WikiLeaks Publishes Afghan War Secrets 966
A number of readers submitted word on the massive WikiLeaks release of Afghanistan war documents. "The data is provided in CSV and SQL formats, sorted by months, and also was rendered into KML mapping data." WikiLeaks provided the documents in advance to the New York Times, Der Spiegel, and the UK's Guardian — the latter also has up a video tutorial on how to read the logs. From the Times: "A six-year archive of classified military documents... offers an unvarnished, ground-level picture of the war in Afghanistan that is in many respects more grim than the official portrayal. The secret documents... are a daily diary of an American-led force often starved for resources and attention as it struggled against an insurgency that grew larger, better coordinated and more deadly each year. The New York Times, the British newspaper The Guardian, and the German magazine Der Spiegel were given access to the voluminous records several weeks ago on the condition that they not report on the material before Sunday. The documents — some 92,000 reports spanning parts of two administrations from January 2004 through December 2009 — illustrate in mosaic detail why, after the United States has spent almost $300 billion on the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban are stronger than at any time since 2001."
US abuse (Score:4, Insightful)
Wikileaks is doing great work for the world. It sickens me that the country that is supposedly so open and about democracy abuses rest of the world like this and tries to hide it. I remember that last year the German and French population support for the war started dropping, so US started a project where they tried to think how to manipulate them. They made specific, independent plans for both countries how to give the war better PR so the general population would support it again.
US is also the only country in the world that is constantly in war with other countries, bullies them and has a history of supporting enemies of its enemies. You know, the exact same thing that US considers as helping terrorists. Funny thing is that because of this, US put itself into this war.
What about ACTA and other laws US tries to push to the rest of the world? No one comes to US and tries to tell them what to do. So leave rest of the world alone too.
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Heinlein, Starship troopers, 1959
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Strangely enough, I'm pretty sure the US and Russian stockpiles of nuclear weapons made the world safer overall. I can't say the same regarding North Korea or Iran having nukes. They might actually use them without fear of retaliation.
Re:US abuse (Score:5, Interesting)
What a lot of people don't know is that a Soviet submarine captain actually gave an order to launch a nuclear missile during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but his second in command [wikipedia.org] refused to do so.
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"I'm not afraid of the man who wants ten nuclear weapons. I'm terrified of the man who only wants one."
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What have we gained from this precarious position? Only peace between a handful of countries who keep their fingers on the trigger. The rest of the world still has war, with all the brutality, violence, and war crimes that come with it, and in several cases those wars are with (or were with, in the case of wars that occurred in the past) the very countries that have nuclear stockpiles.
It is absurd to claim that humanity is safer now than we were before the arms race. We live on the brink of destruction, and while we all go about our lives feeling safe, there are people who spend their time ensuring that at any moment, any country in the world could be completely destroyed, and others whose jobs involve planning how the entire world could be destroyed if some other country decides to execute a nuclear strike.
None of that makes me feel very safe.
Re:US abuse (Score:4, Interesting)
Strangely enough, I'm pretty sure the US and Russian stockpiles of nuclear weapons made the world safer overall.
If you define "the world" as "US and Russia", maybe. Because there were no shortage of proxy wars in South America, Africa, and Asia with the communists and capitalists supplying different sides.
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Huh? Your view of history is pretty narrow. Perhaps in the 20th Century the US has been involved in more wars that others (often as a defensive position, ie, WWI, WW2, Korea) but the history of mankind has been that of war for thousands and thousands of years.
This is reality, not the Federation of Planets. Get used to it.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_operations [wikipedia.org]
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Actually - researchers in 2008 uncovered that there were weapons on the Lusitania: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1098904/Secret-Lusitania-Arms-challenges-Allied-claims-solely-passenger-ship.html [dailymail.co.uk]
Really doesn't say anything to the discussion here or the point your making. But I just read this the other day and thought it was interesting.
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http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100708/full/news.2010.343.html [nature.com]
There's plenty of other information out there, such as the fact that North Korea doesn't have a submarine capable of evading South Korean sonar arrays.
There's also lots in Korean, but that doesn't help you.
Re:US abuse (Score:5, Insightful)
Uhhhh - no system is infallible. Sonar is remarkable. On sonar that would be around 40 years old today, one could actually listen to fish doing fishy things, miles away. You could hear a man sneeze underwater, again, miles away. Even the most stealthy of submarines make noise as it passes through the water - mostly from the propellor of course, but the steam plant makes noise, and the crew makes noise. Machinery inside the sub makes noise. You can hear all of it, if you have very good ears, proper training, and good equipment. A good sonar tech can hear a scuba diver long before the diver gets close enough to plant a limpet mine. But, NONE of it is infallible.
You can potentially take a noisy 1800's steam ship out to run a blockade, and succeed. Because nothing works like it's supposed to all the time.
If you think that S. Korean or any other sonar arrays are impenetrable, you have almost no understanding of sonar, or people, or of complex systems in general. NOTHING WORKS CORRECTLY ALL THE TIME! Repeat that a few thousand times - then go out and preach it to the people around you who fail to understand it.
Re:US abuse (Score:5, Funny)
Right on!
I saw proof on youtube that the fire couldn't be hot enough to melt those steel girders. Sick of all these lies, I went to look for myself, and I'll be damned: the WTC is still standing! They faked the 9/11 attacks in the same studio where they faked the moon landing. The real reason why the 9/11 attacks were faked was to provide an excuse for grounding all air planes so they could be retrofitted with tanks of neurotoxins for the chemtrails program, which is needed to keep the public confused and ignorant about CIA, FBI, UN and Freemason involvement in the Kennedy assassinations. The Kennedys were assassinated because they wanted to go public about the aliens that had been captured after the Roswell incident. The Aliens were here to warn us about the imminent threat posed by the passing of the planet Nibiru, which the Freemason/CIA/FBI conspiracy is trying to keep hidden because they intend to use the confusion caused by the upcoming disaster to impose UN law on the united states. The black helicopters have nothing to do with it though, they're an extremely fancy pizza delivery service for the Skull & Bones alumni.
