By Chris Floyd
These leaked "bombshells" will simply bounce off the hardened shell of American exceptionalism, which easily ustifies the slaughter of civilians, "targeted killings", "indefinite detention" and any number of other atrocities.
The much ballyhooed dump of intelligence and diplomatic files concerning the Afghan War has been trumpeted as some kind of shocking expose, "painting a different picture" than the official version of events -- revelations that are sure to rock the Anglo-American political establishments to their foundations.
The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel were given 92,000 reports by Wikileaks, including thousands of pages of raw "human intelligence."
That is, uncorroborated claims and gossip from interested parties and anonymous sources pushing a multitude of agendas.
They diplomatic notes passed between the promulgators of the occupation in Washington and their factotums "in country" -- reports which you might imagine also purvey a multitude of agendas ... not least the supreme agenda of all officials involved in a dubious enterprise: ass-covering.
Yet these reports are being treated as if they are the "grim truth" behind the shining picture of official propaganda. But what do these stories in the NYT and Guardian actually "reveal"? Let's see:
* That the occupation forces kill lots of civilians at checkpoints and botched raids, then lie about it afterward.
* That these killings make Afghans angry and fuel the insurgency.
* That elements of Pakistani intelligence are involved with some elements of the many resistance groups known collectively (and incorrectly) in the West as the Taliban.
* That the Americans are using more and more robot drones to kill people.
* That the Americans are running death squads in Afghanistan aimed at Taliban leaders.
* That Afghan officials are corrupt, and that Afghan police and military forces are woefully inadequate.
Is there anything in these breathless new recitations that we did not already know? How does this alter the prevailing conventional wisdom about the war?
It doesn't, of course. These leaked "bombshells" will simply bounce off the hardened shell of American exceptionalism, which easily justifies the slaughter of civilians, "targeted killings", "indefinite detention" and any number of other atrocities. In fact, I predict the chief "takeaway" from the story will be this:
American forces are doing their best to help the poor Afghans, but the ungrateful natives are too weak and corrupt to be trusted, while America's good intentions are also being thwarted by evil outsiders.
Getting this message out via "critical" stories in "liberal" publications is much more effective than dishing up another serving of patriotic hokum on Fox News or at a presidential press conference.
In fact, it is so much more effective that one almost begins to wonder about the ultimate provenance of the leaks. Did some deep-delving gamester allow these files to get out? Most likely not; but their ultimate effect does provoke the age-old question, cui bono?
The assumption is that these 92,000 files about the Afghan war were obtained by an American private serving in Iraq, the unfortunate Bradley Manning, who is now under arrest for the "crime" of leaking something far more disturbing than any written document. That was a video showing the slaughter of Iraqi civilians by American Apache helicopters in 2007 [see above].
Washington knows that a couple of moving pictures on the tee-vee have a far greater potential to disturb the moral sleep of the American people than tens of thousands of newspaper reports -- or leaked documents -- detailing similar killings.
That said, in the end the Apache video has had zero effect on public perceptions of the Iraq War, which most people believe is "over," or on public support for the murderous machinations of the Terror War in general, which most people believe needs to continue in one form or another, to "keep us safe."
The only kind of grim truth attended to by anyone in America these days is that which can be shown in moving pictures. (Although the number of people who are upset even by that seems to be rapidly diminishing. That's why Manning had to be put away.
I don't question the bravery or sincerity of Manning or of Julian Assanage in bringing the latest material to light. And I suppose on balance it is better to have it than not to have it.
But I still question the usefulness of rolling out mountains of raw "human intelligence".
It's precisely the same kind of unfiltered junk that was "stovepiped" to build the false case for the mass-murdering invasion of Iraq -- about Iran, al Qaeda, Pakistan; even North Korea gets into the mix.
None of this can be checked -- but all of it will be extremely useful to those who want to build cases for more and more military action, death squads and covert actions around the world.
And it seems very odd that intelligence reports and bureaucratic memos by forces carrying out a prolonged, brutal military occupation of another country are now being treated by "liberal" media outlets as holy writ.
It claims to paint a "true" picture of the war -- a picture that omits any reference to American war-related corruption, for instance, not only in Afghanistan but more especially in Washington, or to America's wider "Great Game" machinations in Central Asia, involving pipelines, strategic bases and "containing China," etc.
Nothing will come of this document dump. It won't lead to the prosecution of even one single person for a war-related crime, or to a genuine debate over the morality of the war in the political and media establishments. There won't be a rise in public opposition to the Terror War project.
If any of that happened I would rejoice, and embrace the flashy packages of the NYT, Guardian and Der Spiegel at their own self-inflated valuation.
I believe the net effect will be simply to entrench the conventional wisdom about the war in the halls of power and in the echo chambers of opinion on both sides of the Atlantic.
We have already seen far too many atrocities, brutalities and acts of criminal folly countenanced, when they are not actually praised, far too many times -- over and over and over again -- in the course of the last decade to believe that these disgorgings of junk intelligence and apparatchik memos will make any difference.
Any difference for the better, that is. For I believe they will supply plenty of ammunition to those bent on further murder and plunder.
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