Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire WikiLeaks: Who's Hiding What and Why - Fred Reed

+1 Mickey==Lack of will is an epidemic in this country ,concerning more than just our war effort and involves more than just the politicans.

I will never figure out why the campfire gives such a silly troll like Barak so much air time.

Heard an interesting thing. In all 90000 pages, not one was after Obama took office. Now I can't verify that it's true, but if it is, could it just be dismissed as coincidence?

Well that probably explians the Messiah's comments the other day that the Wikileaks weren't really a big deal. Maybe we have Messiah Gate in the making here.

Jerry Pournelle offers an excellent analysis.

Fred needs to get off his high horse and notice that the Taliban now has names of people who are supporting the US. Treason is still treason...jim


Wikileaks and the Afghan War

No one has had time to do any detailed analysis of the 91,000 documents leaked by Julian Assange and his Wikileaks organization, but from what we can see now I have two conclusions, one tentative, and one in which I have great confidence.

The tentative conclusion is that the documents told the public nothing that informed citizens, including me, didn't already know and were not in discussion. The war was not going well, there were a number of incidents of less than optimum tactics and command and control, brute force tactics were not going to secure the Afghan provinces, the "President" of Afghanistan was a politician, corruption is rampant in Afghan politics, the "President" of Afghanistan is in realty no more than the Mayor of Kabul (not even Grand Duke; he has to rely on a number of rent-seeking allies even to have his writ run in the suburbs and immediate vicinity), etc., etc. For two thousand years the only thing that unites Afghans is the presence of armed foreigners on Afghan territory. That unites them -- against the foreigners, even if the foreign army -- possibly especially if -- the armed foreigners are in the service of the Khan in Kabul. News flash from my reading of the leaked documents: that's all still true.

My firm conclusion is that the Wikileaks are an act of treason. They release the names of Afghan allies: villagers who have been converted to the notion of liberal democracy, and clan leaders who decided that the Allies are in Afghanistan to stay, and can eventually win, and that it is better for their clansmen to cooperate with the Allies than with the Taliban. Those names are now released, and those identified are doomed, as are their families. The Taliban and al Qaeda have long memories, and there is much to be gained by making examples of those those who collaborate with the West.

A corollary conclusion is that the current US goals in Afghanistan cannot now be achieved. This is a direct consequence of the Wikileaks. I hasten to add that I have always had grave reservations about those goals, largely because I was pretty sure that something like Wikileaks would happen: the names of collaborators is such an enormously attractive target that it would attract a lot of effort, not only by the Taliban and al Qaeda, but also by the intelligence services of countries who do not want the US to succeed in the Great Game in Afghanistan, and also by free lance secret sellers. The Taliban and al Qaeda would have paid enormous sums for the information now available on Wikileaks; only now they don't have to, and they can apply those resources to other objectives including making hideous examples of the collaborators and their families. It may take weeks, it may take longer, but the atrocity stories are already in the making.

There are several conclusions.

First (and of lesser importance), this was an act of treason. The US cannot of course try the Australian editor of Wikileaks for treason, but I do wonder if Australia doesn't have a case. The Aussies have lost troops in Afghanistan and if they stay around they will lose more. In the US treason consists of levying war against the United States or giving aid and comfort to its enemies. I put it to you that when the Legions are committed and the costs are billions, this is war; and little that anyone could do would give more aid and comfort to our enemies than giving out the names of our friends, converts, and informants in Afghanistan. Of course, as a matter of honor we are obliged to offer aid and sanctuary to our friends and allies and their families .

Second and more importantly, the war is now unwinnable under our present definition of win. Therefore, we need a new set of goals and a strategy for Afghanistan, and we need to start adopting it now. Whether or not establishment of a liberal democracy centered in Kabul was ever possible, it is not possible now. The Wikileaks have made it clear that Afghans who cooperate with the US must do so openly and be prepared for the consequences: you will not do so covertly. We also know from Wikileaks -- of course we knew it all the time -- that the presence of armed US soldiers in Afghanistan are great causes for resentment. We need to get them out of there. Up to now we have been able to generate some cooperation by means of raining benefits on those who cooperate. After the coming atrocities that's going to be a lot tougher.

As a first cut at our new strategy for Afghanistan, see "The CIA Solution for Afghanistan" by Jack Devine. Devine was the CIA official in charge of "Charlie Wilson's War" against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, and has more experience in this kind of war than any of our generals. The Afghan War was never a war for the Legions, whose very presence in Afghanistan tended to unite the Afghans against us.

"The U.S. military will not achieve anything resembling victory in Afghanistan, no matter how noble the objective and heroic the effort.

"It's time to face this reality. We should start by developing a new covert action plan to be implemented by the Central Intelligence Agency. The strategy should focus on forging the kinds of relationships necessary to keep Afghanistan from re-emerging as al Qaeda's staging ground once our forces depart, and also on continuing the hunt for Osama bin Laden."

As I have said before, there's little in Afghanistan that America wants. Assuming the newly discovered mineral resources are as valuable as some estimate, the US isn't going to get them. China, and Pakistan, have greater interests and are closer. Factor Russia with its long history of interest in the area. Add India to complicate the matter. The people of the United States aren't going to profit from expenditure of US blood and treasure in the land that has resisted every foreign occupation since the time of Alexander the Great.

