Wikileaks’ war logs and the true extent of our disempowerment
The leaking of some 90,000 military files, detailing US and coalition prosecution of the war in Afghanistan, presents a stark lesson in the extent to which our government is not accountable for its actions.
Reading the Guardian this morning, there were several key points that contributed to this. The capricious treatment of the relatives of civilians killed by coalition forces is high on my list.
The war logs document that occasionally relatives would be paid some sort of compensation for the death of a family member; in other cases they were ignored or bullied into silence.
Assassination as a tactic employed by our government should also concern us. The matter of its legality to one side, it puts an enormous amount of power into the hands of people who aren’t accountable. It’s done in secret. The only reason we’re finding out about it – or finding out about the number of spectacularly botched attempts at it, often with the cost of many civilian lives – is because someone broke the law to bring us this information.
How can we talk about democracy and accountability when we’re killing people in secret?
Exposé after exposé has documented how the intelligence and PR arms of the military have tried to control the flow of information. The clear evidence of misinformation provided by the activities of US Task Force 373 (and a lesser UK equivalent) surely raises questions about how the people of this country can make an informed decision on the war, which is (according to the democratic theory) supposed to filter out through elections.
It is my firm belief that we cannot trust our government to wage any war – and that therefore we should never go to war so long as government and its executive arms are the preserve of a narrow clique, hedged around with secrecy.
As Duncan points out yesterday, as regards the death of Ian Tomlinson at the hands of the police (and as is the case in deaths-in-custody or deaths during police restraints too), our media and politicians are all too ready to offer justification and explain away official mistakes, to dismiss the idea of blame and accountability. It’s no different in war abroad than in the policing of political dissent at home.
One of the Trotskyist reasons for opposing an endorsement of Chamberlain’s government and its participation in World War II was that Trotsky and others believed that the British ruling class would capitulate if they could get terms favourable to British imperialism and capitalism. The bottom line was that, despite all the rhetoric about ‘national unity’, the ruling class was out for its own interests and would interpret the national interest however it liked.
We haven’t moved on terribly far from that position.
There’s no doubt that our armed forces are propping up an oppressive, dictatorial, nepotistic regime in Afghanistan; talk of peace with the Taliban surely provides the last kick in the teeth to anyone who genuinely believed the US-UK coalition were invading for truth, justice and the American way. They’re ignoring civilian deaths, condoning assassination and deliberately misinforming domestic media.
Faced with a gap between reality and rhetoric, our governments (whether Democratic or Republican in the US, Labour or Conservative in the UK) have chosen to interpret their original mission statement to suit their immediate needs. Bugger democracy, or women’s rights; a puppet government of whatever political orientation will do nicely. Never mind not moving on from World War II, we haven’t moved on from Lord Auckland.
Whether one thinks in terms of class, cliques, power elites or another system of sociological division, the government is self-interested. Labour quite happily sat on most of these secrets and the Conservatives have, in a stunning display of political cowardice, refused to comment. William Hague simply stayed on message: “We are working hard with our allies in Afghanistan on improving security on the ground, in increasing the capacity of the Afghan government.”
This makes sense. Answering questions about these problems highlights that actually the Tories have been behind the invasions from day one, and might open the door to more serious questions about what the hell we’re doing in Afghanistan at all. Apart from letting Pakistan’s intelligence service try and play the Taliban off against India, or destabilising northern Pakistan and extending the reach of Islamic extremism in Central Asia.
And what can we do about any of this? The answer is not a lot – and that enrages me.
Foreign policy news stories – whether about the use of chemical weapons at Fallujah in Iraq, about the assassination of trades unionists by groups supplied by the coalition, the oppression of women by the same groups or the brazen incompetence of the armed wings of the pro-coalition Afghan government – arrive, have an effect on opinion polls and then leave. Their practical effect is essentially zero.
NGOs like Human Rights Watch will appear in the newspapers to denounce the behaviour of the coalition armed forces. Opinion pieces will be fielded by the political Right to the effect that we’re fighting against an enemy that’s much worse (as though moral relativism is any justification). The majority of people will quietly be disgusted, David Cameron will make some platitudinous remark about troops coming home and the status quo will continue.
Disempowerment doesn’t get much more complete than that.
Of course the problem with the Trotskyist analysis of WWII is that it was wrong, at least insofar as what it predicted didn’t happen. So it may not be entirely wise to claim that analysis as your starting point vis-a-vis Afghanistan…
I take issue with this Dave:
“There’s no doubt that our armed forces are propping up an oppressive, dictatorial, nepotistic regime in Afghanistan; talk of peace with the Taliban surely provides the last kick in the teeth to anyone who genuinely believed the US-UK coalition were invading for truth, justice and the American way. They’re ignoring civilian deaths, condoning assassination and deliberately misinforming domestic media.”
For all the reasons you could find for criticising our foreign policy and strategy in Afghanistan, I can’t see why the UK/US can be blamed for Karzai’s nepotism, and the near impossible task of dialogue with the Taliban (not simply the members of the Taliban who were probably forced into it, but the ones who really mean it). Any appeals to the UK/US installing a puppet government if Karzai was dictatorial would be thrown out of the water; equally any appeals that the US/UK have installed a rebel is mere conspiracy talk.
As for civilian deaths, condoning assassination and deliberately misinforming domestic media; this isn’t altogether to do with what has been leaked, there is a place for secrecy during war for national security, but I concede the files did paint a different picture to the one we had (despite us all having an inkling that things were going crooked, see what happened in Sangin).
