Pentagon Papers II
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By Richard Reeves
Op-Ed Columnist
MAY 17, 2010
NEW YORK — Henry Fairlie, the British-American contrarian who wrote for The New Republic and The Washington Post, among many others, derided the publication of the Pentagon Papers as nothing more than a summary of what Americans already knew about the war in Vietnam. To prove his point in those pre-Google days, Fairlie spent hour after hour plowing through newspaper, magazine and government archives, finding stories and public documents revealing the same information the Defense Department was classifying during the 1960s.
Is the same thing happening now in regard to Afghanistan? It sure looks that way to me.
Take this last week as an example of what Fairlie wrote about almost 50 years ago.
The Pentagon has released a 150-page "Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan," one of a series of unclassified evaluations required to be filed every six months by congressional mandate. The Pentagon report, in the executive summary, says:
"Operationally, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), in coordination with the Afghan Government, has commenced conduct of clear, hold, build, sustain, and transition operations throughout Afghanistan as part of an 18-month civil-military campaign plan. ... Combined ISAF, ANSF (Afghan security forces), and Afghan and international civilians continue to make progress in Marjah. Consolidating gains and continuing to deny the Taliban the ability to re-establish a foothold will be the focus for continued operations. These events collectively demonstrate the increasing proficiency of the ANSF and increased engagement by the Afghan Government."
So far, so good, but.... One of the first reporters to read the whole thing, Fred Kaplan of Slate.com, wrote:
"A few disheartening lines from its executive summary were duly recited by the media. But the full report is a hair-raiser. The news is almost all bad; and the few bits of good news turn out, on close inspection, to be extremely misleading. ... Things in that unhappy country are going badly — much worse, of course, than Team Obama had to pretend this week, but quite a bit worse than even a sensible skeptic might think."
The reason the Obama administration had to "pretend" was that our sometimes pretend ally, Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, was in Washington to talk about progress, some of it pretend progress — just as it was in Vietnam.
The biggest progress talked about by the Pentagon (in that summary) had to do with clearing and holding territory in the Marja region, where NATO troops, mostly Americans, had launched a major military — clear and hold — operation in February.
Then Monday, Carlotta Gall of The New York Times reported, on page one, that indeed Marja had been cleared, but was not being held. The headline read:
Farmers Flee Area Taken by U.S., Saying Taliban Still Hold Sway
The copy, based on dozens of interviews with farmers running for their lives, was both frustrating and heart-breaking. Frustrating for Americans; life-breaking for local Afghans:
"Over 150 families have fled Marja in the last two weeks, according to the Afghan Red Crescent Society in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah.
"Marja residents arriving here last week, many looking bleak and shell-shocked, said civilians had been trapped by the fighting, running a gantlet of mines laid by insurgents and firefights around government and coalition positions. The pervasive Taliban presence forbids them from having any contact with or taking assistance from the government or coalition forces.
"'People are leaving; you see 10 to 20 families each day on the road who are leaving Marja due to insecurity,' said a farmer, Abdul Rahman, 52, who was traveling on his own. 'It is now hard to live there in this situation.'"
Another farmer, Mir Hamza, added: "I am sure if I stay in Marja I will be killed one day either by Taliban or the Americans."
I take his word. Hamza knows better what is happening than the Pentagon does. I assume most of us do, and we will admit that in "Pentagon Papers" released or leaked in 20 years or so.
*Richard Reeves is a columnist for Universal Press Syndicate and is a visiting professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. He has also taught political writing at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. His weekly column has been distributed by Universal Press Syndicate since 1979 and appears in such newspapers as the Los Angeles Times, The Denver Post and Dallas Morning News. He is a former chief political correspondent of The New York Times and has written extensively for numerous magazines including The New Yorker. |
