In 1948, three civilian engineers died in the crash of an air force B-29 bomber that was testing a missile guidance system; in their widows' lawsuit, the Supreme Court upheld the air force's refusal to divulge accident reports that it claimed held military secrets. But when the declassified reports surfaced decades later, the only sensitive information in them involved the chronic tendency of B-29 engines to catch fire, egregious lapses in maintenance and safety procedures, and gross pilot error. Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Siegel (Shades of Gray) ably recounts the case, a scandal and cover-up with grave constitutional implications. The 1953 Supreme Court decision gave the executive branch sweeping authority to conceal information under national security claims without judicial review, a precedent confirmed when the Court refused to reopen the case in 2003. (The author notes the influence of Cold War anxieties and the 9/11 attacks in these rulings.) Siegel insists on decorating the story with often extraneous human-interest profiles of everyone involved. But his is an engrossing exposition of the facts and legal issues in the case, which produced a disturbing legacy of government secrecy and misconduct still very much alive. (June)
This is just one example of gross mismanagement of justice in the name of "national security." There are many others, both before and since, and it wouldn't take very long to drudge up a few. Governments want the people over which they rule to trust and support them; whether they're a democracy or a totalitarian regime, this remains true. This is why it's so important for societies to do exactly the opposite - question at every turn, demand transparency and accountability, and make sure the things they do in your name are things with which you agree.
The media (or at least those portions of the media which are stuck suckling at the U.S. Government's tit, which is most of them) would have you believe that the latest batch of documents released by Wikileaks - which, I'd agree, was released in a careless manner - did nothing but put people in danger. "There is nothing new to be found in these documents," goes the refrain, "anyone who's been paying attention already knew all this stuff."
There's some truth to this statement, though it makes one wonder why most of this was classified in the first place.
It's certainly true that it's been a poorly-kept secret at best that Coalition forces have been utilizing teams of assassins to target high-profile insurgent leaders; this is something that's been reported on before, though usually with a certain level of deniability on the part of Government spokespersons. But there are certain details that have emerged as a result of the leak that are rather eye-opening. As Prattap Chatterjee reports:
"Find, fix, finish, and follow-up" is the way the Pentagon describes the mission of secret military teams in Afghanistan which have been given a mandate to pursue alleged members of the Taliban or al-Qaeda wherever they may be found. Some call these “manhunting” operations and the units assigned to them “capture/kill” teams.
Whatever terminology you choose, the details of dozens of their specific operations -- and how they regularly went badly wrong -- have been revealed for the first time in the mass of secret U.S. military and intelligence documents published by the website Wikileaksin July to a storm of news coverage and official protest. Representing a form of U.S. covert warfare now on the rise, these teams regularly make more enemies than friends and undermine any goodwill created by U.S. reconstruction projects.
...
In more than 100 incident reports in the Wikileaks files, Task Force 373 is described as leading numerous “capture/kill” efforts, notably in Khost, Paktika, and Nangarhar provinces, all bordering the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of northern Pakistan. Some reportedly resulted in successful captures, while others led to the death of local police officers or even small children, causing angry villagers to protest and attack U.S.-led military forces.
The core information used here is from the diarydig website that catalogues and analyzes the Wikileaks documents. Very interesting/disturbing is the way that local leaders of reconstruction projects are forced to apologize to communities for the actions of these sorts of teams - the aid workers we put there are distrusted by the populace because they're seen as part of the same group. And really, why wouldn't they be? If my country was being occupied and my countrymen being killed on such a regular basis, I split hairs like that, either.
In fact, it gets worse than this. If you look through the data, there's only a single case where Task Force 373 successfully assassinated their target; every other incident involves friendly fire, killing afgan police, or a civilian massacre. That's one successful mission out of a hundred for a task force that's illegal by international law in the first place.
This isn't helping.
"We have an important job to do there," various Coalition governments assure us - my own government included. We do? What is it? We're not saving any lives, our very presence in Afganistan is causing far more harm than we could possible prevent... We're not fighting for equal rights for women, despite our claims to the contrary and terrible articles found in Time magazine; our presence there is actively making things worse because we tend to prop up and protect the very people who do these terrible things (despite our claims to the contrary). Initially, the coalition went in to dismantle the Taliban and get bin Laden. Well, okay. The first part's done, the second part can't be done anymore, at least not in Afganistan.
Now, what?
Supposedly, we're still there in an effort to rebuild Afganistan after the tremendous damage we've inflicted there.
So, what is it? Revenge? How many lives must end, how much blood must be spilt, before the West in general, and the U.S. in specific, has had its revenge on that part of the world for 9/11? It was nine years and over a million deaths ago.
Just how many Afgan and Iraq lives is a single U.S. life worth? Or, to put it more selfishly, how many Coalition soldiers' lives have to be wasted before we can admit that we're not helping, there's little point to staying, and we should just leave? Any chance we likely had to complete the mission (assuming the mission statements ever given in Afganistan actually had anything to do with truth) is probably gone.
So, why are we still there?
It's a damn good question, in my mind. And it's the sort of question that makes Wikileaks so important in this day and age, because as the media becomes more profit-driven, as cutbacks limit the media's ability to get at the unvarnished truth (if they were ever able to do so), the importance of finding an alternative for the public grows.
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