Re:US abuse (Score:5, Informative)
Took the Romans two centuries to pacify the Iberian peninsula (present day Spain and Portugal). And that was without outside meddling (after they took it from the Carthaginians).
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taking out many civilian targets then trying to hide it
What history book have you been reading? The history of war is one of marching all over civilians. What you are supposed to do is walk in and kill every man woman and child so there is no one left to oppose you. So there aren't any children left fatherless to build a grudge of hatred towards your nation. This idea of not killing civilians is a result of the televised news cycle. Hell during WWII the firebombing campaigns in Japan killed 100's of thousands of people, more than the two atomic bombs.
The reason the war is taking so long is because they are at least attempting to not kill civilians. They aren't doing a great job of it, but at least they are trying.
Re:US abuse (Score:4, Insightful)
Scale is relative. The British and Roman empires were waging at least as many as we are, and were just as ruthless. Granted, that shows you where we're headed, but your statement is still wrong.
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Alexander didn't conquer Afghanistan. The British didn't. The Soviets didn't. Maybe the Romans would have done a more thorough job, but all the other failures weren't exactly poofters. Then again, Julius Caesar instigated the Gallic Wars and then went on to murder over a million Celts just so his troops could sharpen their swords for civil war, and to settle the old debt from when the Gauls sacked Rome 390 b.c. They were particularly hard-assed back then.
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Maybe the fact that the Romans and the Mongols never tried to conquer Afghanistan was the result of an intelligent reticence. Even in the Byzantine era (who still called themselves "Romans") when Heraclius more or less replicated Alexander the Great's feat of conquering the Persian Empire, he promptly turned around and went home without touching Afghanistan.
But like an earlier comment mentioned, as ruthless and (in my opinion) needlessly violent as the USA's recent conduct as been, the Romans would not have tolerated an insurgency. I once heard the journalist Seymour Hersch (I probably misspelled his name) allege that in the Project for a New American Century circles such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the Third Punic War is bandied about as lot as an example of what the USA should do (As in, after two huge wars against Carthage, one of them involving Hannibal running riot across Italy for ten years, the Romans had effectively cowed Carthage into little more than a vestige of what it once was. When there were rumblings of possibly a third major conflict, the Romans responded by simply killing everyone they wanted to, selling the few survivors into slavery, and famously sowing their land with salt so that nothing would ever grow there again.)
I'm reminded of a great quote by the grouchy Roman historian Tacitus - "The Romans make a desert and call it 'peace.'"
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US revolutionary war, anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
They refused to abide by the laws of war and we responded in kind.
I find that statement pretty funny given that I grew up about 15 minutes away from where a bunch of colonial farmers basically engaged in guerrilla warfare and pretty well obliterated almost a thousand British troops. What did those wild heathens do? Why, they didn't respect the proper rules of war by moving around in proper tidy columns and shooting in volleys (the procedure is truly hilarious to watch.) The bastards...they fired from spread out positions! And from behind rock walls! Cowards! And then, as the British retreated, they were picked off militia hiding in the woods all along the road back to Boston.
So. The standards of war are rewritten by whoever wins...and it's not like we went into Iraq and Afghanistan not knowing what we were getting ourselves into. The Soviets did a pretty good job of discovering that a decade or two prior.
Re:US revolutionary war, anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure that old-style infantry was a result of outright incompetence.
Sure, it's better to spread the troops out, and hide them behind rock walls, but only if you trust them to stick their heads out long enough to fire. That's not a problem if you have all volunteers, but colonial armies aren't staffed with volunteers. I guess modern armies have better training, so they can give their troops a bit more independence.
Re:US revolutionary war, anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
I just find it absurd that we force our military to fight with one hand behind it's back. Our enemies aren't doing the same.
It all depends on what you're trying to achieve. If it's suppressing all resistance, then, yes, "shoot on sight" is the way to do that - though there are more efficient ways still, such as carpet bombing.
But if you want to take over an area and maintain control, not by keeping population at the barrel of your guns (and showing that it's loaded by shooting one or another periodically), but more or less willingly, then you have to do PR. Be better than the other guys.
And PR has its costs, including soldiers' lives.
But then Soviet Union tried to go without back in 80s, and you might recall how well that went.
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Our weaponry and style of war is far more ruthless today than the Romans could've ever dreamed of.
Note that the helicopter pilots had to radio in for permission to kill the people on the ground (they did get that permission, of course) -- the Romans would not have had to radio in. A group of Roman soldiers would have slaughtered the people with weapons, and probably the "historians" (i.e. reporters) that were there with them, without first asking a higher level commander for permission. The "rules of engagement" in Roman times were not quite what they are today: the Romans won many battles by simply laying siege and letting people starve to death (can you find an instance of the United States Army laying siege and waiting for people to starve to death?).
Yes, the weapons are more deadly. The tactics and rules, however, are a lot less brutal. Yes, warfare is still brutal, but we really do hold back our armies. If you want to see what less restraint looks like, take a look at what is happening along the Congo-Rwanda border, and you will see the kind of restrain the US army is showing in Iraq.
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"Our weaponry and style of war is far more ruthless today "
Bullshit. Every combat action is subject to public scrutiny, and the commanders have to answer to a Congress that watches the news, right along with reading full reports from the front line.
We do not wage a "ruthless" war. We haven't done so since about 1950. We fight "humane" wars. We bend over backwards to avoid inflicting civilian casualties and civilian damage. We have very strict rules of engagement. If you think our troops are "ruthless", you have no concept of what ruthless really is.
