chinese government, do they get to redivide into those smaller countries? Obviously Songtsän Gampo, the guy who founded the Tibetan EMPIRE, wasn't a true Tibetan. He was just some random, outside oppressor engaged in acts of aggression against his neighbors. The earth was made and Tibet was there immediately with monks and quaint makers of handcrafted goodies for celebrity photo op types to pose with. Damn him for messing with that.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Actually this behavior can be seen in any aristocracy/republic, when you have a cultural elite that controls most of the wealth/power/resources it will naturally seek to "domesticate" the population by sending off aggressive individuals to fight remote wars. This pacifies your population in the short run and in the long run you limit their chances of passing on aggressive genes since they are less likely to breed offspring while away or dead. In most mammals you can domesticate them within 10 generations, why should humans be any different?

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[hairyfeet]

The problem is we have this thing known as the military industrial complex that needs shit to kept stirred to give it a reason to exist and enjoy massive profits.

Old Ike warned us about it in the 50s saying "we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. " but nobody listened.

You look at our history pre WWII and we pretty much tried to stay out of everyone else's business for the most part. After all those corps got a taste of the government teat they sure as hell wasn't about to give it up, hence where we are now. Sadly the MIC has become a self perpetuating monster, with plants and projects across every district, and more than enough cash to buy anything they want passed. Short of a total economic collapse I just don't see anything changing with regards to the USA and the MIC.

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[BLKMGK]

In order for that to actually work we'd all have to do it - all at once. By all means go ahead and try to convince the Chinese, the Russians, the Koreans, the Taliban etc. to all sing along and be friends with one another. Don't forget the Palestinians and Israelis too. Go over there and try to talk this sense to them, we'll be seeing you on TV shortly after I'm betting and not in the good way either. What exactly different is it that you propose?

If you think that somehow leading by example and becoming pacifists is going to get it done be prepared to be crushed as every other country rolls over you. What you're looking for is a fantasy and it's the sort of fantasy that's dreamed up by folks who have a warm bed, enough food, plenty of water, education, and free time to have have such thoughts. Many places in this world have very little of any of that and you had better believe they aren't going to get it overnight.

Want to win in places like Afghanistan? Start by raising their standard of living to something akin to ours. School them, build roads, develop their industries and resources, maybe give them something worthwhile to lose! When they have the luxuries that the "developed" worlds do then and only then will we begin to see progress. The Taliban and other tyrants know that an educated populace is their worst enemy. If we give Iran enough time I bet we will see this happen, trying badly to strangle them with by withholding needed supplies will work as well for us as it's working in Palestine I fear...

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[sbates]

What a lot of people don't know is that a Soviet submarine captain actually gave an order to launch a nuclear missile during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but his second in command refused to do so.

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[Demiansmark]

Actually - researchers in 2008 uncovered that there were weapons on the Lusitania: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1098904/Secret-Lusitania-Arms-challenges-Allied-claims-solely-passenger-ship.html

Really doesn't say anything to the discussion here or the point your making. But I just read this the other day and thought it was interesting.

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[Zeinfeld]

You don't think that maybe the US and Russian nuclear stockpiles have encouraged the proliferation by other states? Now certainly from the US point of view, the US is safer if other countries do not have nuclear weapons. But is the same true of Iran? We can be pretty sure that the US would not have attacked Iraq if it genuinely believed that Saddam had acquired WMD for the simple reason that he would have been able to retaliate. Iran's nuclear program began in the days of the Shah and was a joint program between Israel, Iran and South Africa. Israeli nukes are made with uranium from Iran. The deal was that Israel would provide the technology (stolen from the US), Iran the uranium, South Africa the test facility. After the Iranian revolution, the Ayatollah Khomeni shuttered the nuclear program. The main reason that it is now believed Iran is building a nuclear bomb is that they would be utter fools not to after George W. Bush's 'Axis of evil' speech, a speech that was widely considered tantamount to a declaration of an intent to attack Iran. One of the predictable consequences of the invasion of Iraq was that it would almost certainly result in Iran restoring its nuclear program. It was also fairly predictable that Iran would emerge stronger with the elimination of its main Shi'ia rival in the region as an effective military force. The Bush administration took a similar line with North Korea. Clinton's approach was deemed to have been 'too soft'. So trash talk took the place of diplomacy and the carefully negotiated deal in which the US paid North Korea not to finish its bomb was reneged on. But only after the US had parted with most of the cash. As a means of preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons by unfriendly powers, the Bush administration could hardly have acted more disastrously.

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[jd2112]

From the movie 'The Peacemaker'

"I'm not afraid of the man who wants ten nuclear weapons. I'm terrified of the man who only wants one."

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[DigiShaman]

You must be referring to Okinawa and Peleliu. I'm actually in the process of reading With the Old Breed by E.B. Sledge.

From Wiki.

In contrast to the European theater, Sledge's memoir gives a perspective on the Pacific campaign. His memoir is a front-line account of infantry combat in the Pacific War. It brings the reader into the island hopping, the jungle heat and rain, the "banzai attack" or full frontal assault used by his enemies. Sledge wrote starkly of the brutality displayed by American and Japanese soldiers during the battles, and of the hatred that both sides harbored for each other. In Sledge's words, "this was a brutish, primitive hatred, as characteristic of the horror of war in the Pacific as the palm trees and the islands."

Sledge describes one instance in which he and a comrade came across the mutilated bodies of three Marines, including one Marine whose genitals had been cut off and stuffed into the corpse's mouth. He also describes the behavior of some Marines towards dead Japanese, including the removal of gold teeth from Japanese corpses (and, in one case, a severely wounded but still living Japanese soldier), as well as other disturbing trophy-taking.

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[Conzar]

Pre WWII, what was the USA responsible for? Genocide on the Native Americans, taking land from the Mexicans, fighting the Canadians, invades Hawaii, kidnapping and enslaving people from another content, and the list goes on. I hardly think this qualifies as "staying out of everyone else's business". Please stop with the propaganda that the USA was once great bullshit.

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[Kell Bengal]

You know, I agree with you. I suspect the most dangerous thing you can teach kids in an American classroom is the true history of their forefathers.

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[AHuxley]

Its a long list for the US, then add the black operations and support, death squads ect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_operations

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[Altima(BoB)]

Maybe the fact that the Romans and the Mongols never tried to conquer Afghanistan was the result of an intelligent reticence. Even in the Byzantine era (who still called themselves "Romans") when Heraclius more or less replicated Alexander the Great's feat of conquering the Persian Empire, he promptly turned around and went home without touching Afghanistan.

But like an earlier comment mentioned, as ruthless and (in my opinion) needlessly violent as the USA's recent conduct as been, the Romans would not have tolerated an insurgency. I once heard the journalist Seymour Hersch (I probably misspelled his name) allege that in the Project for a New American Century circles such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the Third Punic War is bandied about as lot as an example of what the USA should do (As in, after two huge wars against Carthage, one of them involving Hannibal running riot across Italy for ten years, the Romans had effectively cowed Carthage into little more than a vestige of what it once was. When there were rumblings of possibly a third major conflict, the Romans responded by simply killing everyone they wanted to, selling the few survivors into slavery, and famously sowing their land with salt so that nothing would ever grow there again.)

