On Wikileaks and Afghanistan
On Wikileaks and Afghanistan
Fred Smoler: On Wikileaks and Afghanistan
The earliest assertion held that the Wikileaks were the Afghan War?s Pentagon Papers. This was apparently intended to imply that the Wikileaks materials were a) stunning revelations that would b) destroy support for the war by c) revealing that successive American administrations had very grossly lied about the war in Afghanistan. But the Pentagon Papers are not remembered, at least not accurately remembered, for too many startling revelations. Their most crucial disclosure was that LBJ had in 1964 accused Barry Goldwater of meditating a policy LBJ had himself already resolved upon–but the Pentagon Papers are nonetheless rarely remembered as a striking vindication of Senator Goldwater. The Papers had also revealed that the Administration was bombing Cambodia, but this was a secret to neither the Cambodians nor to the hundred thousand demonstrators in Washington in 1970.
The Pentagon Papers were also a legal event of great importance, because the Nixon Administration attempted but failed at prior restraint of the press. If the Obama Administration attempts to extradite Julian Assange but fails to do so, there may be a smaller but in some remote sense comparable legal impact?or perhaps not. In the event that the Justice Department manages to extradite Assange and then successfully prosecutes him, there is of course the possibility that Wikileaks will be remembered as a Pentagon Papers in reverse?a piece of legal history that increased rather than weakened the power of states over journalists. This sequence does not yet seem likely, but it seems just a little less unlikely today than it did a few days ago.
One of the more interesting things about the Wikileaks was the very swift revelation that Assange seems to have put many Afghan lives at risk by failing to purge the documents of material allowing the Taliban to identify informants. Assange quickly claimed that Wikileaks had withheld 15,000 documents out of such a concern, but within a day or two not only military commentators but New York Times writers had managed to identify a number of risks to Afghans who had cooperated with either their own elected government or the Americans?for example, their fathers’ names and villages were included in the Wikileaks documents.
From some quarters there will no doubt be replies to the effect that Quislings who secure foreign assistance against people who murder and torture young women for attempting to learn to read deserve whatever happens to them. My guess is that Assange, who does not (yet) talk this way, is nonetheless unlikely to care too much about his victims?he is reported to have annoyed President Obama by noting that he (Assange) enjoyed crushing bastards, and expressing his hope for war crimes trials. Since neither the Taliban nor the Pakistani intelligence services are at much risk of being prosecuted for war crimes, it is not too hard to work out which side Assange thinks the bastards are on, and whom he imagines crushing.
The Wikileaks documents include a great number of assertions about Pakistani Army and intelligence service collaboration with the Taliban, and a few about collaboration with Al Qaeda, including some particularly ugly stories about cooperation in attempts to kill Americans. These assertions, while so numerous that they are extremely unlikely to all prove false, are also generally very hard to prove true, especially by the very rigorous standards of proof generally demanded by people desperate to avoid a hard decision. The allegations about the murderous treacherousness of the Pakistani military and intelligence services are anything but a secret to people who follow the Afghan war, but it is possible that a fair number of Americans who do not closely follow the Afghan war will now learn about this evidence, which could have two quite opposite political effects. One, support for the war, already shaky, could erode more swiftly, or two, American support for Pakistan, still strong, i.e. worth billions as well as indispensable spare parts for F-16s, could erode more quickly yet.
If the latter happens before the former, it is possible that Pakistani behavior will improve?the prospect of a hanging proverbially concentrates the mind. In that latter case, a good outcome in Afghanistan becomes more rather than less likely. While assertions about the invincibility of guerrillas are hooey?guerrillas usually lose?it remains true that guerrillas with a border sanctuary within which to recruit, retrain, recuperate, and rearm, plus the persistent and effective support of a neighboring state, are much more difficult to defeat than guerrillas deprived of such advantages. It is thus (remotely) possible that Julian Assange will indeed have helped to crush bastards, although not precisely in the fashion he had intended.