A ruthless military would identify a village from which some combatants came, surround that village, destroy all the structures with air strikes and artillery, then they would roll through it with armor, and follow up with infantry. A sign would be erected, "This village destroyed as penalty for supplying 10 soldiers to fight against America." And, the bodies would be left lying in the road when everyone left. That is ruthlessness.
Re:US abuse (Score:4, Interesting)
A puny sword cut, compared to what flamethrowers and napalm can do to you, or those vacuum bombs which literally turn your lungs inside out (but don't always kill right away)? And that's not even to mention chemical weapons.
There are very gory ways to go even on today's battlefield. It's just that they happen more often to the "insurgents", so you don't hear much about them. Then again, the fate of a captured American soldier can be quite disturbing, as well.
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Did the Romans plant devices [banminesusa.org] that could chop off the limbs of a playing child years or even decades after the conflict has ended, devices specifically intended to maim and kill indiscriminately ? And did they in fact spread this disease all over the world by exporting the stuff to every two bit warlord with the cash to buy them ?
The Romans were ruthless enough to chop limbs off children personally (sort of a "hands off"-approach ;-). It takes quite a different level of ruthlessness to personally skewer a kid with a sword, than selling a mine to somebody who may use it in a way that results in kids getting maimed and killed. Any coward can quiet their conscience in the hopes of quick profits (for an arms merchant) or not think very far into the future when securing their position in a war (for a soldier in a war zone). Very very few individuals (today, in developed countries) are ruthless enough to personally off a kid.
Re:US abuse (Score:5, Informative)
I realize that you were mocking the "kindness" statement and not arguing the necessity, but a quick review of the history might enlighten a few readers here about the US approach to war and its determination to minimize civilian casualties.
By 1945, WW2 was nearing its end and everyone knew it; the Japanese were all but beaten but were refusing to surrender unconditionally. Rather than lay down their arms, they adopted a strategy to prevent an invasion of the Japanese home island by dragging out the war as long as possible and making each succeeding engagement so bloody that, hopefully, the US public would be increasingly appalled by the death toll and pressure their leaders to just quit. That strategy came to a head at the Battle of Okinawa which lasted almost three *months* (1 April - 22 June 1945) and resulted in 100,000 and 72,000 Japanese and US military casualties respectively, and 100,000 Japanese civilian casualties--a full 25% of the island's population. There was no Japanese compunction about using civilians as human shields. The Okinawan government to this day claims that the Japanese military gave a mass suicide order to the civilian population and expedited more than a few. 90% of the island's buildings and infrastructure were destroyed.
Still undeterred by those high losses, the Japanese leadership were preparing the civilian population of the home island to escalate that style of warfare even further. The military began issuing hand grenades to civilian families with orders to throw them at US soldiers when they appeared in the streets. It would have made modern day Baghdad look like a playground spat. They had decided that they would rather sacrifice the entire civilian population than surrender. Accordingly, the projected casualty count for the Allies' Operation Downfall --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall
--were in the millions for the Allied forces and in the *tens of millions* for the Japanese civilian population. Faced with those numbers, Truman ordered the use of the atomic bomb. The shock of losing two entire cities in three days, with a total casualty count of 240,000 people, with no loss of Allied life finally convinced the Japanese military they were done. The math and the psychology finally became overwhelming. There would be no more bloody engagements, just one Japanese city after another vanishing in a flash of light until the military was eviscerated with no loss to the Allies, so the Japanese finally surrendered.
Terrible as it was, those numbers were still orders of magnitude smaller than the deaths that would have resulted had the Allies been forced to invade Japan. The only other alternative would have been a blockade, resulting in mass starvation of the civilian population.So by any objective measure, the Japanese refusal to surrender and determination to drag out the war in as bloody a fashion as possible justified the use of Fat Man and Little Boy. Truman made the right call. It was the most merciful option left.
The point is that the US does not kill civilians just for jollies. In fact, it bends over backwards to try to minimize civilian casualties, way past the point of endangering its own troops. The fact that the Obama Administration is considering creating a military award for "courageous restraint" is proof of that. Whether the wars should have been started in the first place is, of course, debatable; but if the US were so ruthless and brutal as some Slashdotters claim, it would have turned Afghanistan and Iraq into glass parking lots long before George Bush had wrapped up his second term.
Re:US abuse (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually this behavior can be seen in any aristocracy/republic, when you have a cultural elite that controls most of the wealth/power/resources it will naturally seek to "domesticate" the population by sending off aggressive individuals to fight remote wars. This pacifies your population in the short run and in the long run you limit their chances of passing on aggressive genes since they are less likely to breed offspring while away or dead. In most mammals you can domesticate them within 10 generations, why should humans be any different?
Re:US abuse (Score:5, Interesting)
my point is, even with the selection against agressive genes that wars provide, aggression, and most importantly, the ultra-violent people [amazon.com], get that way through a gradual learning process of though experiences most people in this forum will never be able to imagine.
Re:US abuse (Score:5, Interesting)
I hesitate to intrude upon this good-natured colloquy, but I must point out that there were no "Frenchmen" (or French women) for about 1000 years after Caesar and his colleagues conquered Gaul. (The very name "France" derives from the Franks, a tribe of barbarians who invaded Gaul hundreds of years after Caesar). The main source for the Roman conquest of Gaul, of course, consists of Caesar's own books. Is it at all possible that he might have slanted them, perhaps touching up a few facts and figures, in order to impress the voters back in Rome? (Point 1: Caesar is one hell of a general, who conquers whole provinces in a matter of months and utterly destroys Rome's enemies; Point 2: You *really* do not want to anger him).
