Noam Chomsky's article comes from the magazine In These Times. I take excerpts from the article. Chomsky's agrees that the wikileaks documents may help to raise questions about the U.S. role in Afghanistan and challenge Obama's and the media echo chamber's justifications for it. However, in his view, while documents like those released by WikiLeaks may help to increase opposition to the war/occupation in Afghanistan, it will take a riled and mobilized American citizenry to bring it to an end.
This article is permanently archived at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/main/article/6280/
Why WikiLeaks Won’t Stop the War
By Noam Chomsky
http://www.inthesetimes.com/main/article/6280
August 3, 2010
The War Log...released on the Internet by the organization WikiLeaks--documents a grim struggle becoming grimmer, from the U.S. perspective. And for the Afghans, a mounting horror.
While the documents are generally viewed as providing support against the continued war and occupation of Afghanistan by U.S. troops, Chomsky has another view. The War Logs, however valuable, may contribute to the unfortunate and prevailing doctrine that wars are wrong only if they aren't successful--rather like the Nazis felt after Stalingrad.
Last month came the fiasco of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, forced to retire as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and replaced by his superior, Gen. David H. Petraeus.
A plausible consequence is a relaxation of the rules of engagement so that it becomes easier to kill civilians, and an extension of the war well into the future as Petraeus uses his clout in Congress to achieve this result.
President Obama's principal justification of the continued Afghanistan intervention makes little sense. [....] The official goal is to protect ourselves from al-Qaida, a virtual organization, with no specific base -- a "network of networks" and "leaderless resistance," as it's been called in the professional literature. Now, even more so than before, al-Qaida consists of relatively independent factions, loosely associated throughout the world.
The CIA estimates that 50 to 100 al-Qaeda activists may now be in Afghanistan, and there is no indication that the Taliban want to repeat the mistake of offering sanctuary to al-Qaeda.
[....]
In February, in the first exercise of Obama's new strategy, U.S. Marines conquered Marja, a minor district in Helmand province, the main center of the insurgency, but failed to oust the Taliban permanently.
[....]
According to Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, commander of the Marine expeditionary brigade in Helmand Province. `Most people here identify themselves as Taliban. [....]
Chomsky compares the situation being faced by the U.S. military forces to what U.S. forces confronted in Vietman in 1969.
[....] In 1969, Douglas Pike, the leading U.S. government scholar on Vietnam, lamented that the enemy--the National Liberation Front--was the only "truly mass-based political party in South Vietnam." Pike then recommended that the only way to overcome the NLF's political force was
by using our comparative advantage, violence--with horrifying results.
Chomsky also refers to other comparable unwinnable situation, for example to the Russians in Afghanistan during the 1980s, where they won every battle but lost the war.
[....]
After the Marja triumph, the U.S.-led forces were expected to assault the major city of Kandahar, where, according to a U.S. Army poll in April, the military operation is opposed by 95 percent of the population, and 5 out of 6 regard the Taliban as "our Afghan brothers"--again, echoes of earlier conquests. The Kandahar plans were delayed, part of the background for McChrystal's leavetaking.
Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that U.S. authorities are concerned that public support for the war in Afghanistan may erode even further.
In May, WikiLeaks released a March CIA memorandum about how to sustain Western Europe's support for the war. The memorandum's subtitle: "Why Counting on Apathy Might Not Be Enough."
[....]
Democratic societies rely not on force but on propaganda, engineering consent by "necessary illusion" and "emotionally potent oversimplication," to quote Obama's favorite philosopher, Reinhold Niebuhr.
The battle to control the internal enemy, then, remains highly pertinent--indeed, the future of the war in Afghanistan may hinge on it.
© The New York Times Syndicate
Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor & Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the author of dozens of books on U.S. foreign policy. He writes a monthly column for The New York Times News Service/Syndicate.
Showing posts with label Media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Media. Show all posts
Friday, August 13, 2010
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Media attention on Afghanistan War is down
Here are excerpts from the following article, focusing on the relative lack of media attention to the futile and destructive US-led military occupation of Afghanistan.
America’s Forgotten War
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/americas_forgotten_war_20100528/
Posted on May 28, 2010
By Bill Boyarsky
Excerpts:
News on Afghanistan "war" lost amidst other crises: "...the oil spill, intractable unemployment and the rest—for it has definitely diverted attention from his biggest disaster: the Afghanistan war."
