UPDATE 14 MARCH: A statement from the International Security Assistance Force has rejected Starkey’s latest report as “categorically false”. Later it attributes the claims of bound and killed civilians were due to “confusion” from “initial operational reports”.
UPDATE 13 MARCH: Jerome Starkey, the reporter who broke the story of the handcuffed and executed civilians, makes another claim today: “A night raid carried out by US and Afghan gunmen led to the deaths of two pregnant women, a teenage girl and two local officials in an atrocity which Nato then tried to cover up, survivors have told The Times.”
When Charlie Company’s Lt. William Calley ordered and encouraged his men to rape, maim and slaughter over 400 men, women and children in My Lai in Vietnam back in 1968, there were at least four Americans who tried to stop him or bring him and higher officers to justice. One was helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson Jr., who evacuated some of the wounded victims, and who set his chopper down between a group of Vietnamese and Calley’s men, ordering his door gunner to open fire on the US soldiers if they shot any more people. One was Ron Ridenhour, a soldier who learned of the massacre, and began a private investigation, ultimately reporting the crime to the Pentagon and Congress. One was Michael Bernhardt, a soldier in Charlie Company who witnessed the whole thing, and reported it all to Ridenhour. And one was journalist Seymour Hersh, who broke the story in the US media.
Thomas H. Johnson and M. Chris Mason, writing in Foreign Policy, are sceptical about the loudly-hailed “victory” for US forces, taking the town of Marja in Helmand Province in Afghanistan, and the detention of Taliban leaders in Pakistan:
The release of Tim Burton’s new blockbuster movie, Alice in Wonderland, is days away. The timing could not be more appropriate. Lewis Carroll’s ironically opium-inspired tale of a rational person caught up inside a mad world with its own bizarre but consistent internal (il)logic has now surpassed Vietnam as the best paradigm to understand the war in Afghanistan.
The war in Afghanistan, as we have written here and in Military Review (pdf), is indeed a near replication of the Vietnam War, including the assault on the strategically meaningless village of Marjah, which is itself a perfect re-enactment of Operation Meade River in 1968.But the callous cynicism of this war, which we described here in early December, and the mainstream media’s brainless reporting on it, have descended past these sane parallels. We have now gone down the rabbit hole.
THE PRESIDENT: Good evening. To the United States Corps of Cadets, to the men and women of our Armed Services, and to my fellow Americans: I want to speak to you tonight about our effort in Afghanistan — the nature of our commitment there, the scope of our interests, and the strategy that my administration will pursue to bring this war to a successful conclusion. It’s an extraordinary honor for me to do so here at West Point — where so many men and women have prepared to stand up for our security, and to represent what is finest about our country. Read the rest of this entry »
Just a bit of historical reflection, which may or may not be connected with events of today. I suspect a lot of readers and viewers will be familiar with the first of these interviews, in which President John F. Kennedy declared about the conflict in South Vietnam, “In the final analysis, it is their war.”
I doubt many are familiar with the follow-up, however. A week later, President Kennedy made clear to another interviewer:
What I am concerned about is that Americans will get impatient and say, because they don’t like events in Southeast Asia or they don’t like the Government in Saigon, that we should withdraw. That only makes it easy for the Communists. I think we should stay.
We should use our influence in as effective a way as we can, but we should not withdraw.
2 SEPTEMBER 1963: PRESIDENT KENNEDY WITH WALTER CRONKITE OF CBS
MR. CRONKITE. Mr. President, the only hot war we’ve got running at the moment is of course the one in Viet-Nam, and we have our difficulties here, quite obviously. Read the rest of this entry »
Our coverage of the battle within the Obama Administration over Iraq and Afghanistan strategy reached The Guardian last night with Scott Lucas’ analysis of the President’s plans and General David Petraeus’s manoeuvres:
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HOW MANY TROOPS IS ENOUGH? General David Petraeus is subtly challenging President Obama’s views on the number of US troops needed in Afghanistan
HOST JOHN KING: General Petraeus, let me start with the threshold question for you, how many troops will it take? How long will it be.
PETRAEUS: Well, as you know, John, the president and President Bush before him have set in motion orders for troops that will more than double the number that were on the ground at the beginning of the year. We’ll get those on the ground. We’ll take a lot of effort with infrastructure, logistics and so forth, start employing those in the months that lie ahead. They’ll all be on the ground by the end of the summer and the early fall.
And along the way we’ll be doing the assessments. And among those assessments, of course, will be the kinds of questions about force levels, about additional civilians and other resources as well.
KING: General McKiernan, your commander on the ground, had been up-front that he needed even more troops. Why did the president say no?
Mullen, like Secretary of Defense Robert Gates last week, framed the US mission in Afghanistan as one against Osama bin Laden’s boys: “We cannot accept that al-Qaida leadership which continues to plan against us every single day — and I mean us, here in America — to have that safe haven in Pakistan nor could resume one in Afghanistan.” That outlook seems to miss the point that the actual US military confrontation is with Afghan insurgent groups such as the Taliban and that the political challenge has nothing to do with Al Qa’eda.
The second error in Mullen’s thinking is even more egregious. US involvement in Afghanistan will not repeat the Vietnam disaster because “we are not an occupying force”. He might not think so, but his opinion isn’t the important one here.
As Juan Cole points out, the US denied that it was an “occupying force” in Vietnam. But, in Vietnam and in Afghanistan, how do you think most of the local people regarded their American visitors?
UPDATE 14 MARCH: A statement from the International Security Assistance Force has rejected Starkey’s latest report as “categorically false”. Later it attributes the claims of bound and killed civilians were due to “confusion” from “initial operational reports”.
Our coverage of the battle within the Obama Administration over Iraq and Afghanistan strategy 
HOST JOHN KING: General Petraeus, let me start with the threshold question for you, how many troops will it take? How long will it be.
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