You are probably aware of the wide gap between pagan Roman (and Greek, and for that matter Gaulish) ethics and the Christian ethics with which everyone in the West is more or less permeated. Whereas Christ abjured us to love our enemies, turn the other cheek when struck, and to forgive our brother "unto seventy times seven" times, the ancients believed in returning whatever they received - with interest. A noble Roman, Greek, Gaul, or Goth would take pride in rewarding his friends and servants lavishly, heaping kindness upon his dependents, and showing the most merciless cruelty to his declared enemies. In some ways, the Nazi philosophy (if one can dignify it with that name) harked back to the days of the Romans in regarding forgiveness and mercy as signs of weakness, likely to be abused and exploited by enemies. So it's not surprising that the Romans took such a robust approach to conquering other nations and repressing rebellions. The very word "virtue" originates from the Latin "vir" (a man) and to the Romans meant the manly virtues of truth, courage, and strength. That's why it's foolish and inappropriate to compare the violence of 20th and 21st century wars with those of the pre-Christian period. One shouldn't forget, either, the appalling bloodiness of the high Christian period, from the Dark Ages through to the Enlightenment. No one who casts stones at Islam for its culture of violent intolerance should forget that Christianity, for most of its history, was very similar in that regard. It has just had an extra few hundred years to lose its sharp edges.
Nowadays, in the post-Christian epoch, everyone has been exposed to Christian ethics - even if many of us are avowed agnostics or atheists, the ethical rules that we consider self-evident and universal often derive from Christianity. So we pay abundant lip service to kindness, mercy, charity and forgiveness. Yet the people who reach the top layers of government and the armed forces cannot afford any such scruples: they have to behave very much like ancient Romans, while pretending to subscribe to Christian or humanist ethics. Hence the paradoxes expressed in the t-shirt slogan "Whom would Jesus bomb?" Clinton had it right: "It's the economy, stupid!" Every US president (and all their staff too) is fully aware that his overriding goal must be to make Americans prosperous and keep them that way. That is not done by exporting the huge amounts of wealth that would be necessary to turn a country like Afghanistan into a passable replica of Ohio (or even Egypt); instead, it is done by sucking wealth out of such countries for the enrichment of Americans. But overt looting of foreign nations is frowned upon, most of all by our own ethics. How to square the circle? (Hint: I do know that's impossible) The method adopted has been to pretend that the invasion is for the good of the invaded. The forces of Western civilisation are conquering Afghanistan - as they did Iraq - to bring freedom, security, and the American Way of Life to the benighted heathen (sorry, "impoverished tribesmen").
It won't work. And there is very good reason to believe that no one in the White House or the Pentagon ever believed it could. This is what Maximilien Robespierre, no pacifist himself, had to say on the subject in 1791:
"The most extravagant idea that c
Re:US abuse (Score:4, Insightful)
US is also the only country in the world that is constantly in war with other countries, bullies them and has a history of supporting enemies of its enemies
You realize that every country in the history of humanity has done the exact same things, right?
I pretty much agree with your point, but would like to point out that no other country is or has been involved in as many large scale, outright wars as we are, at the frequency we are.
No other country has the ability to wage the large scale wars that the US has. I don't doubt that there are many countries that, given the technology and logistics that the US currently possesses, would do the same if not worse. Not taking one side or another on the debate, just saying, it's a matter of capability, not desire.
Re:US abuse (Score:4, Insightful)
Uh, I'm Swiss, you insensitive clod!
Re:US abuse (Score:4, Insightful)
You need to do a little research on the British Empire, the Roman empire, The Mongols, etc. Pretty much ANY empire in recorded history. Most involved outright genocide of millions and ongoing conflicts on multiple fronts. We're a bunch of candy-ass pacifists by comparison.
Oh, another one. Right, I see. Thank God for your logical explanation, because I was on the edge of thinking that maybe what US was doing might not be right.
But now that you pointed out that other have done it before, then it MUST be right.
Right?
Re:US abuse (Score:5, Interesting)
Not recently, and there have been a push to make the world a non-corrupt and peaceful place.
Precious few, if any, governments have these goals at the top of their list or anywhere in their list -- ignore the rhetoric and watch what they do. Corruption is the nature of nearly all governments simply because it's how business is done. You'd be amazed at how much of your priviledge of owning a computer and having electricity is the result of bribes and blatantly unethical behavior. Nor is peace their goal. The only goal is economic stability. Whether that means a non-combatant posture today or a brutal attack on certain citizens the next, the goal is only stability for the economy and outside investment.
There is many countries that haven't had war in many many years now. It was different in the pre-modern times.
Besides, the issue is the hypocrisy and hiding it from the public. US has done over and over again the exact same things that they accuse the current terrorists and countries that support them doing.
I agree the US is guilty of the same atrocities they accuse terrorists of committing, but so are many countries. Your memory may be short, but history is quite long, and just because a few years have gone by without major war reporting doesn't mean they're suddenly pure and will never use weapons again.
So let's not be naive about anything here. Much of the criticism against the US is deserved, but it is not the only deserving country.
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You realize that every country in the history of humanity has done the exact same things, right?
Not Tibet.
Tibet was a bunch of separate entities way back in the day [wikipedia.org]. If and when it gets free of the Chinese government, do they get to redivide into those smaller countries? Obviously Songtsän Gampo, the guy who founded the Tibetan EMPIRE, wasn't a true Tibetan. He was just some random, outside oppressor engaged in acts of aggression against his neighbors. The earth was made and Tibet was there immediately with monks and quaint makers of handcrafted goodies for celebrity photo op types to pose with. Damn him for messing with that.
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In order for that to actually work we'd all have to do it - all at once. By all means go ahead and try to convince the Chinese, the Russians, the Koreans, the Taliban etc. to all sing along and be friends with one another. Don't forget the Palestinians and Israelis too. Go over there and try to talk this sense to them, we'll be seeing you on TV shortly after I'm betting and not in the good way either. What exactly different is it that you propose?
If you think that somehow leading by example and becoming pacifists is going to get it done be prepared to be crushed as every other country rolls over you. What you're looking for is a fantasy and it's the sort of fantasy that's dreamed up by folks who have a warm bed, enough food, plenty of water, education, and free time to have have such thoughts. Many places in this world have very little of any of that and you had better believe they aren't going to get it overnight.