The lack of a serious debate and media attention on the Afghanistan quagmire is probably good for Obama, but bad for the country. Some reasons. "Casualties are rising, passing 1,000. The Afghanistan war’s cost in February alone was $6.7 billion, USA Today reported. At this rate, there may not be enough money to pay for the health care reform that Obama sees as his legacy.
Boyarsky refers to Pew Reserch Center survey findings. "For the week of May 17-23, Afghanistan was in seventh place in the overall standings. For newspapers, the war was 10th. It was seventh for online, sixth for network television and 10th for cable TV. Afghanistan coverage didn’t register for radio. The oil rig explosion, the 2010 elections, the economic crisis and the Mexican president’s Washington visit all occupied more space or time."
Tom Rosensteil, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, responds to a question from Boyarsky. "With the death toll rising and the number of Americans in Afghanistan increasing, why the poor coverage?....“'One factor is that, historically, if Americans—and the American news media is a reflection of them—have pressing domestic concerns … the domestic concerns seem to come out first,' he said."
Moreover: "The few prominent opponents and critics of the war can’t catch their attention.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s resolution for withdrawal from Afghanistan within 30 days was defeated in the House. Peace candidates in the current election campaigns, such as Marcy Winograd, who is running against Rep. Jane Harman in a Democratic primary in Southern California, are scarce.
And there has been minimal coverage of legislation requiring President Obama to develop a flexible timetable for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, introduced by Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and Reps. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., and Walter Jones, R-N.C. Obama has said he wants to begin withdrawing troops in July 2011, but that obviously isn’t a firm enough promise for Feingold. The senator also disagreed with Obama’s goal of denying al-Qaida “a safe haven,” stopping Taliban advances and strengthening Afghanistan’s government. This made little sense to Feingold, who said, “A large open-ended expensive military presence in Afghanistan is not the way to defeat al Qaeda.” He inserted the Feingold-McGovern measure as an amendment to a spending bill, but it was voted down, 18-80."
America’s Forgotten War
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/americas_forgotten_war_20100528/
Posted on May 28, 2010
By Bill Boyarsky
Excerpts:
News on Afghanistan "war" lost amidst other crises: "...the oil spill, intractable unemployment and the rest—for it has definitely diverted attention from his biggest disaster: the Afghanistan war."
The lack of a serious debate and media attention on the Afghanistan quagmire is probably good for Obama, but bad for the country. Some reasons. "Casualties are rising, passing 1,000. The Afghanistan war’s cost in February alone was $6.7 billion, USA Today reported. At this rate, there may not be enough money to pay for the health care reform that Obama sees as his legacy.
Boyarsky refers to Pew Reserch Center survey findings. "For the week of May 17-23, Afghanistan was in seventh place in the overall standings. For newspapers, the war was 10th. It was seventh for online, sixth for network television and 10th for cable TV. Afghanistan coverage didn’t register for radio. The oil rig explosion, the 2010 elections, the economic crisis and the Mexican president’s Washington visit all occupied more space or time."
Tom Rosensteil, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, responds to a question from Boyarsky. "With the death toll rising and the number of Americans in Afghanistan increasing, why the poor coverage?....“'One factor is that, historically, if Americans—and the American news media is a reflection of them—have pressing domestic concerns … the domestic concerns seem to come out first,' he said."
Rosensteil added other reasons. (1) "War fatigue" from the years of coverage on the Iraq "war." (2) "mainstream news business is short of money...." "Covering a war is expensive." (3) "editors and other media managers don't think people are interested."
Furthermore: "...there’s not much political debate over the war, and without controversy there’s not much interest on the blogs and among cable’s so-called analysts, who have become more influential than old-fashioned reporters."Moreover: "The few prominent opponents and critics of the war can’t catch their attention.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s resolution for withdrawal from Afghanistan within 30 days was defeated in the House. Peace candidates in the current election campaigns, such as Marcy Winograd, who is running against Rep. Jane Harman in a Democratic primary in Southern California, are scarce.
And there has been minimal coverage of legislation requiring President Obama to develop a flexible timetable for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, introduced by Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and Reps. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., and Walter Jones, R-N.C. Obama has said he wants to begin withdrawing troops in July 2011, but that obviously isn’t a firm enough promise for Feingold. The senator also disagreed with Obama’s goal of denying al-Qaida “a safe haven,” stopping Taliban advances and strengthening Afghanistan’s government. This made little sense to Feingold, who said, “A large open-ended expensive military presence in Afghanistan is not the way to defeat al Qaeda.” He inserted the Feingold-McGovern measure as an amendment to a spending bill, but it was voted down, 18-80."