I'm reminded of a great quote by the grouchy Roman historian Tacitus - "The Romans make a desert and call it 'peace.'"

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[Kell Bengal]

Given half a chance, Liechtenstein would kill you, and everyone you care about.

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[Dravik]

The British did conquer Afghanistan on their second try, put in place a friendly ruler and got 30 years of peace out of there while preventing Russian influence from spreading south. They pretty much accomplished all their strategic goals. There was quite a massacre during the first Afghan war though.

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[ckedge]

The Romans killed one third of all Frenchmen. LITERALLY enslaved another third. And left the final third grovelling for mercy in a destroyed country.

After destroying tyrannical governments (ones that murdered their citizens openly and wantonly with disregard for any defensible "justice") -- the Americans said "form a government that allows all your citizens to openly participate" -- and then stick around trying to make sure a genocide doesn't break out between the squabbling factions.

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[Dravik]

Read up on the fall of Carthage. The US did not go from house to house raping every woman we could find. The US did not sell 50,000 Afghans into slavery. The Afghan cities were not razed to the ground so that no building was left standing.

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[Shakrai]

They all believed them. Clinton made a habit out of bombing Iraq. The Iraqi Liberation Act was voted for by most Democrats in the House and all of them in the Senate.

Most of the World believed them too for that matter....

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[betterunixthanunix]

In fact, those nuclear weapons have made the world far less safe, for the simple reason that retaliation in the event of a nuclear strike is not only absolutely certain, but would also carry with it extremely destructive consequences for the entire planet. We have come right to the brink of destruction multiple times now, because of human or computer error, or poor diplomacy.

What have we gained from this precarious position? Only peace between a handful of countries who keep their fingers on the trigger. The rest of the world still has war, with all the brutality, violence, and war crimes that come with it, and in several cases those wars are with (or were with, in the case of wars that occurred in the past) the very countries that have nuclear stockpiles.

It is absurd to claim that humanity is safer now than we were before the arms race. We live on the brink of destruction, and while we all go about our lives feeling safe, there are people who spend their time ensuring that at any moment, any country in the world could be completely destroyed, and others whose jobs involve planning how the entire world could be destroyed if some other country decides to execute a nuclear strike.

None of that makes me feel very safe.

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[pcolaman]

US is also the only country in the world that is constantly in war with other countries, bullies them and has a history of supporting enemies of its enemies

You realize that every country in the history of humanity has done the exact same things, right?

I pretty much agree with your point, but would like to point out that no other country is or has been involved in as many large scale, outright wars as we are, at the frequency we are.

No other country has the ability to wage the large scale wars that the US has. I don't doubt that there are many countries that, given the technology and logistics that the US currently possesses, would do the same if not worse. Not taking one side or another on the debate, just saying, it's a matter of capability, not desire.

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[linhares]

right now some kid is pissing, drunk, on a tree somewhere in the US. If he is unlucky, he will be caught by the police. If he's even more unlucky, it will be in a state where that is considered a *sexual offence*, and he'll get a nice labeling for his entire life. If he is even more unlucky and gets thrown on prison (not hard in the usa), gets regularly beaten, he will either learn to fight back and become a violent man, or get depressed into submission and become someone's bitch.

my point is, even with the selection against agressive genes that wars provide, aggression, and most importantly, the ultra-violent people, get that way through a gradual learning process of though experiences most people in this forum will never be able to imagine.

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[rve]

Right on!

I saw proof on youtube that the fire couldn't be hot enough to melt those steel girders. Sick of all these lies, I went to look for myself, and I'll be damned: the WTC is still standing! They faked the 9/11 attacks in the same studio where they faked the moon landing. The real reason why the 9/11 attacks were faked was to provide an excuse for grounding all air planes so they could be retrofitted with tanks of neurotoxins for the chemtrails program, which is needed to keep the public confused and ignorant about CIA, FBI, UN and Freemason involvement in the Kennedy assassinations. The Kennedys were assassinated because they wanted to go public about the aliens that had been captured after the Roswell incident. The Aliens were here to warn us about the imminent threat posed by the passing of the planet Nibiru, which the Freemason/CIA/FBI conspiracy is trying to keep hidden because they intend to use the confusion caused by the upcoming disaster to impose UN law on the united states. The black helicopters have nothing to do with it though, they're an extremely fancy pizza delivery service for the Skull & Bones alumni.

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[X.25]

You need to do a little research on the British Empire, the Roman empire, The Mongols, etc. Pretty much ANY empire in recorded history. Most involved outright genocide of millions and ongoing conflicts on multiple fronts. We're a bunch of candy-ass pacifists by comparison.

Oh, another one. Right, I see. Thank God for your logical explanation, because I was on the edge of thinking that maybe what US was doing might not be right.

But now that you pointed out that other have done it before, then it MUST be right.

Right?

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[betterunixthanunix]

Take a look at the collateral murder video before making statements like this:

Our weaponry and style of war is far more ruthless today than the Romans could've ever dreamed of.

Note that the helicopter pilots had to radio in for permission to kill the people on the ground (they did get that permission, of course) -- the Romans would not have had to radio in. A group of Roman soldiers would have slaughtered the people with weapons, and probably the "historians" (i.e. reporters) that were there with them, without first asking a higher level commander for permission. The "rules of engagement" in Roman times were not quite what they are today: the Romans won many battles by simply laying siege and letting people starve to death (can you find an instance of the United States Army laying siege and waiting for people to starve to death?).

Yes, the weapons are more deadly. The tactics and rules, however, are a lot less brutal. Yes, warfare is still brutal, but we really do hold back our armies. If you want to see what less restraint looks like, take a look at what is happening along the Congo-Rwanda border, and you will see the kind of restrain the US army is showing in Iraq.

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[laddiebuck]

The British tried the pacifism by example thing after the First World War. The result was the Second World War, which could well have been avoided by keeping the balance of power as it stood in 1918. Instead they gutted their army and navy and only protested feebly at Germany building hers right up again.

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[daveime]

the history of mankind has been that of war for thousands and thousands of years.

This is true ... but other countries throughout history tended to either WIN or LOSE ... not fuck around for 10 years, spending billions of dollars you don't have, taking out many civilian targets then trying to hide it in the name of "national security", only to find the enemy as strong or even stronger than when you started.

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[shutdown -p now]

A puny sword cut, compared to what flamethrowers and napalm can do to you, or those vacuum bombs which literally turn your lungs inside out (but don't always kill right away)? And that's not even to mention chemical weapons.

There are very gory ways to go even on today's battlefield. It's just that they happen more often to the "insurgents", so you don't hear much about them. Then again, the fate of a captured American soldier can be quite disturbing, as well.

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[martin-boundary]

You realize that every country in the history of humanity has done the exact same things, right?

Uh, I'm Swiss, you insensitive clod!

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[marsu_k]

You're quoting Conservapedia? Seriously? Unsurprisingly, Wikipedia offers a different view on the events.

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[Runaway1956]

Uhhhh - no system is infallible. Sonar is remarkable. On sonar that would be around 40 years old today, one could actually listen to fish doing fishy things, miles away. You could hear a man sneeze underwater, again, miles away. Even the most stealthy of submarines make noise as it passes through the water - mostly from the propellor of course, but the steam plant makes noise, and the crew makes noise. Machinery inside the sub makes noise. You can hear all of it, if you have very good ears, proper training, and good equipment. A good sonar tech can hear a scuba diver long before the diver gets close enough to plant a limpet mine. But, NONE of it is infallible.

