Not true at all. Every mission's potential outcome is analyzed and strategically weighed, and if the ROI is there, better believe it that civilians will die. It's not as uncontrolled collateral damage as it was in the past, as billions of dollars invested into the technology of warfare has at least brought us that far. Still, the focus of death in battle has zoomed into the individual, not the generic masses.
I was wondering about this, but I don't agree with that motivation. Consider the facts that the U.S. has seriously stepped up drone attacks in Pakistani territory over the past year, and that pressure to hold to the 2011 withdrawal timeframe is steady, and you're left wondering who benefits from a leak of documents alleging collaboration between Pakistani intelligence and the Afghan Taliban. It's a whole new reason to stick around. Massive conspiracy? Probably not. But a rogue politician or military officer with an agenda? Who knows? As for the casualty rates and how it will influence public opinion, I argue that it won't. The people who were for the war will continue to be in favor of it, and the people who were against it will be even more against it. There will be more talk about the culprit and the repercussions of the leak more than the information itself.
Because we're the United States of America, and the only way we can call ourselves agents of Democracy and guardians of freedom is if we hold ourselves to the highest moral and operational standards, especially in wars with a shaky basis to begin with, like Iraq. High-minded ideology is exactly what makes us the best and most just country on Earth.
More than the leaking of documents, I'm more interested in how people get all up in arms to know that the US government is, you know, waging a war. War is not pretty. War is doing things you would never want to do, in places you would never want to go. I will never understand how people think war is this ultra-rational process with a known beginning and a known end. I could read the documents, but I don't think I'd be very shocked at what I would find. The US government said they were going to war. That said it all, for me.
Plenty of people are saying these documents present a danger to national security. Most of the explanations have been some variation of the word Because. Can anyone who knows what they're talking about tell me exactly why they are dangerous?
It's been pretty strongly asserted that there's nothing in these documents that is shockingly revelatory, or very important. The brouhaha is generally with the principle of the thing.
Personally, I'm more concerned about the First Amendment issues that could arise because of this. I think Julian Assange's decision to stretch the limits of freedom of speech and freedom of the press could make it easy for some opportunistic politicians to say or do some pretty dangerous things to gain the support of a nervous public. All because of a bunch of documents that apparently mean very little.
Hi all, I usually just lurk, but this quote got me thinking...These documents range in classification from confidential to TS/SCI. Which means a lot of this info was compartmented, with no one person having access to ALL of it. Usually in Intel you get bits and pieces of a story, rarely the whole thing. Misinformation is mixed in, chronologies are re-arranged, all to provide a bit of plausible deniability. Disregarding the possibility of hackers, it kind of suggests that there was more than one person involved. How else could all of these disparate documents be assembled? Spook directors and deputies generally have access to this scope of information. Not even the President is privy to some things, unless he needs to know. Its interesting that only relatively mundane after action reports and such were released, carefully omitting any of the SpecWar ops stuff or anything else terribly damaging. It is worth noting that intel reports are drafted from the mundane. Piecemeal. Like the old example goes---you hear one guy talk in a bar about shipping a lot of medical supplies, some grunt is talking about packing his bags, Sailors are babbling about steaming up north, and off loading some equipment-add it up and pretty soon it becomes clear an invasion is being planned... Point is, you have to be careful about what is being released, because there is a lot of potentially actionable info in those reports (not current intel, but maybe some clarity on our SOP bad guys don't need to know), IF you know what you're looking for. Snowflakes accumulate into an avalanche eventually. Furthermore, if no punitive action is taken, it only encourages more people to release stuff, and God only knows what may come up next time. Generally, I'm all for gov't transparency, but some sources need to be protected for the greater good. And no one person (or handful of people) should take it upon themselves to jeopardize nat'l security matters. They are people looking to draw dwindling public attention back towards that shit hole, which is a good thing. Unfortunately, they did so in a treasonous fashion. Sorry this is so long and likely incoherent. I'm not in the best frame of mind to be doing this right now.
A man not known for bullshitting, Rick Hiller, says... <a class="postlink" href="http://news.aol.ca/ca/article/hillier-slams-wikileaks-friendly-fire-report/19570867?icid=main|canada-toshiba|dl1|link4|http%3A%2F%2Fnews.aol.ca%2Fca%2Farticle%2Fhillier-slams-wikileaks-friendly-fire-report%2F19570867" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://news.aol.ca/ca/article/hillier-s ... 2F19570867</a> Also, about the friendly fire... No shit.