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Misinformation on Marja battle to mislead US public
Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specializing in US national security policy, uncovers information on the US-led offensive on Marja, in Afghanistan's Helmand Province. The offensive included 7,500 US, NATO, and Afghan troops. In an article titled "Fiction of Marja as a City Was US Information War," Porter makes three major points.
First, "the picture of Marja presented by military officials and obediently reported by the news media is one of the clearest and most dramatic pieces of misinformation of the entire war." In the highly publicized run-up to the battle, US officials described Marja as "a city of 80,000 people." Porter reports that "Marja is not a city or even a real town, but either a few clusters of farmers' homes or a large agicultural area covering much of the Helmand River Valley, which covers "125 square miles." The focus of the attack was a location in Marja "where farmers gathered for markets" and included "a mosque and a few shops."
Second, Porter asks, "how did the fiction that Marja is a city of 80,000 get started?" "The idea," he reports, "was passed on to the news media by the US Marines in southern Helmand," and then picked up by the Associated Press and other news media. The story that was more or less repeated was that there were as many as a 1,000 insurgents in the town and that there would be deadly "house to house urban street fighting."
Third, why then was the fiction of an urban Marja perpetrated. Porter's answer can be gleaned from from the last two sentences in the article:
"The Washington Post reported Feb. 22 that the decision to launch the offensive against Marja was intended largely to impress US public opinion with the effectiveness of the US military in Afghanistan" - and how Afghan soldiers are becoming ready to engage the enemy and do their part in the fighting that lies ahead.
"The false impression that Marja was a significant city was an essential part of that message."'
One implication of Porter's reporting is that the US command in Afghanistan - and at the Pentagon - is groping for a military strategy that can convince American elected officials and the American public that pouring more resources into the Afghanistan occupation will eventually be successful or cost-effective. They seem to be making it up as they go. What a snow job.
http://original.antiwar.com/porter/2010/03/08/fiction-of-marjah-as-city.
First, "the picture of Marja presented by military officials and obediently reported by the news media is one of the clearest and most dramatic pieces of misinformation of the entire war." In the highly publicized run-up to the battle, US officials described Marja as "a city of 80,000 people." Porter reports that "Marja is not a city or even a real town, but either a few clusters of farmers' homes or a large agicultural area covering much of the Helmand River Valley, which covers "125 square miles." The focus of the attack was a location in Marja "where farmers gathered for markets" and included "a mosque and a few shops."
Second, Porter asks, "how did the fiction that Marja is a city of 80,000 get started?" "The idea," he reports, "was passed on to the news media by the US Marines in southern Helmand," and then picked up by the Associated Press and other news media. The story that was more or less repeated was that there were as many as a 1,000 insurgents in the town and that there would be deadly "house to house urban street fighting."
Third, why then was the fiction of an urban Marja perpetrated. Porter's answer can be gleaned from from the last two sentences in the article:
"The Washington Post reported Feb. 22 that the decision to launch the offensive against Marja was intended largely to impress US public opinion with the effectiveness of the US military in Afghanistan" - and how Afghan soldiers are becoming ready to engage the enemy and do their part in the fighting that lies ahead.
"The false impression that Marja was a significant city was an essential part of that message."'
One implication of Porter's reporting is that the US command in Afghanistan - and at the Pentagon - is groping for a military strategy that can convince American elected officials and the American public that pouring more resources into the Afghanistan occupation will eventually be successful or cost-effective. They seem to be making it up as they go. What a snow job.
http://original.antiwar.com/porter/2010/03/08/fiction-of-marjah-as-city.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Democracy Now! on lack of Antiwar Media Coverage
Study: In Afghan Debate, Few Antiwar Op-Eds in Nation’s Two Leading Newspapers
President Obama has issued orders for a major escalation of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan by sending 34,000 additional troops. Has the media helped beat the drum for war? A new study by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting reveals pro-war voices outnumbered anti-war ones by a huge margin in the OpEd pages of the nation’s two leading newspapers, The New York Times and the Washington Post.
President Obama has issued orders for a major escalation of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan by sending 34,000 additional troops. Has the media helped beat the drum for war? A new study by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting reveals pro-war voices outnumbered anti-war ones by a huge margin in the OpEd pages of the nation’s two leading newspapers, The New York Times and the Washington Post.