You can potentially take a noisy 1800's steam ship out to run a blockade, and succeed. Because nothing works like it's supposed to all the time.

If you think that S. Korean or any other sonar arrays are impenetrable, you have almost no understanding of sonar, or people, or of complex systems in general. NOTHING WORKS CORRECTLY ALL THE TIME! Repeat that a few thousand times - then go out and preach it to the people around you who fail to understand it.

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[Uberbah]

Strangely enough, I'm pretty sure the US and Russian stockpiles of nuclear weapons made the world safer overall.

If you define "the world" as "US and Russia", maybe. Because there were no shortage of proxy wars in South America, Africa, and Asia with the communists and capitalists supplying different sides.

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[Runaway1956]

"Our weaponry and style of war is far more ruthless today "

Bullshit. Every combat action is subject to public scrutiny, and the commanders have to answer to a Congress that watches the news, right along with reading full reports from the front line.

We do not wage a "ruthless" war. We haven't done so since about 1950. We fight "humane" wars. We bend over backwards to avoid inflicting civilian casualties and civilian damage. We have very strict rules of engagement. If you think our troops are "ruthless", you have no concept of what ruthless really is.

A ruthless military would identify a village from which some combatants came, surround that village, destroy all the structures with air strikes and artillery, then they would roll through it with armor, and follow up with infantry. A sign would be erected, "This village destroyed as penalty for supplying 10 soldiers to fight against America." And, the bodies would be left lying in the road when everyone left. That is ruthlessness.

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[evanspw]

Took the Romans two centuries to pacify the Iberian peninsula (present day Spain and Portugal). And that was without outside meddling (after they took it from the Carthaginians).

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[Archtech]

I hesitate to intrude upon this good-natured colloquy, but I must point out that there were no "Frenchmen" (or French women) for about 1000 years after Caesar and his colleagues conquered Gaul. (The very name "France" derives from the Franks, a tribe of barbarians who invaded Gaul hundreds of years after Caesar). The main source for the Roman conquest of Gaul, of course, consists of Caesar's own books. Is it at all possible that he might have slanted them, perhaps touching up a few facts and figures, in order to impress the voters back in Rome? (Point 1: Caesar is one hell of a general, who conquers whole provinces in a matter of months and utterly destroys Rome's enemies; Point 2: You *really* do not want to anger him).

You are probably aware of the wide gap between pagan Roman (and Greek, and for that matter Gaulish) ethics and the Christian ethics with which everyone in the West is more or less permeated. Whereas Christ abjured us to love our enemies, turn the other cheek when struck, and to forgive our brother "unto seventy times seven" times, the ancients believed in returning whatever they received - with interest. A noble Roman, Greek, Gaul, or Goth would take pride in rewarding his friends and servants lavishly, heaping kindness upon his dependents, and showing the most merciless cruelty to his declared enemies. In some ways, the Nazi philosophy (if one can dignify it with that name) harked back to the days of the Romans in regarding forgiveness and mercy as signs of weakness, likely to be abused and exploited by enemies. So it's not surprising that the Romans took such a robust approach to conquering other nations and repressing rebellions. The very word "virtue" originates from the Latin "vir" (a man) and to the Romans meant the manly virtues of truth, courage, and strength. That's why it's foolish and inappropriate to compare the violence of 20th and 21st century wars with those of the pre-Christian period. One shouldn't forget, either, the appalling bloodiness of the high Christian period, from the Dark Ages through to the Enlightenment. No one who casts stones at Islam for its culture of violent intolerance should forget that Christianity, for most of its history, was very similar in that regard. It has just had an extra few hundred years to lose its sharp edges.

Nowadays, in the post-Christian epoch, everyone has been exposed to Christian ethics - even if many of us are avowed agnostics or atheists, the ethical rules that we consider self-evident and universal often derive from Christianity. So we pay abundant lip service to kindness, mercy, charity and forgiveness. Yet the people who reach the top layers of government and the armed forces cannot afford any such scruples: they have to behave very much like ancient Romans, while pretending to subscribe to Christian or humanist ethics. Hence the paradoxes expressed in the t-shirt slogan "Whom would Jesus bomb?" Clinton had it right: "It's the economy, stupid!" Every US president (and all their staff too) is fully aware that his overriding goal must be to make Americans prosperous and keep them that way. That is not done by exporting the huge amounts of wealth that would be necessary to turn a country like Afghanistan into a passable replica of Ohio (or even Egypt); instead, it is done by sucking wealth out of such countries for the enrichment of Americans. But overt looting of foreign nations is frowned upon, most of all by our own ethics. How to square the circle? (Hint: I do know that's impossible) The method adopted has been to pretend that the invasion is for the good of the invaded. The forces of Western civilisation are conquering Afghanistan - as they did Iraq - to bring freedom, security, and the American Way of Life to the benighted heathen (sorry, "impoverished tribesmen").

It won't work. And there is very good reason to believe that no one in the White House or the Pentagon ever believed it could. This is what Maximilien Robespierre, no pacifist himself, had to say on the subject in 1791:

"The most extravagant idea that c

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[Urkki]

Did the Romans plant devices that could chop off the limbs of a playing child years or even decades after the conflict has ended, devices specifically intended to maim and kill indiscriminately ? And did they in fact spread this disease all over the world by exporting the stuff to every two bit warlord with the cash to buy them ?

The Romans were ruthless enough to chop limbs off children personally (sort of a "hands off"-approach ;-). It takes quite a different level of ruthlessness to personally skewer a kid with a sword, than selling a mine to somebody who may use it in a way that results in kids getting maimed and killed. Any coward can quiet their conscience in the hopes of quick profits (for an arms merchant) or not think very far into the future when securing their position in a war (for a soldier in a war zone). Very very few individuals (today, in developed countries) are ruthless enough to personally off a kid.

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[oji-sama]

To the idiots defending the taliban

The thing is, none of the parents above defended taliban.

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[Anonymous Coward]

I realize that you were mocking the "kindness" statement and not arguing the necessity, but a quick review of the history might enlighten a few readers here about the US approach to war and its determination to minimize civilian casualties.

By 1945, WW2 was nearing its end and everyone knew it; the Japanese were all but beaten but were refusing to surrender unconditionally. Rather than lay down their arms, they adopted a strategy to prevent an invasion of the Japanese home island by dragging out the war as long as possible and making each succeeding engagement so bloody that, hopefully, the US public would be increasingly appalled by the death toll and pressure their leaders to just quit. That strategy came to a head at the Battle of Okinawa which lasted almost three *months* (1 April - 22 June 1945) and resulted in 100,000 and 72,000 Japanese and US military casualties respectively, and 100,000 Japanese civilian casualties--a full 25% of the island's population. There was no Japanese compunction about using civilians as human shields. The Okinawan government to this day claims that the Japanese military gave a mass suicide order to the civilian population and expedited more than a few. 90% of the island's buildings and infrastructure were destroyed.