Want to win in places like Afghanistan? Start by raising their standard of living to something akin to ours. School them, build roads, develop their industries and resources, maybe give them something worthwhile to lose! When they have the luxuries that the "developed" worlds do then and only then will we begin to see progress. The Taliban and other tyrants know that an educated populace is their worst enemy. If we give Iran enough time I bet we will see this happen, trying badly to strangle them with by withholding needed supplies will work as well for us as it's working in Palestine I fear...
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Re:Just stupid... (Score:3, Interesting)
No you're not stupid! We should all aim to improve ourselves and our countries! And, I can't believe all the assholes that say that other countries have been as bad or worse. Who cares, everyone is responsible for their own actions! Otherwise all you're saying is that it's ok to be an asshole because there were and are other assholes! Highly unethical, if you ask me!
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Re:Killing other people does not solve problems. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Killing other people does not solve problems. (Score:5, Insightful)
15,000 reports held back but will be release later (Score:5, Informative)
Last line of http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/ [wikileaks.org]:
"We have delayed the release of some 15,000 reports from total archive as part of a harm minimization process demanded by our source. After further review, these reports will be released, with occasional redactions, and eventually, in full, as the security situation in Afghanistan permits."
So this archive isnt complete, come back later for more...
Re:15,000 reports held back but will be release la (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, if you watch the video on guardian, Assange specifically addresses the problem of "safety" that is being lauded here, noting how wikileaks take great care not to endanger people, other then politicians and military making the decisions leading to these occurrences of course. He points out why "this endangers the safety" argument is beating on a dead horse - the data here is so old, that the real meat that could in fact endanger lives of NATO soldiers, namely positional info is long beyond any reasonable secrecy requirements, while names are being redacted.
Anyone parroting the "endangers lives of out troops" is doing nothing but repeating drivel meant to discredit wikileaks at this point. Sensitive negotiations on the other hand usually imply "crimes behind them", which brings us to judicial responsibility - i.e. how many children are you willing to have raped, mutilated and killed in the name of Aghanistan, before it gets to be too many? Perhaps it's time to note that NATO has quite a few sociopaths installed in positions of power, and they need to be replaced rather then be taking part in "sensitive negotioations"?
On the other hand, the people dead because of what NATO is doing in Afghanistan are actually dying, in droves. And as these documents show, NATO sweeps many of them under the rug, and who are the people responsible for that accountable for, and who are people covering them accountable for?
And mind you, he's not American. He's Australian, and he claims to speak for no one least of all Americans. He simply offers facts, and allows everyone to formulate their opinion on their own. This is quite different from most modern mass media, that tends to be opinionated to no end nowadays rather then offer facts and let people think for themselves.
Ethics of leaks (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody elected him. And I don't have the information necessary to represent his ethical position. However, in general a democracy only really works when the people have visibility regarding the activities of its leaders and military. So, I can guess that he believes he has an ethical position. Can we trust him? No. But we can do our best to verify the data. Can we trust our own leaders? Same answer, unfortunately. This much is clear from history.
Next, is our country better off or not for this release? If there really is some care being taken regarding names and the age of data, it may well be better off for the people to have another look at the war.
Re:Ethics of leaks (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, it's game over then, by your rules.
I have considered running for office, and may consider it again. However, I'm not terribly electable. Not Christian, for one thing. If you look at who is in office, it's clear that this is a Christian nation.
Re:15,000 reports held back but will be release la (Score:5, Insightful)
uh oh (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:special interests (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know. I don't think that Afghanistan is capable of invading and conquering the United States. They pose no great threat to us. Given that, I'd really rather have the $300 billion.
Re:special interests (Score:4, Insightful)
And?
There's no constructive point in trying to get revenge (nor is it good for the soul), that method of terrorism stopped working 3/4 of the way through that particular attack, and it didn't actually pose any sort of existential threat to us.
The real harm caused by the attack wasn't crashed planes or collapsed buildings; the real harm was that it goaded us into doing stupid, self-destructive things, like pissing away a lot of money that we really need for other projects, or systematically tearing down our own carefully built, hard won civil liberties.
Afghanistan can't really hurt us, and neither can Al Qaeda. But we can hurt ourselves, and that's just what we've been doing.
One thing I don't understand... (Score:5, Interesting)
...is how did someone manage to download, store and transfer 90,000 classified documents and not be noticed?
I know there will be a lot of finger-pointing at Wikileaks for publishing the data on their website, but for the information to have been leaked in the first place should raise even more questions.
Re:One thing I don't understand... (Score:5, Funny)
I bet they used a computer.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
several newspapers have had 'access' to them for a while. Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.
You got that backwards: The newspapers were given access to the material by wikileaks.
The newspapers are not the source of the documents.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Well, maybe put in prison. One person has been charged with Treason since 1952, and he's a fugitive. People are charged with espionage or sedition more often, but I am not at all clear that either of those apply to this case.
re Triple GDP (Score:5, Interesting)
According to the CIA World Fact Book: [cia.gov]
So now, expenditure over six years (Jan 2004 - Dec 2009) is $300,000,000,000.00 divided by six is around $50,000,000,000.00 per year
Per capita is $1,716.96 or more than double the GDP per capita of the country!
I would think that the US would get better resultsif the money was simply given to each inhabitant, the $800 they already make plus $1,700 from the US, would triple the GDP per capita, no small feat.
Just smile for the camera and show that you have not handled explosives or fired guns in the last week (paraffin test) and you get your weekly expenditure; you don't show up for a week then you lose the privilege, i.e. you knew you couldn't pàss the test.
Who said "You Can Rent an Afghan But Never Buy One"? It would rent the whole lot of them for a long time!
