This is the sort of thing I hate
Joshua Foust on Mar 17 2008 at 7:29 am | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Military Matters
Posted first on Registan.net.
There is a fine line between sympathetic reporting and outright propaganda. I would say this post at Long War Journal crosses that line:
At 9:40 PM local time, US officials declared the group posed an imminent threat to forces inside Afghanistan and the call to strike the compound was made. After the orders were given to launch a coordinated strike, fixed-wing and rotary-wing air support along with Predator surveillance and reconnaissance began scanning likely insurgent attack positions inside Afghanistan. US military officials confirmed no women or children had been seen in the targeted North Waziristan compound or in any structures near it over the last five days.
Nearly four hours later, a salvo of indirect fire targeting the compound hit its mark, completely obliterating the building and killing an unknown number of people inside of it. Several insurgents working sentry posts around the compound were observed by aerial surveillance leaving the area on foot. Initial intelligence reports on March 12 indicated three “high-level Haqqani network commanders” were killed and that “many” Chechen fighters also died in the blast.
First off, aside from solemn official assurances they keep running under our bombs, there is no evidence for any Chechens in Afghanistan, or anywhere nearby. Military officials admit they have no idea how many people died in the attack, just that no women and children were among them. Uh huh. The Pakistani military says several women and children were killed in the strike. The LWJ insists, despite credible evidence that firing artillery into a group of houses might actually kill innocent people, that “intelligence,” which is always 100% accurate, says no innocents were killed. Who to believe?
At least they’re not blaming the women and children for being in our way, which far too many do when they’re not claiming these fatalities are “Taliban propaganda.”
There remain, however, several problems with taking the military’s statements uncritically:
- The 82nd Airborne, which operates in Eastern Afghanistan, uses M198 155mm medium-towed Howitzers, which have a CEP of about 10 meters (i.e. there is a 50% chance the round will fall within 10 meters of its target). It’s not fair to call it inaccurate, but it also isn’t fair to brag about how it can take out a single house of baddies without harming anyone or anything nearby. You can never avoid ballistic weaponry being a rather blunt instrument
- There will always be contradictory reports from strike sites. Unfortunately, given the terrain and the history of U.S. strikes in the area, it is still highly probable women and children were killed in the attack. Not seeing any for days at a time only means if any were present they weren’t allowed outside.
- How, one wonders, was this compound in Waziristan under constant, real-time surveillance for five days straight? Considering the acquisition demand and deployment schedule of MQ-1’s and MQ-9’s, I was unaware enough could be tasked with orbiting a single suspected compound in territory we don’t have permission to enter for five straight days. Again: not impossible, it just seems a little too miraculous.
- NATO ISAF didn’t have any knowledge of the incident even while US officials were discussing it with reporters.
That last bit is what truly concerns me. Aside from the rest of those points, which just indicate the usual fog of war type stuff that makes immediate after-action reporting so very useless, having the U.S. and NATO in such deep variance is bad news if we are all supposed to hold hands and lead Afghanistan to a brighter, democratic future. Anyone with a bit of military fluency will tell you that coordination is essential to avoid tactical and strategic incoherence. Unfortunately, we have tactical and strategic incoherence in Afghanistan. How can NATO be expected to do its job when it’s not even told of unilateral strikes on a third country?
The problem may be even worse. VOA is reporting that yesterday yet another compound in Waziristan was struck by an unknown party. No one knows who did it, or even if the explosions were deliberate, but since it’s Wana and that’s where some bad guys hid out once, it’s not unreasonable to think that maybe the U.S. threw some more missiles that way. At least that story gets it right that news of America bombing Pakistan would fuel “anti-U.S. sentiment.”
So is the U.S. now fighting a lower-intensity war inside Laos Pakistan?
It is a sticky situation: I’m all for killing the bad guys, but when crossing borders and violating territory you’re technically not permitted to, the ethics of the situation become a bit fuzzy. How credible is the determination that some men you can’t eavesdrop on in Pakistan pose an “immediate” threat to Coalition forces in Afghanistan? How precise* can weapons fired from miles away be? These are decisions I cannot make or even very strongly question from 8,000 miles away. But I do very strongly hope those in charge, even Bomber McNeill, do… just as I hope none of you take anything official sources claim at face value.
*I’m fully aware of the great P.R. campaign about precision weapons. And the U.S. does indeed have some of the most precise weaponry on the planet. But in the real world, there are so many exogenous factors that go into targeting and execution that precise weapons, in the way Colin Powell got us to thinking about them in Gulf War I, really don’t exist.
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I’m a little confused by your post, Josh. I’m all for a healthy skepticism, but it’s difficult to know what you’re getting at here. Are you saying that the after-action report is wrong? If you are, is it just because statistically speaking the chances of things happening the way that LWJ claimed is lower than you expected? Also, I don’t see where the bragging about bombing accuracy is.
It almost seems like there is a lot more information to which you are privy, and yet which is not presented here, that is fueling your critique.
And with regard to Wana, are you opposed to just overt military action, or are covert ops acceptable against the bad guys? I only ask because I’m sure that we have the ways and means of unofficially sneaking into anywhere in the world. If Pakistan is not going to deal with the “lawless” areas within its borders on its own, and the bad guys are going to (naturally) hang out there, where does the moral/ethical dilemma arise? To be sure, I can understand how lobbing missiles could present such a dilemma (based on the uncertain intelligence, accuracy, etc. as you presented above), but do covert, up-close-and-personal missions fall into the same category?