AMY GOODMAN: President Obama has issued orders for a major escalation of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. On Monday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs confirmed Obama has told military leaders to implement his war plan which involves the deployment of an estimated 34,000 additional U.S. troops. Obama is also believed to be seeking commitments of an additional five to 10,000 troops from NATO allies. He’s expected to meet with a bipartisan group of lawmakers before publicly unveiling his plan in a national address tonight the from U.S. Military Academy at West Point. This is Obama’s second escalation of the Afghan war following his initial deployment of at least 22,000 additional troops earlier this year. It’ll bring the U.S. occupation force to more than 100,000 troops, more than half of them will have been sent to war by President Obama. Obama’s plan to escalate the Afghan war comes amidst dwindling public support for the Afghan occupation. Recent polls show a majority of Americans believe the Afghan war is not worth fighting with the country near evenly split on whether to send more troops. As Obama prepares to unveil his plan, the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has put out a study analyzing how the issue of war escalation has been discussed in the opinion papers of the two leading newspapers in the country, the New York Times and The Washington Post. They feature decidedly pro-war views in the months leading up to Obama’s decision on deploying more troops. In the New York Times, pro-war voices outnumbered anti-war ones by a ratio of five-one. While in the Washington Post, the ratio was ten to one. We’re joined now in our New York studio by Jim Naureckas, editor of “Extra,” the magazine of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting that published the report. Jim, lay out your findings.
JIM NAURECKAS: Well, we were looking at the pages at the New York Times and the Washington Post for the first ten months of 2009 and during that time they had 110 op-eds discussing military policy in Afghanistan. So it’s not like this is an issue that isn’t being talked about. But what was missing from the discussion was the idea of getting out of Afghanistan. This is very much a marginal position on these pages. As you say, the New York Times had a five-one pro-war to anti-war voices, the Washington Post had ten to one. It was really – Fareed Zakaria, who is a columnist for The Washington Post said that withdrawal is not a serious option and that seemed to be the attitude overall in the discussion was that people who did not want to keep fighting the war in some manner were not really advancing a serious idea. That was kind of off the table.
AMY GOODMAN: The New York Times, the majority of those anti-war columns, right, from one person, from Bob Herbert?
JIM NAURECKAS: Right, yes, it was nearly all of them, actually were from Bob Herbert. If it wasn’t for Herbert, the New York Times would have been almost univocally pro-war without any discussion of the idea of whether the war was worth fighting.
AMY GOODMAN: And Jim, the range of debate in the Washington Post and the New York Times, when the op-ed page presents so-called opposing opinions?
JIM NAURECKAS: Well, they do have debate over how to fight the war. That is president in the pages. Not everyone was in favor of sending more troops, as Obama was talking about doing. But the discussion was often framed as should we send more ground troops or should we fight the war more using, you know, unmanned aerial attacks, you know, remote-controlled attacks. Is that a better way of carrying out this war? It was really not a discussion of the ends, but a discussion of the means.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring Steve Zunes into this discussion. Professor Zunes has not only written about the Western Sahara, but has written extensively about Afghanistan critic. Your response to the announcement President Obama will be making later today at West Point, the increase of 34,000 troops?
STEVEN ZUNES: Very disappointing. It’s ironic that we are escalating a war in the name of fighting totalitarianism, the oppression of women and terrorism, when we refuse to support a non-violent democratic movement led by a woman in Western Sahara. This is only going to make things worse. There’s a large Afghan committee out here in the Bay area, particularly around Fremont. And these are people who have suffered enormously under the Taliban. They’ve lost family members. The view is almost universal that this escalation is only going to make things worse, that it’s going to just create more extremists, more resistance, that what we call the Taliban is in fact a whole plethora of resistance groups that are primarily fighting what they see as a foreign occupation. With this escalation, the United States is going to have more troops in Afghanistan than the Soviets did at the height of their occupation in the 1980s. We saw what the reaction was to the Soviet presence during that period.
AMY GOODMAN: Michael Moore had a very interesting letter to President Obama where he said, I simply can’t believe you’re about to do what they say you’re going to do. Moore warned that Obama would tarnish his legacy, turn away his supporters and effectively crown himself the new war president escalating the war in Afghanistan. He said, with just one speech tomorrow night, which actually is tonight, you’ll turn a multitude of young people who are the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. Moore wrote, your potential decision to expand the war will do more to set your legacy in stone than any of the great things you’ve said and done in your first year. Michael Moore went on to say, for the sake of your presidency, hope, and the future of our nation, stop. For God’s sake, stop. Jim Naureckas, this is not a view that was on the op-ed pages of The New York Times or The Washington Post recently.