No, not at all (Score:5, Interesting)
Handing out money would accomplish nothing. Few reasons:
1) True wealth is not in having money, it in having the ability to produce things. Rich countries are rich not because they have cash, they are rich because they have strong economies. While cash could be used to buy that, it won't be. Direct handouts are never used in that fashion.
2) It would just fall in to the hands of warlords. When you get an anarchy situation where the strong can prey on the weak that is what happens. Happens all the time in Africa with aid. You can hand it out to individuals if you send in guys with guns to make sure that happens, but when they leave it'll get taken.
3) It would just be used to fuel further fighting. Afghanistan is highly tribal. What this means is people don't really have a large scale, national, identity. They identify just with their "tribe" which in this case is basically extended family living together. By and large they see no problem with stealing from, killing, etc other tribes to their own gain.
Unfortunately, there is no real solution to the problems there. You cannot help people that do not want to help themselves. This is true with individuals who have addictions, and it is true with cultures, with nations, as well. Help only works when the group you are trying to help wants it, and is willing to worth with you. The Afghans don't, so help will do nothing.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
the remainder realizes the fight is not worth it.
Yeah... that's not true. Not in the slightest. You might get lucky and have the enemy become demoralized. What's more likely, when you're in their territory, is that they're going to stop caring if they live, since they know they're going to die, and then adopt more damaging tactics. Instead of getting a guy dropping off a briefcase with a pound of C4, who tries to get out of blast radius, you get a guy driving a truck with a few hundred pounds of C4 driving straight in to a target. And then you get all the
Re:re Triple GDP (Score:4, Informative)
Guess where the insurgents come from...
I mean, do you seriously think that some Afghanis are genetically born to be insurgents, and, as soon as you kill that bunch off, the rest will cheer democracy and religious freedom in their country?
By the way, speaking of "new order of things" - do you know that the current constitution of Afghanistan, enacted by the western-backed government, specifies Islam as a state religion, and Shari'a as the supreme law of the land, trumping any other law and article in the constitution? Meaning that e.g. apostasy and blasphemy is punished by death in Afghanistan today - not by Taliban, but by "our guys".
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Thanks for the reply, but it has been done before, like the Marshall Plan [wikipedia.org] or McArthur's occupantion [wikipedia.org] of Japan
People with nothing to lose, become suicide bombers, people with children and a way to feed them, do not.
Pretty pathetic (Score:3, Insightful)
I am surprised to see the Guardian plunge to the depths of New of the World. I personally am shocked at soldiers killing other soldiers without trial, the use of 'deadly' surface to air missiles rather than the fluffy kind, and the carnage that is being caused by the Taliban to... er 2000 civilians (eh, I thought they were stronger than any time since 2001 so why target civilians, and why is it the fault of the US?). As for the supposedly massive collateral damage by the Allies, 195 people over 10 years is tragic but not huge. Even then it's a mix of French, Polish, British, etc that are at fault so it's not a targetted campaign. Worth quoting a paragraph not unsurprisingly near the end:
"Most of the material, though classified "secret" at the time, is no longer militarily sensitive. A small amount of information has been withheld from publication because it might endanger local informants or give away genuine military secrets. Wikileaks, whose founder, Julian Assange, obtained the material in circumstances he will not discuss, said it would redact harmful material before posting the bulk of the data on its "uncensorable" servers."
Phillip.
Re:Pretty pathetic (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you think Julian waves his hand and documents appear?
He gets documents from people inside the war machine, those sources are able to tell him what parts would be detrimental to the people on the field.
Who elected Martin Luther King? Who elected Gandhi? Who elected Mohter Theresa? They do what they think is right to make a better world.
What's your age? Like sixteen / seventeen? Grow up! Now get off my lawn!
Conflicted (Score:4, Insightful)
Similarly a New Yorker piece [newyorker.com]commented on the leaked video and noted that
Another article [fas.org]
Personally I don't like them (Score:4, Insightful)
Secrets are sometimes necessary, and yes that includes to the government. As a simple example: Would you want a criminal getting a hold of information relating to an active investigation against them? How about the locations and identities of people in witness protection?
If you think any of that should be kept secret, then you agree that secrets can be necessary, including for the government. In that case the question is when should they be allowed to keep a secret. Then you have to start exercising discretion about what you release. You need to weigh the public's need to know versus the damage it could do.
Wikileaks just wants to release any and everything. They don't seem to give any consideration as to public good or need, they just want to leak everything. That I cannot agree with, be it for public or private entities. Anyone who says "There should be no secrets," is just the other side of the "If you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide," coin.
Also, as noted, they seem to have a political agenda. The helicopter video is a great example. It is possible that you could feel the public needed to know about it. Fine, but then the unaltered, uncommented video would be what to release. If you really believe the public needs to see what happened then that is what to show them. The unedited truth. When you edit and comment on it, you are trying to use it as a tool to present a point of view. You aren't interested in telling the truth, you are interested in pushing an agenda.
Using facts to do that doesn't make it any better. Bill Orielly is nearly always factual in his presentation. He rarely fabricates stuff. However it isn't true. What he does is pick and choose the facts he likes, and choose how to frame them to push a point of view. So while it isn't lying per se, it is still misleading. Wikileaks seems to be willing to do the same.
So between those two things, I really can't support them. They try to pretend to be the good guys but to me their actions do not show them in that light.
Re:Personally I don't like them (Score:5, Informative)
Would you want a criminal getting a hold of information relating to an active investigation against them?
In fact, sometimes we do, in countries where people are labeled "criminals" for being members of the wrong political groups or other abuses of human rights.
Wikileaks just wants to release any and everything
In fact, the Wikileaks volunteers do review the material that is submitted to them to ensure that it is not personal information about someone or other private information. They are not there to "release everything," they are there to release information that is of political or historical interest that some group of people is deliberately trying to keep secret from the public. You may disagree with that specific goal, but the least you could do is refrain from criticizing Wikileaks for things that they do not do.
Fine, but then the unaltered, uncommented video would be what to release.