But what you didn’t pick up on, Dave, is differences in opinion on strategy. It doesn’t follow that support for the mission in Afghanistan means a plea for civilian deaths and misinformation; it appears in your article that your either for the war – therefore you like civilian deaths and misinformation – or you’re against, therefore you’re opposed to civilian deaths and misinformation. This isn’t the picture.
Further, there is no reason to be for the mission in Afghanistan and not agree with Trotsky on this one, which is why I would like to invite Paul to elaborate more on why he felt Trotsky’s analysis was wrong, and why he feels his view is vindicated because it didn’t work – what didn’t work?
Lastly, and this will ruffle feathers, the reason the mission in Afghanistan is NATO-led is because the Taliban is a global problem, being a network (operating in a landlocked country helps this) that has managed to show its muscle in the North on the border with Pakistan, where young men are forced to join in their war, and where at checkpoints they choose to detonate their bombs. If this NATO-led mission fails, this is no victory for those who hate war, this is a victory for the Taliban, who love war, will wage war, all the more if the UK/US effort is seen as a failure.
Some of the reason UK/US forces are in Afghanistan now is to help a weak Afghanistan government form an army strong enough to defend its Northern provinces; if the troops leave before that has happened, it’s entirely possible that the Taliban could strangle the Karzai administration; this would be no victory for the anti-war contingent.
You’re right about foreign affairs news stories. In terms of altering public opinion, I think it doesn’t matter what specific misdemeanours coalition troops get up to. Not unless the debate shifts towards questioning the reasons for being in Afghanistan in the first place.
@Paul; I don’t think the Trotskyist analysis of WWII was wrong. In this instance, the most you can call it is untested. The British ruling class were never pushed to the same extent as the French, and the contradictions between British and German imperialism were sharper – not to mention that we were protected by the sea. But you have to bear in mind the degree to which many senior figures sympathised with the Nazis.
@Carl; I’m not sure what your point is re: Karzai. My point is that the people we’re propping up and the people we’re fighting against aren’t noticeably different – certainly this is true for Karzai once you get beyond the niceties of elections to the real groups on which his power is based. As in Iraq, it amounts to an armed thuggery.
As for differences in strategy, there’s a reason that I take an uncompromising attitude (that is, for the war = for the civilian deaths and misinformation vs against the war). There is no strategy that wins this war without exactly the sort of tactics currently being used. Any political strategy that ‘wins’ the war isn’t a win, as the people of Afghanistan end up in roughly the same place where they started (minus the number of people killed and the bitter legacy laid) – and any military strategy. Any military strategy involves exactly the things I’m decrying in the article above.
Basically my point here becomes this; you can’t be for the war and against these measures. It takes a staggering degree of self-delusion to pretend that war, waged with regard to the protection of our own soldiers and its cost, can be stripped of its dangers – to accountability and to human life.
the oppressive, dictatorial, nepotistic regime in Afghanistan, was that the Karzai administration you were talking about,, I assume it was, my point was that the fact that you may think he is oppressive, dictatorial, nepotistic, is not the fault of the UK/US for the reason that if he was, the conspiracy that he is a puppet of the US/UK would be thrown out of the water. I admit to second-guessing part of your argument, perhaps why I haven’t been clear here.
Second point, as I’ve mentioned, there needs to be secret information during war, whether a war you agree with or one you don’t, war secrets cannot be broadcasted to the public for reasons of national security. True, you cannot be for war and against death – although ironically, the US always seems to be for war, but against the death of US soldiers, as if that is somehow a contravention of the strict rules where the US goes to war not to fight but to win.
However, my contention is that you cannot be against this war and against death either, the Taliban are warriors and bankrolled by warlords; they may not be progressive governments insitgating this war in the UK and the US, strategy may often be deceitful, but we have to remember that the mission to curb the fascism of the Taliban is not itself reactionary, despite the reactionary support the war effort has.
On Karzai, the fact that I think he is oppressive dictatorial and nepotistic is not the fault of the UK/US. The fact that he is these things and is in power is the fault of the UK/US coalition. Whether he can be regarded as a puppet or not (which is essentially secondary when the extent of his government’s executive power is absolutely determined by the vastly superior military forces of the coalition) is frankly irrelevant.
Second point, I don’t believe there is any issue of national security involved in this war. In fact I would go so far as to put that beyond opinion and state it as fact. There is no issue of national security involved. Even if there was, it’s easy to argue that the majority of these secrets aren’t vital to any ‘national security’ interest – even to the safety of troops. Civilian deaths certainly don’t count here – unless you’re suggesting that the government is justified in withholding anything on the grounds of weakening the war effort, at home or abroad. In which case we can bring in a totalitarian dictatorship and be done with it.
And even if all of these things count for nothing with you, we’re far beyond secrets and into the terrain of actively lying about events to domestic UK media.
Your contention that by being against war we’re essentially for the Taliban assumes an alternative – that if the war, then no Taliban. This assumption is bogus on two levels; first, that the Taliban are obviously still around and can assert a great and growing degree of control. The war, for all the horrors it has unleashed, hasn’t put paid to that. Second, that the groups known officially as “Taliban” might be crushed (some hope!) or settled with (in which case being for the war is both for the current deaths and for anything you wish to lay at their door) but their tactics and ideology will live on independently in other groups – several of which are on ‘our’ side.