Still undeterred by those high losses, the Japanese leadership were preparing the civilian population of the home island to escalate that style of warfare even further. The military began issuing hand grenades to civilian families with orders to throw them at US soldiers when they appeared in the streets. It would have made modern day Baghdad look like a playground spat. They had decided that they would rather sacrifice the entire civilian population than surrender. Accordingly, the projected casualty count for the Allies' Operation Downfall --

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall

--were in the millions for the Allied forces and in the *tens of millions* for the Japanese civilian population. Faced with those numbers, Truman ordered the use of the atomic bomb. The shock of losing two entire cities in three days, with a total casualty count of 240,000 people, with no loss of Allied life finally convinced the Japanese military they were done. The math and the psychology finally became overwhelming. There would be no more bloody engagements, just one Japanese city after another vanishing in a flash of light until the military was eviscerated with no loss to the Allies, so the Japanese finally surrendered.

Terrible as it was, those numbers were still orders of magnitude smaller than the deaths that would have resulted had the Allies been forced to invade Japan. The only other alternative would have been a blockade, resulting in mass starvation of the civilian population.So by any objective measure, the Japanese refusal to surrender and determination to drag out the war in as bloody a fashion as possible justified the use of Fat Man and Little Boy. Truman made the right call. It was the most merciful option left.

The point is that the US does not kill civilians just for jollies. In fact, it bends over backwards to try to minimize civilian casualties, way past the point of endangering its own troops. The fact that the Obama Administration is considering creating a military award for "courageous restraint" is proof of that. Whether the wars should have been started in the first place is, of course, debatable; but if the US were so ruthless and brutal as some Slashdotters claim, it would have turned Afghanistan and Iraq into glass parking lots long before George Bush had wrapped up his second term.

Re:US abuse

[2obvious4u]

taking out many civilian targets then trying to hide it

What history book have you been reading? The history of war is one of marching all over civilians. What you are supposed to do is walk in and kill every man woman and child so there is no one left to oppose you. So there aren't any children left fatherless to build a grudge of hatred towards your nation. This idea of not killing civilians is a result of the televised news cycle. Hell during WWII the firebombing campaigns in Japan killed 100's of thousands of people, more than the two atomic bombs.

The reason the war is taking so long is because they are at least attempting to not kill civilians. They aren't doing a great job of it, but at least they are trying.

15,000 reports held back but will be release later

[evil9000]

Last line of http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/:
"We have delayed the release of some 15,000 reports from total archive as part of a harm minimization process demanded by our source. After further review, these reports will be released, with occasional redactions, and eventually, in full, as the security situation in Afghanistan permits."

So this archive isnt complete, come back later for more...

uh oh

[u4ya]

Sure hope no one finds out that war is an ugly business that squanders trillions of taxpayer dollars and wastes countless human lives in order to reap huge rewards for a few special interests. That would be a shame (to the few special interests).

One thing I don't understand...

[Palestrina]

...is how did someone manage to download, store and transfer 90,000 classified documents and not be noticed?

I know there will be a lot of finger-pointing at Wikileaks for publishing the data on their website, but for the information to have been leaked in the first place should raise even more questions.

Re:One thing I don't understand...

[the_other_chewey]

several newspapers have had 'access' to them for a while. Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.

You got that backwards: The newspapers were given access to the material by wikileaks.
The newspapers are not the source of the documents.

Re:One thing I don't understand...

[Dr. Evil]

I bet they used a computer.

Re:Oil...

[jo42]

There is no oil in Bumfuckistan. Only rocks, more rocks, even more rocks, religious nutters and poppy plants.

Re:Oil...

[MichaelSmith]

There is a lot of money in those poppies...

Re:Killing other people does not solve problems.

[Cassius Corodes]

It merely removes them...

re Triple GDP

[jelizondo]

According to the CIA World Fact Book:

• Population: 29,121,286
• GDP (Per capita:) $800 (2009 est.)

So now, expenditure over six years (Jan 2004 - Dec 2009) is $300,000,000,000.00 divided by six is around $50,000,000,000.00 per year

Per capita is $1,716.96 or more than double the GDP per capita of the country!

I would think that the US would get better resultsif the money was simply given to each inhabitant, the $800 they already make plus $1,700 from the US, would triple the GDP per capita, no small feat.

Just smile for the camera and show that you have not handled explosives or fired guns in the last week (paraffin test) and you get your weekly expenditure; you don't show up for a week then you lose the privilege, i.e. you knew you couldn't pàss the test.

Who said "You Can Rent an Afghan But Never Buy One"? It would rent the whole lot of them for a long time!

Re:re Triple GDP

[Shakrai]

The real way to fight a war of ideology is with ideology, not money or guns.

No, the real way to fight a war is to kill enough of the enemy that the remainder realizes the fight is not worth it.

Re:re Triple GDP

[shutdown -p now]

Guess where the insurgents come from...

I mean, do you seriously think that some Afghanis are genetically born to be insurgents, and, as soon as you kill that bunch off, the rest will cheer democracy and religious freedom in their country?

By the way, speaking of "new order of things" - do you know that the current constitution of Afghanistan, enacted by the western-backed government, specifies Islam as a state religion, and Shari'a as the supreme law of the land, trumping any other law and article in the constitution? Meaning that e.g. apostasy and blasphemy is punished by death in Afghanistan today - not by Taliban, but by "our guys".

Pretty pathetic

[horza]

I am surprised to see the Guardian plunge to the depths of New of the World. I personally am shocked at soldiers killing other soldiers without trial, the use of 'deadly' surface to air missiles rather than the fluffy kind, and the carnage that is being caused by the Taliban to... er 2000 civilians (eh, I thought they were stronger than any time since 2001 so why target civilians, and why is it the fault of the US?). As for the supposedly massive collateral damage by the Allies, 195 people over 10 years is tragic but not huge. Even then it's a mix of French, Polish, British, etc that are at fault so it's not a targetted campaign. Worth quoting a paragraph not unsurprisingly near the end:

"Most of the material, though classified "secret" at the time, is no longer militarily sensitive. A small amount of information has been withheld from publication because it might endanger local informants or give away genuine military secrets. Wikileaks, whose founder, Julian Assange, obtained the material in circumstances he will not discuss, said it would redact harmful material before posting the bulk of the data on its "uncensorable" servers."

Phillip.

Re:Pretty pathetic

[jelizondo]

Do you think Julian waves his hand and documents appear?

He gets documents from people inside the war machine, those sources are able to tell him what parts would be detrimental to the people on the field.

Who elected Martin Luther King? Who elected Gandhi? Who elected Mohter Theresa? They do what they think is right to make a better world.

What's your age? Like sixteen / seventeen? Grow up! Now get off my lawn!