They did release it, so what is your point? The commentary on the video is their own take on it, but do not present this as them trying to hide the truth from people -- anyone can download an unedited copy.
Re:Conflicted (Score:5, Informative)
Frankly, given that the US government has a plan in place to discredit Wikileaks (which was, of course, leaked on Wikileaks), any article which takes an overtly negative tone of Wikileaks is immediately suspect. Anything that criticizes Wikileaks without at least mentioning that it is an organization of loosely connected volunteers should be taken with a grain of salt. There is a lot of misinformation about Wikileaks, and we really should not be perpetuating it.
Re:Conflicted (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because without secrets the populous might have to face up to the mayhem their elected officials cause.
One wonders... (Score:5, Insightful)
Worse, even if we were having it all our way in military terms, our best case scenario seems to be installing our ridiculously corrupt and dubiously competent puppet leader sufficiently securely that we can leave before he gets overthrown. Given what happened in Iran when our ridiculously corrupt and dubiously competent puppet leader fell, this strategy seems to have a strong structural weakness.
Re:One wonders... (Score:5, Insightful)
Y'know what really puts the 300 billion figure in perspective? That the GDP of Afghanistan is ~13 billion. If you can't crush an adversary like a bug for almost a quarter-century's worth of its GDP(and that is comparing your military expenditures vs. their entire economy) there is some part of you technique that you really need to take a hard look at..
To be fair, the US military could trivially crush Afghanistan by pattern-bombing it with nukes. The trouble is that 'destroying the country in order to save it' would be a little difficult to justify to American voters and Afghanistan's neighbours.
The real issue is that Americans really don't care about Afghanistan, but no politico is yet willing to say 'this was a stupid idea and we're leaving'. If 'crushing' the country really mattered they'd have done it long ago, but it doesn't.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Something tells me you could have sold it to the American voter on September 12th 2001.
Probably, but at that point there was still the prospect of walking into Afghanistan, grabbing bin Laden and getting out; the US government took a few years to realise what a disaster they'd caused by not doing just that. If they'd been willing to lose enough troops to do the job then it could all have been over in a few weeks, but by using Afghan mercenaries to take most of the casualties they pretty much guaranteed that bin Laden would be allowed to get away.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I spent 21 years in the US military. It's the best military in the world, bar none.
But... It's a tool. To put it in perspective, a B787 is far advanced compared to the Titanic... But a fleet of them could not have influenced the disaster when the Titanic sank.
Like a 787, the US military is a tool finely honed to a specific purpose, which was to win a European theater mass war. To apply this tool to the one-on-one guerrilla fighting that is Afghanistan means to retrain and requip every troop, and to rewri
Re:One wonders... (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you know that? What other militaries have you served in to which you can compare your experience and declare one to be the best?
Re:One wonders... (Score:5, Informative)
Part of the process of making a soldier consists of inbuing them with an exceptionally strong sense of group and belonging to the group: it's well know that in the thick of it men do not fight above all for their countries they fight above all for their mates.
Thus it's not surprising that an (ex-)member of a military outfit will belief that "(we) are the best".
I've seen the same thing in some ex-high-school colleagues of mine, years later when we had a reunion, after they had been in the Portuguese special forces.
The US isn't trying to crush them (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a big difference. The US military is the best of the best at destroying shit. If things need to get blown up, people need to die, etc, they can do it quickly and professionally. Never before has there been a military with such raw power.
What the US military is not good at is conquest, going in and taking a place over. For that you need lots and lots of troops on the ground, and a willingness to be fairly ruthless. None of that guarantees a conquest is successful, of course, history is full of people pushing out oppressors, but it is needed for it to work. That's not what the US army does, never has except for maybe in Japan in WWII.
So what they US army can do, and has done well, is act as an army of liberation. A country has a powerful occupying force, the US can smash that force and liberate the populace. France in WWII is a good example. That is what the US tried to do in Afghanistan and Iraq. Come in, toss out the assholes in power.
The problem is that liberation only works when people want to be liberated, and are willing to work for it. It worked in France because of two reasons:
1) The French people wanted the Germans out, pretty much to a man. There weren't a whole lot of Nazi supporters there, relative to the total population.
2) They were willing to work together. When the Nazis were kicked out, the worked as a country to untie and rebuild. They understood that freedom meant sacrifices.
This is not the case in Afghanistan. It is a very, very tribal mindset over there. For the most part people care about what is good for them and their tribe. There is little sense of national identity, little cohesion. To them, freedom means freedom to take your neighbour's shit and make your tribe richer/stronger. As such liberation is near impossible. They aren't willing to work for it.
So if the objective was to kill every person in the country, I've no doubt the US military could accomplish that goal quickly and efficiently, with little loss on their own part. That's not the goal though.
Re:The US isn't trying to crush them (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a very important point, one of Sun Tzu's keys to victory and the most important was what was translated as "the moral law". The moral law was a populations willingness to follow a leader, in WWII most of Europe was willing to follow the Allies or Stalin rather then Hitler. Same with the Pacific, the Filipinos, Indonesians and Thais happily threw off Japanese rule in favour of the Americans at their first opportunity.
It wasn't the US Army who shot Nazi collaborators when they liberated Holland, the Dutch did.
Re:One wonders... (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is Pakistan. There's a safe haven of Islamic militants across the border. Even the Pakistani government doesn't know what to do with them. Even worse, approval ratings for the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden are in the 35-50 percent range in Pakistan - which is, no doubt, concentrated in the tribal north west. When we're the demonized "evil West trying to destroy Islam" and the Taliban is "one of them" - i.e. fanatical muslims who "just want to implement God's government on earth", even when it means throwing acid in women's faces for wearing the wrong clothing. When they're that mired in conspiracy and in-group loyalty, it can be difficult to win a war.
