These sorts of coordinated media campaigns—called “messaging” in military parlance—have been going on for years. Two years ago, I wrote in CJR about another such campaign. At that time, the military had spent a year trying to convince the public that paving the roads in Afghanistan would somehow lead to fewer IEDs and better security. In reality, security has become significantly worse in every respect—and in some cases it has become worse because of those very roads we paved. In 2008, too, the messaging campaign followed the same pattern we saw in Marjah, and what we see now in Kandahar: upbeat pronouncements about how this policy will work this time, it’s defeating the Taliban, we’re making progress, we learned from our mistakes, and so on.
Away from the military’s spin machine, reality is nothing so upbeat. Two weeks ago Michael Cohen noted in The New Republic that the military is, literally, the only group inside or outside of Afghanistan that sees hope and progress in the war. Everyone else—he spoke to NGO workers, election monitors, and longtime residents and analysts—sees nothing but “pervasive gloom” when it comes to Afghanistan’s future.
This disconnect between military spin and ground reality is not only dangerous, it is insulting: Americans can handle the truth about the war their government is fighting. Whitewashing the real challenges and problems we face can only make us worse off: it will make our eventual withdrawal more humiliating and surprising, and it will create a need in the public to know what went wrong. What went wrong, however, is years of consistent political and policy failures, on the part of four military commands, two administrations, and the entire civilian foreign policy community. A surprise “defeat,” which can result from such odious spin, will lead not to a sober reconsideration of how to avoid such a catastrophe in the future, but a witch hunt instead. The military should be more responsible in how it handles its public images. And much more importantly, the media—print and TV alike—should quit meekly reprinting whatever briefing they’re given on their embeds.
You make a pretty effective propagandist but you seem to have overlooked all the independent reports coming out of Afghanistan (including Marjah) that document things you say are not happening, such as locals supporting the coalition.
Anti-war analysts make mistakes of convenient omission, which doesn't serve to keep the public any better informed than a high-five press release from the military. The real picture emerging from Afghanistan is much more complex.
In fact, the Taliban would not be moving their operations to the north or assassinating more civilians if the coalition's activities were as ineffective as you imply. These changes in tactics are clear evidence that the military operation is having the effect that was promised: they are pressuring the taliban and moving them out of areas they have long controlled.
The ultimate goal, as the military keeps telling the media, is not a military victory on the battlefield but a political victory at the negotiating table that the Afghan people can and will live with.
The sooner that happens, the sooner we can bring our troops home. But it is both absolutely pointless and completely insane to contemplate pulling out of Afghanistan before a clear peace is in sight. We did that in Somalia and now not only does the world have to contend with a growing piracy problem, Somalia's neighboring countries are being afflicted by an increase in terrorism.
If you want people to learn the lessons history has to teach, you must first learn them yourself.
#1 Posted by Michael Martinez, CJR on Thu 21 Oct 2010 at 01:26 PM
Nice piece.
#2 Posted by Shannon, CJR on Thu 21 Oct 2010 at 01:58 PM
>> If you want people to learn the lessons history has to teach, you must first learn them yourself.
Vietnam - yes, I'm mentioning it - should have taught the US government/military that if you're engaged in a struggle that you can't win - you MUST leave. If no end is ever in sight - continuing to fight is - what would be the word - ah - "insane".
>> But it is both absolutely pointless and completely insane to contemplate pulling out of Afghanistan before a clear peace is in sight.
Let's see - a few years into the war "It's too early to leave" and a few years after that "It's too early to leave" and few more years later "It's too early to leave" and some more years pass and it's "It's too early to leave" and then...
If we don't leave and peace hasn't arrived at the 15th year or - god - the 20th then what?
And there's the hideous financial cost too - trillions down the drain. Trillions. And for what? Pride?
But hey, the few billion a year the Pentagon spends on PR must be working - voters aren't interested and politicians ignore any mention of war.
For anybody reading this who hasn't read Orwell's "1984" - you should. The majority of Americans now seem to think "War is peace." There's a very good chance that the US is involved in yet another war in the next few years: Yemen, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, wherever.
#3 Posted by F. Murray Rumpelstiltskin, CJR on Fri 22 Oct 2010 at 02:26 AM
"If only because of its sheer size, the press community in Vietnam did a creditable job in serving as a transmission belt for statistics and reports of military engagements, or activities of civil agencies of the government. Nevertheless, there was an obvious shortage of interpretive writing which might have served as the basis for evaluating the importance or even the relevance of the statistics and isolated facts which poured forth daily."
Jeffrey Race, War comes to Long An: revolutionary conflict in a Vietnamese province
As you know, Joshua, the problem with metrics in murky COIN wars is nettlesome. There actually is an uptick in several key metrics. Some have suggested that this increased activity across several fronts (economic development, governance, kinetic raids, detentions, ralliers, et al) suggests "progress," in much the same way that the HES methods during Vietnam became an ongoing barometer of the effort in the South under MACV and CORDS.
But as with Vietnam, the metrics in Afghanistan might not be telling the full story.
A key question the journalist should have is this: Are we merely measuring activity (or to be bluntly, occupation) or are we measuring pacification?
In other words, do the metrics show what we as the dominant power in Afghanistan are doing well (bringing in Taliban ralliers who have been turned, sluicing aid to the villages, delivering government agents to live in provinces, et al) or do they signal that we actually are solving or mitigating what a military mind would term the "causative forces" of the rebellions in the first place?
If all we're measuring is occupation/activity, then we're likely no more closer to "winning" than we initially were before we started counting. If, however, we're tracking a purported progress toward key political goals that will lead to pacification, then that's newsworthy and should be argued and studied.
Until we can eye the transparent data showing progress or failure and publicly suss out the intellectual bedrock for our assumptions about the relevance, collection and analysis of the information, then all we're doing is that which Race pointed out several decades ago.
And how is that serving our readers or viewers?
#4 Posted by Carl Prine, CJR on Fri 22 Oct 2010 at 08:17 AM
Joshua:
excellent piece.
Carl makes the critical observation that in measuring success in Coin are we tend to measure and report on only our own activities rather than if pacification is really working. The mistaken conventional understanding of Vietnam argues CORDS worked in that it supposedly pacified the countryside. It did not, the VC and NLF were not defeated nor were the rural folks won over to the government. To be sure CORDS rationalized American inputs of energy and resources into the SVN pacification program, but still pacification failed.
gian
#5 Posted by gian p gentile, CJR on Fri 22 Oct 2010 at 02:18 PM
the usa military is simply incapable of telling the truth - about anything at any time. since at least the end of wwii if not before. just cannot tell the truth.
#6 Posted by general giap, CJR on Sat 23 Oct 2010 at 11:35 PM