I’m saying the AAR is out of synch with non-official reports, and that the breathless parroting of CA spokesmen gets really old. Yes, the way LWJ described the strike is highly unlikely—from the description of surveillance to the MDMP to execute the strike. I’m not saying it didn’t happen, just that when an author can write “military officials insist there were no women and children killed in the strike” alongside “they didn’t know how many died in the attack,” my B.S.-warning system starts beeping. Denying civilian casualties, then admitting there were “some,” then many, then apologizing, then blaming them for being in our way is, unfortunately, an SOP under GEN McNeill.
So that’s where my “umm, wtf” is coming from. It just doesn’t fit. Which doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, just that I’m deeply skeptical (and that Chechen claim is especially annoying).
As for Wana, covert action is a bit different, but unless we’ve gained official-but-classified permission to enter sovereign Pakistani territory to conduct military actions, we are de facto declaring war on Pakistan. I don’t think they’ll strike back or officially declare war or whatever, but our non-covert covert wars haven’t exactly worked out well for us.
I wouldn’t call them in the same category, just a different one. All covert action is illegal, to be sure—just as all spies are, technically, criminals. And I don’t deny that they all serve very good purposes. And I would vastly prefer small hit teams operating in Pakistan than us lobbing predators across the border (individuals are far more accurate and discriminating). But we need to be damned sure we’re getting good intel, which I am certain we are not from NWFP, and we need to be damned certain what we do won’t make matters worse… which, so far, they have.
I hope that explains why I’m conflicted on this.
It does, and thanks. My only quibble, if you can call it that, is that the LWJ article simply reported what they in fact were told. I guess you would prefer that they had thrown in some of the skepticism you mention? Makes sense, I suppose.
Yeah, the lack of reliable intel is always going to be a problem. I’m reading Quil Lawrence’s book about the Kurds right now, and it is appalling how anemic our intel has been in the ME (and pretty much everywhere else outside of the USSR, Europe and maybe China). For example, during the mid 90’s when the Kurds were attempting to help overthrow Saddam, the Iraqi and Iranian intelligence knew all about it and were ready for everything before it happened, but we were well behind the ball … AND THE KURDS WERE ACTIVELY INFORMING US! I expect that we still have major deficiencies in this area.
True about the LWJ… but if all they’re doing is repeating what they’re told, why bother reading them? I can just go to defenselink.mil if I want the official version of what happened (put another way: why read LWJ if they do exactly what Stars and Stripes does?). Mindlessly repeating whatever the PR people at Bagram tell you isn’t really reporting the news, it is funneling propaganda. Not necessarily immoral, mind you, but not really of any value.
As for the Intel stuff… yes. I used to do some work in the IC, and it is just appalling. (One analyst once told me he never read al-Jazeera because it’s an “enemy broadcast.” Which is great and all until you realize that al-Jazeera informs what several hundred million people in strategic areas think and feel about the U.S. and her actions abroad.)
If reporting what the PR people tell you isn’t reporting, and maybe it’s not, I sort of wish that reporters would just leave be. Reporting what comes from the enemy PR or stringers or photographer called and told where to be to photograph an assassination isn’t reporting either.
And what we’ve been getting since day one is how Bush doesn’t communicate well enough… how he doesn’t make us all want to be on his side… how he doesn’t take responsibility for public opinion.
Well, that’s propaganda, isn’t it? Propaganda doesn’t have to be a lie, it can be the truth that supports the cause or whatever. So propaganda is out… reporters aren’t supposed to pass on that information.
Maybe we’d all be better off if reporters all had to investigate things on their own, travel, interview people, and just ignore the official press releases. We’d probably get more accurate information and we’d get it with a delay of weeks… time to get it right… and enough time not to push the events being reported on. Maybe it would make reporters more like reporters and less like players.
This is an interesting discussion. I find that many of the reporters working in the ME either don’t know the area they are reporting on very well (and don’t know the language for that matter), and feel that going into the streets to do investigative journalism is just too dangerous or impractical, and so they take whatever they are given when it comes to reporting an event. You saw this kind of thing when Israel recently invaded Lebanon; the reporters just took whatever Hezbollah or other groups told them and reported it as fact.
They’re probably right that going into the streets is too dangerous.
I agree, but sitting around a military bunker doesn’t give a reporter much more insight than sitting in a well connected office in New York. The fact that journalists are targeted with such vigor these days makes it difficult to get factual and rigorous reporting throughout this war.
Sitting in a military bunker would certainly give the reporter more insight about military bunkers and those in them and what they are up to than a reporter sitting in an office in New York.
If their entire report is simply the same thing the military will publish to the media, it doesn’t mean much. Not that I am against reporters doing their reports from the military barracks, but if they are trying to report on serious political and social changes in the area outside of the military camp, then no, they aren’t any more important than those sitting in their well connected New York offices.
They would definitely learn more about military grub, troop moral, and the military apparatus from being there however. Those are things worth reporting on (the last two at least), and I am all about keeping reporters in those places. I simply doubt the reliability of the “bigger issues” from these same reporters.
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