Conflicted

[cappp]

I'm finding myself more and more conflicted in my thoughts regarding wiki-leaks. On the one hand a democracy can only thrive when an informed populace can make choices grounded in reliable facts. The increase in secrecy and the rush to classify and obscure data therefore undermines the functioning of democracy. This isn’t good, we can all agree on that but I’m just not sure if wikileaks is going about things in the right way. Worse, I don’t know what better way there is. Over at Gawker there’s a quick reminder of the media-savvy that underpins the way wiki-leaks works – as they point out,

Assange has a long history of making vague conspiratorial claims of harassment that don't stand up to scrutiny

Similarly a New Yorker piece commented on the leaked video and noted that

These pieces of missing information are not just inherent limitations in video. The producers themselves have chosen not to provide them. There appears to be a purpose to the omissions, which is underlined by the Orwell quote at the start, the prefatory explanation, the quotes and dedication at the end, even the way the helicopter crew’s cruel remarks are edited in a few places for effect. Although the producers identify the camera of the Reuters journalist who, along with his assistant, will be killed by Apache cannon fire, they don’t point to the AK-47 or the RPG launcher carried by other men with whom the journalists are walking in a group. Stripped of much context and weighted with commentary, this video is both an important document of the war, courageously leaked after the military had steadily refused to release it, and, in its way, a propaganda film

Another article

Last year, for example, WikiLeaks published the “secret ritual” of a college women’s sorority called Alpha Sigma Tau. Now Alpha Sigma Tau (like several other sororities “exposed” by WikiLeaks) is not known to have engaged in any form of misconduct, and WikiLeaks does not allege that it has. Rather, WikiLeaks chose to publish the group’s confidential ritual just because it could. This is not whistleblowing and it is not journalism. It is a kind of information vandalism. In fact, WikiLeaks routinely tramples on the privacy of non-governmental, non-corporate groups for no valid public policy reason. It has published private rites of Masons, Mormons and other groups that cultivate confidential relations among their members. Most or all of these groups are defenseless against WikiLeaks’ intrusions. The only weapon they have is public contempt for WikiLeaks’ ruthless violation of their freedom of association, and even that has mostly been swept away in a wave of uncritical and even adulatory reporting about the brave “open government,” “whistleblower” site. On occasion, WikiLeaks has engaged in overtly unethical behavior. Last year, without permission, it published the full text of the highly regarded 2009 book about corruption in Kenya called “It’s Our Turn to Eat” by investigative reporter Michela Wrong (as first reported by Chris McGreal in The Guardian on April 9). By posting a pirated version of the book and making it freely available, WikiLeaks almost certainly disrupted sales of the book and made it harder for Ms. Wrong and other anti-corruption reporters to perform their important work and to get it published. Repeated protests and pleas from the author were required before WikiLeaks (to its credit) finally took the book offline. “Soon enough,” observed Raffi Khatchadourian in a long profile of WikiLeaks

Re:Conflicted

[QuantumG]

Yes, because without secrets the populous might have to face up to the mayhem their elected officials cause.

Re:Conflicted

[betterunixthanunix]

It is fair to point out the following:

1. Wikileaks released an unedited version of the collateral murder video, which anyone else could add commentary about the weapons to. Assange also explained the decision not to include commentary on the RPG, which was that in their opinion, the supposed RPG may have been a camera tripod.
2. The leaking of secret societies' material is in line with Wikileaks guidelines: Unless otherwise specified, the document described here...Is of political, diplomatic, ethical or historical significance. (emphasis mine).
3. As the article you quoted pointed out, Wikileaks did remove a book after being contacted about it. Yes, Wikileaks is run by humans, and humans do make mistakes, and at least they corrected that mistake when pressed on it. It is not like the Wikileaks staff went out searching for books to publish on their site; someone outside of Wikileaks thought it would be worthwhile for Wikileaks to publish the book.

Frankly, given that the US government has a plan in place to discredit Wikileaks (which was, of course, leaked on Wikileaks), any article which takes an overtly negative tone of Wikileaks is immediately suspect. Anything that criticizes Wikileaks without at least mentioning that it is an organization of loosely connected volunteers should be taken with a grain of salt. There is a lot of misinformation about Wikileaks, and we really should not be perpetuating it.

One wonders...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Y'know what really puts the 300 billion figure in perspective? That the GDP of Afghanistan is ~13 billion. If you can't crush an adversary like a bug for almost a quarter-century's worth of its GDP(and that is comparing your military expenditures vs. their entire economy) there is some part of you technique that you really need to take a hard look at...

Worse, even if we were having it all our way in military terms, our best case scenario seems to be installing our ridiculously corrupt and dubiously competent puppet leader sufficiently securely that we can leave before he gets overthrown. Given what happened in Iran when our ridiculously corrupt and dubiously competent puppet leader fell, this strategy seems to have a strong structural weakness.

Re:One wonders...

[0123456]

Y'know what really puts the 300 billion figure in perspective? That the GDP of Afghanistan is ~13 billion. If you can't crush an adversary like a bug for almost a quarter-century's worth of its GDP(and that is comparing your military expenditures vs. their entire economy) there is some part of you technique that you really need to take a hard look at..

To be fair, the US military could trivially crush Afghanistan by pattern-bombing it with nukes. The trouble is that 'destroying the country in order to save it' would be a little difficult to justify to American voters and Afghanistan's neighbours.

The real issue is that Americans really don't care about Afghanistan, but no politico is yet willing to say 'this was a stupid idea and we're leaving'. If 'crushing' the country really mattered they'd have done it long ago, but it doesn't.

Re:One wonders...

[cptdondo]

I spent 21 years in the US military. It's the best military in the world, bar none.

But... It's a tool. To put it in perspective, a B787 is far advanced compared to the Titanic... But a fleet of them could not have influenced the disaster when the Titanic sank.

Like a 787, the US military is a tool finely honed to a specific purpose, which was to win a European theater mass war. To apply this tool to the one-on-one guerrilla fighting that is Afghanistan means to retrain and requip every troop, and to rewrite every manual of war the military has.

Or, just simply to say that the US military is the wrong tool for that job, and that someone like Greg Mortenson is far better suited to the effort than George Bush.

Re:One wonders...

[brit74]

Y'know what really puts the 300 billion figure in perspective? That the GDP of Afghanistan is ~13 billion. If you can't crush an adversary like a bug for almost a quarter-century's worth of its GDP(and that is comparing your military expenditures vs. their entire economy) there is some part of you technique that you really need to take a hard look at...

The problem is Pakistan. There's a safe haven of Islamic militants across the border. Even the Pakistani government doesn't know what to do with them. Even worse, approval ratings for the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden are in the 35-50 percent range in Pakistan - which is, no doubt, concentrated in the tribal north west. When we're the demonized "evil West trying to destroy Islam" and the Taliban is "one of them" - i.e. fanatical muslims who "just want to implement God's government on earth", even when it means throwing acid in women's faces for wearing the wrong clothing. When they're that mired in conspiracy and in-group loyalty, it can be difficult to win a war.

2007 Poll: "According to poll results, bin Laden has a 46 percent approval rating...al Qaeda has a 43 percent approval rate; the Taliban has a 38 percent approval rate; and local radical extremist groups had an approval rating between 37 percent to 49 percent." http://edition.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/09/11/poll.pakistanis/index.html

Re:One wonders...

[Matt Perry]

I spent 21 years in the US military. It's the best military in the world, bar none.

How do you know that? What other militaries have you served in to which you can compare your experience and declare one to be the best?

Re:One wonders...

[Aceticon]

Part of the process of making a soldier consists of inbuing them with an exceptionally strong sense of group and belonging to the group: it's well know that in the thick of it men do not fight above all for their countries they fight above all for their mates.

Thus it's not surprising that an (ex-)member of a military outfit will belief that "(we) are the best".

I've seen the same thing in some ex-high-school colleagues of mine, years later when we had a reunion, after they had been in the Portuguese special forces.

Re:Killing other people does not solve problems.

[jav1231]

Other people are often the problem. Therefore, it in fact does solve the problem.

