Where Simplification Fails

It is a painful fact that many contemporary war correspondents know virtually nothing of military ranks, weapons, and tactics. Someone who calls the dropping of a single JDAM “carpet bombing” and who doesn’t know if a company is larger or smaller than a battalion is hardly likely to be able to tell the difference between genuine “collateral damage” — the unwitting, and in some cases avoidable, killing of non-combatants — and a deliberate massacre.

—Reporter Jonathan Foreman, proclaiming the willing complicity of “the media” (there we go again) in pushing enemy propaganda in Afghanistan. In National Review, naturally, enough, since I guess that’s not “media.” Apparently the week he spent in Kabul last winter has reasonably informed him of how often “the media” broadcast pure lies, uncritically accepting the rumors of tribal chiefs instead of the sacred word of NATO commanders.

Of course, Foreman also lets one big doozy slip at the end of his piece:

At the end of my visit to Afghanistan, I sat in on at a press conference at the huge Bagram airbase where the local representatives of the international media pressed General James L. Jones, then supreme commander of NATO, about the latest news in the war… The general calmly pointed out that the enemy uses civilians as human shields and likes to spread lies about the Coalition — points that made no impact on the assembled press — then personally apologized for any civilian deaths and, rightly, promised a full investigation.

It may turn out that the reports were accurate, that allied airmen did indeed kill a large number of civilians because of faulty intelligence or some other aspect of the fog of war. But if the 90 to 200 so-called civilian deaths were either mythical or primarily composed of Taliban warriors, the press that was so sure of allied guilt will have acted once again as an unwitting ally of some very nasty people.

Oh right, so he actually has no evidence that “the media” were knowingly or even unwittingly reporting false information; he was just mouthing off about “reporters” (a group to which he undoubtedly belongs), while uncritically accepting whatever it was the coalition forces had to say. So then, Foreman only views one kind of non-neutrality with favor, which is pushing (using his characterization) NATO propaganda, as if either way of spinning reality is ultimately helpful or constructive.

The simple, sad fact of the matter is this: especially lately, coalition air strikes have been poorly targeted, and have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of innocent people. NATO has felt the need to pay out $2000 per wrongful death—truly, a pittance for someone’s mother or child or brother or husband. What’s more, all NATO offers—ever—is just more apologies, requests for understanding, and assurances that “those responsible” will pay in some manner. While payments have been made to the families, there has been no other retribution, at least that I’ve heard of—no one cited for wrongful weapons release, no review of targeting intelligence or procedures, no systematic attempt to draw out Taliban militants to avoid clashes in populated civilian areas.

None of this is to deny that 4GW combat is a dirty, messy, bloody affair. It is, and there are intractable uncertainties involved in fighting an enemy as adaptable as the Taliban. But that doesn’t mean atrocious mistakes don’t occur, and that the mass killing of civilians—however unintentionally—is not unacceptable. We spend hundreds of billions of dollars on advanced targeting, surveillance, and precision weaponry precisely to avoid these kinds of boondoggles. Because like it or not, they have very real consequences, both for the Karzai government and for the long-term success of the mission.

Related to the general complaint of oversimplifying the nature of the conflict in Afghanistan is this surprising take on the death of Mullah Dadullah, and how an ignorance of the politics within the Taliban may have possibly lead to a critical misreading of the significance of his death:

It is an odd twist that U.S. forces were used to do the dirty work for Al Qaeda in the case of Osmani, and then for the Taliban in the case of Dadullah. It demonstrates a lack of understanding among those in command of U.S. and coalition forces.

This certainly plays into my own biases and frustrations, but I have to cop to my own ignorance of the specific power plays at work within the Taliban’s ranks, and how those impact its relationship with al-Qaeda. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

More importantly, what are we doing, approaching year six of our occupation of the country, still having no idea of exactly which enemy we’re fighting?

Update: Oh look, more Taliban “leaders” wiped out in air strikes. If the Taliban is as I suspect, and is adapting itself into a much more cellular (and therefore atomized and autonomous) structure, then these kinds of attacks won’t mean much outside of a massive effort to bring all the southern provinces on to our side.

This post was written by...

Joshua Foust – author of 1801 posts on Registan.net.

Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust

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