I haven't read any of the documents and don't particularly care to. A primary reason for that is that in the scheme of things, I wouldn't know what the hell I'm looking at. Even if I understood everything in the document, I wouldn't know where it sits in the scheme of things or how accurate it was. Ignorance is dangerous. Fragmented knowledge can be worse. It's like quoting the Bible (or whatever holy book you care to choose) as the truth. There is no way to verify that, except by faith. How can any of these documents be verified as anything? I doubt the military is going to go into discussing their contents, for a whole bunch of reasons. All it succeeds in doing is giving people without working brains another opportunity to take something at face value and consider it the iron clad truth. Personally, I'm interested in real evidence. I'll take anything anyone says without disregarding it, then apply it to what I know or what can be demonstrated as being factual. In the end, it might have to come down to an educated guess. But I just have to shake my head at people who swallow everything they see without applying any reason to things. As for the rest, I've never been to war but I understand the concept. Two or more sides are in opposition, people get killed to provide a victor. Adding rules to that are only as good as the honour of the participants. I'd imagine having a frank discussion with North Korea (for example) about the moral rectitude of chemical warfare would give you a fair indication of what I'm on about. No, we don't want our military killing civilians and torturing prisoners of war and what have you. We subscribe to a society where that is outlawed. If someone is doing these things on purposes or through willful negligence, it should ultimately be punished. But, war is messy. By its nature, people get killed. Snap decisions must be made. There's always going to be some fraying around the edges. Collateral damage may be a cheaply thrown around phrase, but it is accurate. It's the nature of the beast.
I always love this argument. It makes perfect sense on paper but again this is blown out the window when bombs start dropping. The problem with having to stick to hardline high moral concepts is that it can lead to the ever increasing limits on rules of engagement which could leave our mighty military impotent against the tactics of much less equipped and much less moral enemies. Now instead of taking it to the slippery slope route, ie military doesn't have to sink to the enemies level in order to defeat them, there should be some sort of sliding scale that determines what are the best tactics needed to win at the time of the conflict. How could policy makers in Washington who will not budge on their high minded ideology ever going to know how to direct a conflict which has infinite factors deciding the outcome? If our military is handcuffed against stopping our enemy and we end up pulling out before we are done where does it leave the innocent civilians of that country? Under the continuing rule of the oppressive and less righteously moral enemy. So much for trying to maintain our high moral standards.
People can argue about whether our current counter insurgency plan will ever work all day long. It's a tough sell, trying to convince people winning the 'hearts and minds' of the Afghan populace is something that can ever be achieved.. ask the British and the Russians how well that worked out for them. I personally feel that the Genghis Khan approach is probably the only way to 'win' this war. Back to the focus.. Releasing the 70,000+ of classified material won't do much to put our military in more danger than they're already in. However, it did release names (and father's name and what tribe they're from) of Afghan informants working with coalition forces. The few Afghans who were willing to put their neck on line (as well as their families) to provide information for us are now marked men and will surely be dealt with by the Taliban once they find out... in the most humane possible way, I'm sure. For those that feel the public has a right now know what's going on.. fuck 'em. If they want to know, put on a uniform and experience it first hand.
A.) Who ever leaked this information broke that law, plain and simple no matter what their reason's moral or otherwise they should hopefully be caught and held accountable for their crimes (no bullshit let's shoot them) we are a country of laws which makes us different then half the other countries in the world. The information in those reports are classfied as secert for a reason... B.) You may hear the President and military offical's talk about how it is all old info and how it cannot effect us the troops...kind true kinda not. Using that information that was leaked I could learn American and Nato TTP's which is a wealth of information to the enemy..ie.) How long does it take to get a medivac aircraft in the air....How long does it take NATO troops to travel from point a to point b...How long does it take to get asset's such as air support or arty to the troops on the ground...which area's do we deem to be important and where are we working...CERT projects in the area we are working on...Local Village Elders and populations that are working with Nato forces...What equipnment do different NATO nation's use and what do they take with them on mission...etc... I could go on and on with little bits of info that can be taken from this leak. The more information the enemy has the better planned the attacks become so next time you hear about an ambush across the world think twice...think maybe the enemy used to just plant an IED in that area..BOOM it goes off...it used to just be an IED and we would address the injuries the troops may have via the air and carry on with the mission...but now the enemy knows it takes 30 minutes to get there, so instead it now becomes a complex attack carried out by personal along with an IED...much much worse. And let's be honest for a second here...Everyone want's the government to be more "transparent", no you don't you, most of this nasty ugly warfare you rather now know about and trust me I don't blame you. There is a reason why only less then 1% of the USA serves in our military, on 9-11 we were bombed and 99% of the population sent in others to root the enemy out of their hole so that such a attack will never happen again(is it working?is it worth it? etc.. whatever that is a different subject) Just elect the people in office you trust or hope will do what you what while in office and let them do what you sent them to DC to do...lead. As for the Civilians deaths..yeah it happens..sorry, its a sad part of warfare, trust me when I say the US Military does everything it can to limit those from happening, under the new strategy COIN it's important for those not to happen in order to gain the trust of the local population and since the new ROI have been put in place civilian deaths are down across the board this past year. In order to understand why they happen instead of just saying "oh stupid military tigger happy fools" think about the bigger picture for a second, maybe that young 18 year old private has been blown up by car bombs the past two times we goes out to do his mission on day three a car is traveling down the street at a high rate of speed and is not stopping to hand motions or any other actions, of course that kid is going to light that car up like no tomorrow, ends up it was just some guy..accident's happen it's sad and you learn you move on and try to not let it happen again. There is always a bigger pic more then just one action. I can say that there is no mass murder or cover ups going on here. *The Afghan's drive like crazy here we have been here for 9 years but yet don't seem to grasp how we operate or why we get angry when they do stupid stuff like driving up on an army humvee at a high rate of speed it's crazy.