PR

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Wikileaks now part of the PR machine? The feeling you're obviously supposed to take away with you from this is: Americans are fighting an uphill battle and are lost against the steadily increasing forces of terrorism it tried to root out.

an American-led force often starved for resources and attention as it struggled against an insurgency that grew larger, better coordinated and more deadly each year.

When in reality Americans rolled in there ridiculously outnumbering and, more importantly, ridiculously out-being-equipped the mostly half-civilian rabble that dared stand up against them. There is no Afghan War. A war implies two sides fighting, not one waltzing in with vastly superior technomagic, while the other one is hiding, showing their heads, getting beat to a pulp, running for cover and getting shot in the back, until the next round of civilians gets fed up with sights like that and picks up their weapons to meet a similar fate.

Much more importantly, this isn't the right question at all. It shouldn't be "Why is this so difficult?" but "Why are we over there, taking their stuff and murdering everyone who so much as raises his voice against us? And shouldn't we be stopping that?" We demanded it. We were promised it. Success. We did our thing and now we don't care anymore. So it doesn't happen. Yay us, yay humanity. We make me sick.

Fuck me and fuck every single one of you. If I had three wishes I'd wish for a plague on all our houses, then a deluge, and a rinse-repeat.

Re:PR

[X.25]

I only wish that that was the case because the side you are talking about (taliban, al-qaeda and other jihadist forces) are representing a savage medieval ideology that, if not challenged with force, presents the greatest single threat to the survival of human civilization. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be going as well as you say.

Strange. You'll find that majority of Earth's population sees US as a bigger threat than Al-Qaeda or Talibans.

But, please, keep living in a dreamworld.

Re:PR

[jbssm]

Only because the majority of the world's population live under dictatorships of one form or another

Ok, let me rephrase the parent comment.

"Strange. You'll find that majority of European Union population sees US as a bigger threat than Al-Qaeda or Talibans."

So, do we all live in dictatorships here in Europe as well? In fact if you check the various indexes of "freedom" (like the World Associated Press freedom of speech index and similar), all EU countries come on top of the USA. And guess what ... we still think that USA is basically just fuck%& up the world for the profit of their corporations and ex-secretaries/ex-ministers.

Look away, citizens!

[MindlessAutomata]

Citizens and proud patriots of America, look away! Such things are not for your eyes. It is not for you to know how our war (done on your behalf, my steadfast Americans!) is going. Such things will only hurt the morale of our troops--and recruitment numbers! We beseech you, our countrypeople, you have no right to any of this information, for we do not belong to you--you belong to us.

Re:300 billion dollars is chump change...

[rudy_wayne]

those "newly" discovered mineral resources could be worth trillions to the right corporation to exploit them. What, you thought our presence there was to fight the Taliban and spread "democracy"?

Nobody with half a brain ever believed that the war in Afghanistan was "to fight the Taliban and spread democracy". But that's beside the point.

Nobody is going to be getting any of that trillion dollars worth of minerals any time soon. Maybe never. Afghanistan has absolutely no infrastructure and even the most optimistic estimates say it would take decades. Of course, before you can even start doing that you have the problem of the inane lunatics who couldn't care less about about minerals, peace, prosperity, democracy or anything else, and only care about killing anyone who doesn't share their insane lunatic ideology. After 9 years and $300 Billion the U.S. has made no progress in changing this. In other words, if you're hoping to open a big Lithium mine, don't hold your breath.

So what *is* there?

[ugen]

As it often seems to be the case on /., the discussion centers around "talking points" conveniently fed by originator based on fairly clear /. views and agenda.

So, I went and began reading these reports. My impression is that these do have operational value, and are probably of some interest to military buffs (and certainly to enemy intelligence, though they probably knew most of that anyway). What I did not find in these reports is 1) any particularly unvarnished picture that differs markedly of what my impression of war in Afghanistan was until now based on otherwise available data 2) any real insight into why the war is going the way it is

I think, in fact, that both these points were answered many times in variety of other media and in other types of discourse.

My personal opinion is that other than sensationalist value, primarily due to the fact that classified information has been released, there isn't much here that will further any decent causes in our world. There is, however, a clear boon to stature of mr. Assange and his site and he is the one that benefits the most.

Since it is clear that he let his original source in US military down (essentially letting him be a fall guy who will probably be charged with various offenses), I think it is safe to say that mr. Assange is in it for himself and himself alone.

For my part, I will not patronize or support his venture. While in theory openness is good, it is only good if it is for the right reason. "Openness" for the sake of personal ulterior motives is just as bad if not worse than what it purports to fight.

Re:So what *is* there?

[Sabriel]

Since it is clear that he let his original source in US military down (essentially letting him be a fall guy who will probably be charged with various offenses),

Please correct me if I've lost track of this whole snafu, but if your source blabs to someone else that he's leaking military secrets, and that someone else turns your source over to the military, how are you the guy who let him down?

Personally I don't like them

[Sycraft-fu]

Secrets are sometimes necessary, and yes that includes to the government. As a simple example: Would you want a criminal getting a hold of information relating to an active investigation against them? How about the locations and identities of people in witness protection?

If you think any of that should be kept secret, then you agree that secrets can be necessary, including for the government. In that case the question is when should they be allowed to keep a secret. Then you have to start exercising discretion about what you release. You need to weigh the public's need to know versus the damage it could do.

Wikileaks just wants to release any and everything. They don't seem to give any consideration as to public good or need, they just want to leak everything. That I cannot agree with, be it for public or private entities. Anyone who says "There should be no secrets," is just the other side of the "If you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide," coin.

Also, as noted, they seem to have a political agenda. The helicopter video is a great example. It is possible that you could feel the public needed to know about it. Fine, but then the unaltered, uncommented video would be what to release. If you really believe the public needs to see what happened then that is what to show them. The unedited truth. When you edit and comment on it, you are trying to use it as a tool to present a point of view. You aren't interested in telling the truth, you are interested in pushing an agenda.

Using facts to do that doesn't make it any better. Bill Orielly is nearly always factual in his presentation. He rarely fabricates stuff. However it isn't true. What he does is pick and choose the facts he likes, and choose how to frame them to push a point of view. So while it isn't lying per se, it is still misleading. Wikileaks seems to be willing to do the same.

So between those two things, I really can't support them. They try to pretend to be the good guys but to me their actions do not show them in that light.

Re:Personally I don't like them

[betterunixthanunix]

Would you want a criminal getting a hold of information relating to an active investigation against them?

In fact, sometimes we do, in countries where people are labeled "criminals" for being members of the wrong political groups or other abuses of human rights.

Wikileaks just wants to release any and everything

In fact, the Wikileaks volunteers do review the material that is submitted to them to ensure that it is not personal information about someone or other private information. They are not there to "release everything," they are there to release information that is of political or historical interest that some group of people is deliberately trying to keep secret from the public. You may disagree with that specific goal, but the least you could do is refrain from criticizing Wikileaks for things that they do not do.

Fine, but then the unaltered, uncommented video would be what to release.

They did release it, so what is your point? The commentary on the video is their own take on it, but do not present this as them trying to hide the truth from people -- anyone can download an unedited copy.