2007 Poll: "According to poll results, bin Laden has a 46 percent approval rating...al Qaeda has a 43 percent approval rate; the Taliban has a 38 percent approval rate; and local radical extremist groups had an approval rating between 37 percent to 49 percent." http://edition.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/09/11/poll.pakistanis/index.html [cnn.com]
PR (Score:4, Insightful)
Is Wikileaks now part of the PR machine? The feeling you're obviously supposed to take away with you from this is: Americans are fighting an uphill battle and are lost against the steadily increasing forces of terrorism it tried to root out.
When in reality Americans rolled in there ridiculously outnumbering and, more importantly, ridiculously out-being-equipped the mostly half-civilian rabble that dared stand up against them. There is no Afghan War. A war implies two sides fighting, not one waltzing in with vastly superior technomagic, while the other one is hiding, showing their heads, getting beat to a pulp, running for cover and getting shot in the back, until the next round of civilians gets fed up with sights like that and picks up their weapons to meet a similar fate.
Much more importantly, this isn't the right question at all. It shouldn't be "Why is this so difficult?" but "Why are we over there, taking their stuff and murdering everyone who so much as raises his voice against us? And shouldn't we be stopping that?" We demanded it. We were promised it. Success. We did our thing and now we don't care anymore. So it doesn't happen. Yay us, yay humanity. We make me sick.
Fuck me and fuck every single one of you. If I had three wishes I'd wish for a plague on all our houses, then a deluge, and a rinse-repeat.
Look away, citizens! (Score:5, Insightful)
Citizens and proud patriots of America, look away! Such things are not for your eyes. It is not for you to know how our war (done on your behalf, my steadfast Americans!) is going. Such things will only hurt the morale of our troops--and recruitment numbers! We beseech you, our countrypeople, you have no right to any of this information, for we do not belong to you--you belong to us.
So what *is* there? (Score:5, Informative)
As it often seems to be the case on /., the discussion centers around "talking points" conveniently fed by originator based on fairly clear /. views and agenda.
So, I went and began reading these reports. My impression is that these do have operational value, and are probably of some interest to military buffs (and certainly to enemy intelligence, though they probably knew most of that anyway). What I did not find in these reports is 1) any particularly unvarnished picture that differs markedly of what my impression of war in Afghanistan was until now based on otherwise available data 2) any real insight into why the war is going the way it is
I think, in fact, that both these points were answered many times in variety of other media and in other types of discourse.
My personal opinion is that other than sensationalist value, primarily due to the fact that classified information has been released, there isn't much here that will further any decent causes in our world. There is, however, a clear boon to stature of mr. Assange and his site and he is the one that benefits the most.
Since it is clear that he let his original source in US military down (essentially letting him be a fall guy who will probably be charged with various offenses), I think it is safe to say that mr. Assange is in it for himself and himself alone.
For my part, I will not patronize or support his venture. While in theory openness is good, it is only good if it is for the right reason. "Openness" for the sake of personal ulterior motives is just as bad if not worse than what it purports to fight.
Re:So what *is* there? (Score:5, Insightful)
Please correct me if I've lost track of this whole snafu, but if your source blabs to someone else that he's leaking military secrets, and that someone else turns your source over to the military, how are you the guy who let him down?
Can anyone figure out what the mission is? (Score:3, Interesting)
I know, according to the official story, the original mission was to go to Afghanistan and kick the Taliban out of power and get Osama Bin Laden.
I don't really think that's the mission right now. I haven't heard anything about Osama Bin Laden in quite a while. What exactly are they trying to do? Perhaps these documents can shed some light on that?
Re:Oil... (Score:4, Funny)
There is no oil in Bumfuckistan. Only rocks, more rocks, even more rocks, religious nutters and poppy plants.
Re:Oil... (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a lot of money in those poppies...
Re:Oil... (Score:5, Informative)
There's lots and lots of rare (and less rare) metals, it's the saudi arabia of lithium [dailymail.co.uk]. According to wikipedia [wikipedia.org] = "[Lithium is used in] high strength-to-weight alloys used in aircraft, and lithium batteries. Lithium also has important links to nuclear physics." They discovered this right before the war by the way, but I'm sure that's all coincidental.
Re:300 billion dollars is chump change... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody with half a brain ever believed that the war in Afghanistan was "to fight the Taliban and spread democracy". But that's beside the point.
Nobody is going to be getting any of that trillion dollars worth of minerals any time soon. Maybe never. Afghanistan has absolutely no infrastructure and even the most optimistic estimates say it would take decades. Of course, before you can even start doing that you have the problem of the inane lunatics who couldn't care less about about minerals, peace, prosperity, democracy or anything else, and only care about killing anyone who doesn't share their insane lunatic ideology. After 9 years and $300 Billion the U.S. has made no progress in changing this. In other words, if you're hoping to open a big Lithium mine, don't hold your breath.
Re:Criminal (Score:5, Insightful)
Regardless of the politics involved, this information was classified and it was marked as such. It was disclosed illegally and the newspapers (at least NYT) have a legal obligation to not print it.
You don't know what you're talking about.
Newspapers have, in the past, published classified documents which were "disclosed illegally".
FFS, the NY Times went front page with the Pentagon Papers [wikipedia.org] in 1971.
The Government tried to silence them and it went all the way to the Supreme Court [wikipedia.org]
Since I'm telling you that you don't know what you're talking about, it should be obvious how the case was decided..
The only reason the NYT is "interpreting the content and publishing summaries" is due to the enormous volume of information.
There are guidelines for classifying data that determine the classification level based upon how much damage (often in terms of lives lost) that the disclosure would cause.
What we've seen time and time again (the Pentagon Papers are only one of the more famous examples) is that the US Government will break the law and/or lie to its citizens, then classify the evidence and punish any attempts at whistleblowing.
Or have you forgotten about things like the retroactive legalization of otherwise unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping?
Legalization which only came about after the whistle was blown and the public was outraged.