What we do need is to deny Afghanistan as a sanctuary for our enemies. That is achievable. Devine's article is an overview of how.

"If there is any lasting lesson from the recent demise of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, it's that the large and visible occupying army he commanded in Afghanistan is simply the wrong force to wage the battles being fought there. The British and the Russians know this too well.

"Having run the CIA's Afghan Task Force�which covertly channeled U.S. support to the Afghans fighting to drive the Soviets out of their country�I recognize the playbook our policy makers are using today. It didn't work for the Soviets then, and it won't work for us now. However different our current objective, our efforts are alarmingly similar to those of the Russians. Instead of ignoring the lessons of that history, what we need to do is to be more like ourselves in the 1980s and in the months immediately following the attacks of 9/11."

The Wikileaks told the public nothing it needed to know; but they have made the Afghan War unwinnable under the previous definition of win. It is time and past time to reconsider what our objectives are.

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http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2010/Q3/view633.html#Wikitreason

"Most of what you know about Mexico--just of like most of what we know about anything else we learned about from the Old Media--is probably wrong."

Of one thing we can rest assured,....

You are an Anti American idiot, who spends a great deal of his "life" in the company of felons.

At one point your chit was kinda' fun,....these days it's just pure fuggin' SICK.

GTC

You sure got THAT right !

I wish Barak WOULD go to someplace like Culliacan, or Las Mochis, and STAY there.
....after all, he LIKES "anarchy",....right ?

GTC

Fred should realize that what a foreigner living in a narco terrorist state thinks or writes is just so much bs.

However to me it looks like Obama and Fred are out of the same cloth. For instance, "Foxian" view is knuckle dragging uneducated equal to Obama's bitter angry gun clingers who believe in a God.

Fred needs to face east on his prayer rug, smoke a little dope and commune with his belly button while thinking about how America is the Great Satan.

X2- Having worked and lived in a number of Third World countries America haters have no clue how good we have it here in the US. No clue whatsoever.

GW1 was another completely unnecessary waste of American time, dollars, and lives. First, it's none of our business whether Iraq wants to invade Kuwait; secondly, April Glasspie was pretty much dispatched to tell Saddam he had carte blanche to invade as far as we were concerned.


Suppose a bunch of Syrian civilians get murdered, and the Syrian government blames it on a group of Brits in the UK and demands that they be handed over for prosecution, and the British government refuses to extradite them.

Does that mean Syria is justified in invading England?

Or does it only work that way when it's brown people?


At this point, I'm in favor of whatever it takes to bring these two stupid and pointless wars to a conclusion. I don't care about which side gets helped and which side gets harmed in the process, because no matter how it ends--when it finally ends--both sides are going to declare victory anyway, and then the Muslims are going to go straight back to the way they've been living for thousands of years.

The whole thing is a tremendous waste.

I can put you in touch with a Syrian who disagrees with you.

Its government would like to have that much power, of course, just as every government would; but the government isn't nearly as powerful or rich as the US government is, so it can't oppress its subjects as thoroughly as the US government can--except for the ones that happen to live right under its thumb.

An embedded reporter doesn't get to say whatever he wants to say: he's censored by the group he's embedded with. And he doesn't object to the censorship either, or else he gets un-embedded right quick and is kept just as far from the action as you and I are.

It's hardly a free ride. If you're embedded you get to see more stuff, but you tell the story the US military gives you to tell.


Don't worry, they'll get around to it. Check out some of the other stuff on the site. They're not partisan: they're just interested in making secret stuff public.

Which is to say, they're interested in fulfilling the job that real journalists have abdicated in favor of re-masticating government press releases in exchange for "access."

But who are you to say that the people should be interested in the silly Bush/Obama wars? Maybe the people are right in thinking the wars are stupid and the politicians should bring the soldiers home.

Isn't that kind of the whole idea of a representative democracy?

More and more people are coming to the point where they understand the difference between the American people and the US government. In almost every case, the epithet "anti-American" actually means "anti-US government."

Some people (not many, you understand, just a few) are also coming to understand that the objectives of the US military and the interests of the American people are not anywhere close to being aligned with one another.

But if you haven't gotten clear to that rung on the ladder yet, be of good cheer: you'll get there. The US government is doing everything it can to get you there, and it can be pretty effective in that area when it puts its mind to it.

Really, you ought to read some of Fred's other stuff. It's available right there at the link above. You're embarrassing yourself. Not only is he very far from being any kind of liberal, he's a retired Marine.

You probably mean, "Having worked and lived in a number of Third World countries, I can testify that America haters have no clue..." or something like it.

Normally I wouldn't play Grammar Nazi; I have restrained myself on a number of occasions when that grammar pattern was used with the subject of the sentence misplaced. But this time, the subject wasn't even present in the sentence, and I had to say something.

I'd like to see proof of that. Curious like.

You know jack chit about Mexico, keep on reading sport.

Maybe so: I've only been there once. On the other hand, I do read what folks living there--Fred and others--have to say, and one of my coworkers on the current project is a software developer from Mexico City, and my wife has been there a number of times. I'm not entirely uninformed. There's more to Mexico than you'll get from either side of the immigration issue.

LMAO!