Re:15,000 reports held back but will be release la

[Luckyo]

Actually, if you watch the video on guardian, Assange specifically addresses the problem of "safety" that is being lauded here, noting how wikileaks take great care not to endanger people, other then politicians and military making the decisions leading to these occurrences of course. He points out why "this endangers the safety" argument is beating on a dead horse - the data here is so old, that the real meat that could in fact endanger lives of NATO soldiers, namely positional info is long beyond any reasonable secrecy requirements, while names are being redacted.

Anyone parroting the "endangers lives of out troops" is doing nothing but repeating drivel meant to discredit wikileaks at this point. Sensitive negotiations on the other hand usually imply "crimes behind them", which brings us to judicial responsibility - i.e. how many children are you willing to have raped, mutilated and killed in the name of Aghanistan, before it gets to be too many? Perhaps it's time to note that NATO has quite a few sociopaths installed in positions of power, and they need to be replaced rather then be taking part in "sensitive negotioations"?
On the other hand, the people dead because of what NATO is doing in Afghanistan are actually dying, in droves. And as these documents show, NATO sweeps many of them under the rug, and who are the people responsible for that accountable for, and who are people covering them accountable for?

And mind you, he's not American. He's Australian, and he claims to speak for no one least of all Americans. He simply offers facts, and allows everyone to formulate their opinion on their own. This is quite different from most modern mass media, that tends to be opinionated to no end nowadays rather then offer facts and let people think for themselves.

The US isn't trying to crush them

[Sycraft-fu]

There's a big difference. The US military is the best of the best at destroying shit. If things need to get blown up, people need to die, etc, they can do it quickly and professionally. Never before has there been a military with such raw power.

What the US military is not good at is conquest, going in and taking a place over. For that you need lots and lots of troops on the ground, and a willingness to be fairly ruthless. None of that guarantees a conquest is successful, of course, history is full of people pushing out oppressors, but it is needed for it to work. That's not what the US army does, never has except for maybe in Japan in WWII.

So what they US army can do, and has done well, is act as an army of liberation. A country has a powerful occupying force, the US can smash that force and liberate the populace. France in WWII is a good example. That is what the US tried to do in Afghanistan and Iraq. Come in, toss out the assholes in power.

The problem is that liberation only works when people want to be liberated, and are willing to work for it. It worked in France because of two reasons:

1) The French people wanted the Germans out, pretty much to a man. There weren't a whole lot of Nazi supporters there, relative to the total population.

2) They were willing to work together. When the Nazis were kicked out, the worked as a country to untie and rebuild. They understood that freedom meant sacrifices.

This is not the case in Afghanistan. It is a very, very tribal mindset over there. For the most part people care about what is good for them and their tribe. There is little sense of national identity, little cohesion. To them, freedom means freedom to take your neighbour's shit and make your tribe richer/stronger. As such liberation is near impossible. They aren't willing to work for it.

So if the objective was to kill every person in the country, I've no doubt the US military could accomplish that goal quickly and efficiently, with little loss on their own part. That's not the goal though.

Re:The US isn't trying to crush them

[mjwx]

The problem is that liberation only works when people want to be liberated, and are willing to work for it. It worked in France because of two reasons:

1) The French people wanted the Germans out, pretty much to a man. There weren't a whole lot of Nazi supporters there, relative to the total population.

2) They were willing to work together. When the Nazis were kicked out, the worked as a country to untie and rebuild. They understood that freedom meant sacrifices.

This is a very important point, one of Sun Tzu's keys to victory and the most important was what was translated as "the moral law". The moral law was a populations willingness to follow a leader, in WWII most of Europe was willing to follow the Allies or Stalin rather then Hitler. Same with the Pacific, the Filipinos, Indonesians and Thais happily threw off Japanese rule in favour of the Americans at their first opportunity.

It wasn't the US Army who shot Nazi collaborators when they liberated Holland, the Dutch did.

Re:Oil...

[CharlyFoxtrot]

There's lots and lots of rare (and less rare) metals, it's the saudi arabia of lithium. According to wikipedia = "[Lithium is used in] high strength-to-weight alloys used in aircraft, and lithium batteries. Lithium also has important links to nuclear physics." They discovered this right before the war by the way, but I'm sure that's all coincidental.

No, not at all

[Sycraft-fu]

Handing out money would accomplish nothing. Few reasons:

1) True wealth is not in having money, it in having the ability to produce things. Rich countries are rich not because they have cash, they are rich because they have strong economies. While cash could be used to buy that, it won't be. Direct handouts are never used in that fashion.

2) It would just fall in to the hands of warlords. When you get an anarchy situation where the strong can prey on the weak that is what happens. Happens all the time in Africa with aid. You can hand it out to individuals if you send in guys with guns to make sure that happens, but when they leave it'll get taken.

3) It would just be used to fuel further fighting. Afghanistan is highly tribal. What this means is people don't really have a large scale, national, identity. They identify just with their "tribe" which in this case is basically extended family living together. By and large they see no problem with stealing from, killing, etc other tribes to their own gain.

Unfortunately, there is no real solution to the problems there. You cannot help people that do not want to help themselves. This is true with individuals who have addictions, and it is true with cultures, with nations, as well. Help only works when the group you are trying to help wants it, and is willing to worth with you. The Afghans don't, so help will do nothing.

US revolutionary war, anyone?

[SuperBanana]

They refused to abide by the laws of war and we responded in kind.

I find that statement pretty funny given that I grew up about 15 minutes away from where a bunch of colonial farmers basically engaged in guerrilla warfare and pretty well obliterated almost a thousand British troops. What did those wild heathens do? Why, they didn't respect the proper rules of war by moving around in proper tidy columns and shooting in volleys (the procedure is truly hilarious to watch.) The bastards...they fired from spread out positions! And from behind rock walls! Cowards! And then, as the British retreated, they were picked off militia hiding in the woods all along the road back to Boston.

So. The standards of war are rewritten by whoever wins...and it's not like we went into Iraq and Afghanistan not knowing what we were getting ourselves into. The Soviets did a pretty good job of discovering that a decade or two prior.

Re:US revolutionary war, anyone?

[shutdown -p now]

I just find it absurd that we force our military to fight with one hand behind it's back. Our enemies aren't doing the same.

It all depends on what you're trying to achieve. If it's suppressing all resistance, then, yes, "shoot on sight" is the way to do that - though there are more efficient ways still, such as carpet bombing.

But if you want to take over an area and maintain control, not by keeping population at the barrel of your guns (and showing that it's loaded by shooting one or another periodically), but more or less willingly, then you have to do PR. Be better than the other guys.

And PR has its costs, including soldiers' lives.

But then Soviet Union tried to go without back in 80s, and you might recall how well that went.

Re:US revolutionary war, anyone?

[wisty]

I'm not sure that old-style infantry was a result of outright incompetence.

Sure, it's better to spread the troops out, and hide them behind rock walls, but only if you trust them to stick their heads out long enough to fire. That's not a problem if you have all volunteers, but colonial armies aren't staffed with volunteers. I guess modern armies have better training, so they can give their troops a bit more independence.

Ethics of leaks

[Bruce Perens]

Nobody elected him. And I don't have the information necessary to represent his ethical position. However, in general a democracy only really works when the people have visibility regarding the activities of its leaders and military. So, I can guess that he believes he has an ethical position. Can we trust him? No. But we can do our best to verify the data. Can we trust our own leaders? Same answer, unfortunately. This much is clear from history.