JIM NAURECKAS: Yes, Fareed Zakaria would deem that someone who’s not offering a serious option. That kind of broad look at why we would be fighting the war, what the consequences for this war will be, both in Afghanistan and the United States, was really not on the table. It was pretty much a kind of instrumental approach.
AMY GOODMAN: I’m going to have to leave it there. Jim Naureckas, thanks for being with us and Professor Steve Zunes speaking to us from San Francisco.
JIM NAURECKAS: Well, we were looking at the pages at the New York Times and the Washington Post for the first ten months of 2009 and during that time they had 110 op-eds discussing military policy in Afghanistan. So it’s not like this is an issue that isn’t being talked about. But what was missing from the discussion was the idea of getting out of Afghanistan. This is very much a marginal position on these pages. As you say, the New York Times had a five-one pro-war to anti-war voices, the Washington Post had ten to one. It was really – Fareed Zakaria, who is a columnist for The Washington Post said that withdrawal is not a serious option and that seemed to be the attitude overall in the discussion was that people who did not want to keep fighting the war in some manner were not really advancing a serious idea. That was kind of off the table.
AMY GOODMAN: The New York Times, the majority of those anti-war columns, right, from one person, from Bob Herbert?
JIM NAURECKAS: Right, yes, it was nearly all of them, actually were from Bob Herbert. If it wasn’t for Herbert, the New York Times would have been almost univocally pro-war without any discussion of the idea of whether the war was worth fighting.
AMY GOODMAN: And Jim, the range of debate in the Washington Post and the New York Times, when the op-ed page presents so-called opposing opinions?
JIM NAURECKAS: Well, they do have debate over how to fight the war. That is president in the pages. Not everyone was in favor of sending more troops, as Obama was talking about doing. But the discussion was often framed as should we send more ground troops or should we fight the war more using, you know, unmanned aerial attacks, you know, remote-controlled attacks. Is that a better way of carrying out this war? It was really not a discussion of the ends, but a discussion of the means.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring Steve Zunes into this discussion. Professor Zunes has not only written about the Western Sahara, but has written extensively about Afghanistan critic. Your response to the announcement President Obama will be making later today at West Point, the increase of 34,000 troops?
STEVEN ZUNES: Very disappointing. It’s ironic that we are escalating a war in the name of fighting totalitarianism, the oppression of women and terrorism, when we refuse to support a non-violent democratic movement led by a woman in Western Sahara. This is only going to make things worse. There’s a large Afghan committee out here in the Bay area, particularly around Fremont. And these are people who have suffered enormously under the Taliban. They’ve lost family members. The view is almost universal that this escalation is only going to make things worse, that it’s going to just create more extremists, more resistance, that what we call the Taliban is in fact a whole plethora of resistance groups that are primarily fighting what they see as a foreign occupation. With this escalation, the United States is going to have more troops in Afghanistan than the Soviets did at the height of their occupation in the 1980s. We saw what the reaction was to the Soviet presence during that period.
AMY GOODMAN: Michael Moore had a very interesting letter to President Obama where he said, I simply can’t believe you’re about to do what they say you’re going to do. Moore warned that Obama would tarnish his legacy, turn away his supporters and effectively crown himself the new war president escalating the war in Afghanistan. He said, with just one speech tomorrow night, which actually is tonight, you’ll turn a multitude of young people who are the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. Moore wrote, your potential decision to expand the war will do more to set your legacy in stone than any of the great things you’ve said and done in your first year. Michael Moore went on to say, for the sake of your presidency, hope, and the future of our nation, stop. For God’s sake, stop. Jim Naureckas, this is not a view that was on the op-ed pages of The New York Times or The Washington Post recently.
JIM NAURECKAS: Yes, Fareed Zakaria would deem that someone who’s not offering a serious option. That kind of broad look at why we would be fighting the war, what the consequences for this war will be, both in Afghanistan and the United States, was really not on the table. It was pretty much a kind of instrumental approach.
AMY GOODMAN: I’m going to have to leave it there. Jim Naureckas, thanks for being with us and Professor Steve Zunes speaking to us from San Francisco.
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