Am I right in saying that for many of you, no matter what outrageous atrocities are revealed in these leaks, the man who leaked them should still be shot? How else are the people going to hold their government and military to account when the government has free reign to cover-up as it see's fit? As long as these leaks don't compromise any on going missions or peoples lives, which I have yet to see any evidence that they do, then I don't see the problem. Yes, it's not acceptable for any military to continuously have leaks like this, but even though we support 'the mission' many of us have very little trust in the moral standards of the coalition armies. That is why, for people like myself, it's reassuring to look at leaked information like this and find out just how gung-ho and reckless the military is behaving, and it appears, due to the lack of much outrageous content in the leaks, that the US military is doing a fantastic job and not unnecessarily endangering the Afgan people who they are there to protect.
First, I think whoever leaked this document should be shot. It's treason to the highest degree. If you think there's a huge massacre that took place, then fine, you may be a whistle blower. But, this is bullshit, this is some hippie that's just releasing documents to hurt the soldiers. And, second, the CBC (the Canadian national broadcaster) started going through every single document that mentioned Canadians in it. They're fairly independent and unbiased, and usually not shy to criticize the government, so I take their word seriously. They found many errors in it. In one instance, the documents stated that a Canadian bomb exploded and killed several civilians. But, I think two independent inspectors or task forces found that it was an old Russian bomb from their war in Afghanistan. So, I have to assume that most documents are BS. And, when interviewed, Rick Hillier stated that most of these documents were written by idiots in Washington that never saw the war. It's not even second hand accounts, it's about 10 levels after that.
So, who's going to determine that? You? Some other random guy? Would you know a compromise if you saw it? Do you even realise that the slightest bit of information can have the capacity to start a chain of events that may lead to something catastrophic? Once it's out, it's too late. It's all well and good to say "no harm done". But it's too late to shut the gate once the horse has bolted. All it takes is one error. If releases such as these cause even one additional death; where's the moral stance then? These are documents about things that have already happened. Odds are that releasing them will only mean that if they happen again, they'll be hidden better.
Not to hijack this thread, but when I wrote my post I neglected to clarify some things. Like, of course it's wrong for our people to rape, pillage and indiscriminately murder innocent people. That's obviously insane. When I said - "Even if there had been instances of civilians wrongfully killed or, yes, even murdered, I say FUCK THEM" I meant it in the context of the documents being leaked. I don't care what they reveal, to me the releasing of information that potentially puts our guys on the ground in danger supersedes whatever information is gleaned. It doesn't mean the guilty parties shouldn't be punished. When I said - "OUR people are constantly subjected to ridiculous standards and rules of engagement" I did not mean that they should be allowed to commit atrocities at will. Of course we should be held to a higher standard, but not at the expense of the lives of our solders. They should not be told when to fire on an enemy, how to fire on them, not provided with the right tools and weapons, or be burdened with any rules that would lessen the danger on the battlefield to them and in some way benefit the enemy. Other than that, it should be balls to the wall.
Regarding the leak, I tend to agree with those saying that the person(s) responsible for it should be punished, simply because of the nature of what they leaked - classified or secret documents. As for the consequences of it, I'd say the greatest threat is that chances are our common enemy, amongst anyone else who wishes to know, will begin to see the SOPs, routines and AOs of the NATO and ISAF forces in the area. As for myself, the documents contained the reports for many of the combat situations that Swedish personnel have been in, as well as situations where IEDD (US abbreviation?) units have been called to disarm explosives. Besides that it describes which situations that have resulted in Close Air Support being called in. As a soldier who will within a very near future be shipping to Afghanistan myself, that makes me worried for the reasons stated above. Despite this, the focus here (Sweden) has been very much on what the documents say about the way the American forces have been waging the war, especially outside of ISAF. And, as our Defense minister mentioned, they don't show anything that we didn't already know, but it does show the scope of US combat missions in the MeS region (North). That is not to say that the reaction from the public or from the media has been small, it has presented the perfect opportunity for the generally left-orientated media here to bash on the US, the war, and on soldiers in general. Only this morning I read an article where the author praised wikileaks for "standing up" against the world powers. Furthermore, another bashed the Swedish military for not reporting the details of several combat situations Swedes had been in over the past 3 years. That, in effect, means that the leak made an impact on the public support from one of the contributing nations in ISAF - a country which has still not admitted it is at war in Afghanistan(!). Sounds incredible, but unfortunately when you are sticking your head in the sand, getting the truth shoved in your face can be scary. Now, the fact that public support in Sweden is hit by the leak may not sound like the end of the world to an American, but it frustrates the hell out of me since Sweden sends soldiers to a warzone, and then the media acts shocked when they end up killing people.
This is the first I have heard of this particular aspect. If this is true, and I am definitely looking into it to make sure it isn't an exaggerated talking point, and a single informant, or informant's family member is killed in the coming days, I definitely say try this guy for treason, and when convicted, send him to Afghanistan, and let them try him as well, and then put him up in front of a joint firing squad.