Next, is our country better off or not for this release? If there really is some care being taken regarding names and the age of data, it may well be better off for the people to have another look at the war.

Re:Ethics of leaks

[Bruce Perens]

If you can't trust our elected officials to do the right thing when it comes to the essential job of the government, then it's Game Over.

Well, it's game over then, by your rules.

I have considered running for office, and may consider it again. However, I'm not terribly electable. Not Christian, for one thing. If you look at who is in office, it's clear that this is a Christian nation.

Re:15,000 reports held back but will be release la

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, if you watch the video on guardian, Assange specifically addresses the problem of "safety" that is being lauded here, noting how wikileaks take great care not to endanger people, other then politicians and military making the decisions leading to these occurrences of course. He points out why "this endangers the safety" argument is beating on a dead horse - the data here is so old, that the real meat that could in fact endanger lives of NATO soldiers, namely positional info is long beyond any reasonable secrecy requirements, while names are being redacted.

Anyone parroting the "endangers lives of out troops" is doing nothing but repeating drivel meant to discredit wikileaks at this point. Sensitive negotiations on the other hand usually imply "crimes behind them", which brings us to judicial responsibility - i.e. how many children are you willing to have raped, mutilated and killed in the name of Aghanistan, before it gets to be too many? Perhaps it's time to note that NATO has quite a few sociopaths installed in positions of power, and they need to be replaced rather then be taking part in "sensitive negotioations"?
On the other hand, the people dead because of what NATO is doing in Afghanistan are actually dying, in droves. And as these documents show, NATO sweeps many of them under the rug, and who are the people responsible for that accountable for, and who are people covering them accountable for?

And mind you, he's not American. He's Australian, and he claims to speak for no one least of all Americans. He simply offers facts, and allows everyone to formulate their opinion on their own. This is quite different from most modern mass media, that tends to be opinionated to no end nowadays rather then offer facts and let people think for themselves.

I am one of these troops. If you knew anything about operational security, you'd know that an enemy can use the most mundane information to gain advantages over an opponent. I'm sure that in these documents there are numerous references to things that will potentially endanger troops lives, from procedures, to defensive capabilities, to weapons system operation and employment.

I'm all for a free press.. but this is one step too far. These documents were classified for a reason and they were stolen. Maybe someone can steal your information and post it on the interwebs in the name of "transparency". I think that would be sound journalism..

Re:special interests

[cpt kangarooski]

I don't know. I don't think that Afghanistan is capable of invading and conquering the United States. They pose no great threat to us. Given that, I'd really rather have the $300 billion.

Re:15,000 reports held back but will be release la

[dbIII]

OK, so you got Kennedy, but wasn't Reagan shot in Washington?

Re:Not really

[kramerd]

The Taliban offered to hand over bin Laden, the US turned them down. There was never a prospect of going in until we got bin Laden, they were in it for the long haul from the start. They wanted to transform Afghanistan into a proxy state as part of their grand strategy.

Not quite. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.terrorism5

President Bush rejected an offer from the taliban to discuss handing bin Laden over to a third country while researching whether bin Laden was responsible for the 9/11 attacks, in return for the US to cease bombing Afghanistan.

An offer of discussion is not close to an offer to hand over.

It was the equivalent of a movie director offering to look at an actresses resume if she sleeps with him, not offering the part.

ABSOLUTLY NOTHING

[SmallFurryCreature]

The US lives in a dream, it starts with the "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." and deteriorates from there.

If you don't get what is wrong with the above sentence written by slave-owners, then you are an American. Congrats, stop reading, you will never get the rest of this post.

Americans believe at their core that everyone wants to be an American. They must because if they didn't, then they might have to look to other countries and perhaps ask, why are they doing better? Why are there fewer child deaths in Cuba? Why can the EU afford free universal healthcare, why are other car companies not on a government bailout?

Dangerous thoughts that could all to easily lead to, is working 80 hours a week to afford to suvs and a 50 inch TV really all that life is about?

Vietnam is not just a strategy lesson, learning from it would involve questioning the "American Dream". 8 million civilians killed by US soldiers, when you know the inefficiency of bombing vs gas chambers comes dangerously close to the Holocaust. That doesn't fit with the "American Dream".

The US can never learn from these wars because it would have to stop being the US, and start being a regular country.

How is this not like Vietnam?

[PSUspud]

I'm sorry, but the more things change, the more the stay the same. The parallels are eerie:

1) Daniel Ellsberg / Pentagon papers == whoever / This stuff

2) Operation Phoenix == "capture / kill" CIA operations in Afghanistan.

3) The corrupt Ngo Diem == The corrupt Hamid Karzai.

4) French war in Vietnam == Russian war in Afghanistan

5) Corrupt, worthless army == The corrupt, worthless Afghanistan army.

6) Support for the war from North Vietnam == Support for the war from Pakistan

7) Death from above via B-52's, AC-47's, Hueys == Death from above from F-16's, Predators, Reapers

8) Massive civilian casualties == Massive civilian casualties

9) Nationalism / Religion fueling the fire == Nationalism / Religion fueling the fire

10) Slow build up over years, with too little to start with == Slow buildup over years, with too little to start with

11) Humiliating defeat for the US, with a small fig leaf == ????

Without lots more soldiers sent in, and perhaps even then, this war is lost. When are we going to recognize it?

Re:Criminal

[TubeSteak]

Regardless of the politics involved, this information was classified and it was marked as such. It was disclosed illegally and the newspapers (at least NYT) have a legal obligation to not print it.

You don't know what you're talking about.
Newspapers have, in the past, published classified documents which were "disclosed illegally".
FFS, the NY Times went front page with the Pentagon Papers in 1971.
The Government tried to silence them and it went all the way to the Supreme Court
Since I'm telling you that you don't know what you're talking about, it should be obvious how the case was decided..

The only reason the NYT is "interpreting the content and publishing summaries" is due to the enormous volume of information.

There are guidelines for classifying data that determine the classification level based upon how much damage (often in terms of lives lost) that the disclosure would cause.

What we've seen time and time again (the Pentagon Papers are only one of the more famous examples) is that the US Government will break the law and/or lie to its citizens, then classify the evidence and punish any attempts at whistleblowing.

Or have you forgotten about things like the retroactive legalization of otherwise unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping?
Legalization which only came about after the whistle was blown and the public was outraged.

Re:Criminal

[Tejin]

They hate us because we are free.

What is wrong with the people who keep saying this? Why would anyone hate someone else for being 'free'? What does that even mean? I thought people only ever said that to be ironic these days.

The Afghans hate you because you have systematically interfered with their lives for the past 50 years at least.

Re:special interests

[cpt kangarooski]

And?

There's no constructive point in trying to get revenge (nor is it good for the soul), that method of terrorism stopped working 3/4 of the way through that particular attack, and it didn't actually pose any sort of existential threat to us.

The real harm caused by the attack wasn't crashed planes or collapsed buildings; the real harm was that it goaded us into doing stupid, self-destructive things, like pissing away a lot of money that we really need for other projects, or systematically tearing down our own carefully built, hard won civil liberties.

Afghanistan can't really hurt us, and neither can Al Qaeda. But we can hurt ourselves, and that's just what we've been doing.