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Today there is another example of how the mainstream media never ask a whole lot of questions about the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq.
A report released by the US's top military official in Afghanistan, General McChrystal, is saying without more troops on the ground, the war in Afghanistan will be "lost."
According to the article in today's NY Times that was drawn from a Bob Woodward piece in the Washington Post,
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The top military commander in Afghanistan warns in a confidential assessment of the war there that he needs additional troops within the next year or else the conflict “will likely result in failure.” “Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near term (next 12 months) — while Afghan security capacity matures — risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible,” General McChrystal writes.CNN has pretty much the same story: we're gonna lose this war without more soldiers. Still, CNN at least included this bit of contradictory evidence that pouring more troops in does not equal "success" on the ground.
Washington poured an additional 21,000 troops into Afghanistan to provide security for its recent presidential election, which has been marred by allegations of fraud... In August, 48 U.S. troops were killed in the fighting, surpassing the previous high of 45 in July. And the war has spread into Pakistan, where Taliban fighters are now battling government troops in that nuclear-armed country.And, they did mention that support for the war in Afghanistan has reached an all-time low:
But support for the Afghan war hit an all-time low in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released last week. That survey found 39 percent still favor the war, compared with 58 percent who oppose it -- making it almost as unpopular as the Iraq war has become in recent years. And calls for more troops could be a tough sell in Congress.Fox "News" published a similar article but ended on the upbeat note that a surge worked so well in Iraq, it would be the same in Afghanistan.
The Senate's Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said Obama should follow the military's advice. McConnell said Petraeus "did a great job with the surge in Iraq. I think he knows what he's doing. Gen. McChrystal is a part of that. We have a lot of confidence in those two generals. I think the president does as well."
Okay, Fox "News" is not the mainstream, corporate sort, but the crazy, pure propaganda sort. So the logic that the surge "worked" in Iraq (remember when the US won that war?) so it will "work" in Afghanistan is easily dismissed.
Still, there are some questions that an actual free press might ask that the mainstream media isn't:
What would "winning" this war look like?
Does winning equal no Taliban or other Islamic fundamentalism in the region and if so, how does more war make that happen? Seriously, they're hoping to make Islamic fundamentalism go away in Afghanistan by killing more innocent civilians? Isn't that like trying to put a fire out by throwing gas on it? Wouldn't Islamic fundamentalism diminish as people became less desperate - say with money spent on schools and clean drinking water and health care centers?
How would more soldiers "win" the war?
The Soviets had way more troops than the US does now and it wasn't really a war that they won. In fact, they lost it so thoroughly that it probably played a role in making the Communist Party less legitimate in the eyes of the people.
Is the military trying to shape US foreign policy by leaking this report now?
Not so coincidentally, the report was released just as the Obama administration was beginning to have second thoughts about sending more troops to Afghanistan (and actually paying attention to the majority of Americans who do NOT want to continue the madness of this war).
Until the press stops publishing what it is spoon fed by the army and the government and starts asking questions, we are forced - not unlike Soviet citizens during their Afghanistan war - to read everything as propaganda. It reminds me of an early protest against the Communist Party that I was at in Moscow in 1989. Someone had taken the banner from the largest daily newspaper, Pravda, which means "truth," and written the word "lie." We Americans are now forced to do the same - to translate claims to truth and news into the lies that they are. "More troops or we'll lose the war" can only be translated as "military generals wish to justify the continued waste of money on useless war." And the "free press" can only be read as "all the news that corporate and military-industrial interests deem fit to print."