Described as a sophisticated attempt “to win the hearts and minds of Afghans”, [the raid on Marja's] covert and more realistic aim is to win the hearts and minds of the American press, particularly those back in the US who direct the efforts of reporters on the ground. The message the US military wants to send is that in Afghanistan it is fighting a winnable war and not blundering deeper into a quagmire.[...]
In 2001-2 I covered the war in Afghanistan, and I was struck by how little fighting actually took place. The Taliban fighters were ordered by their commanders to go home to fight another day because the warlords had been bribed by the CIA, the Taliban leaders had been so advised by Pakistani military intelligence, and because it was the sensible thing to do. Cities like Ghazni and Kandahar fell without a fight. Well-armed Taliban disappeared back to their villages or crossed the border into Pakistan and bands of bewildered anti-Taliban guerrillas took over. But people watching TV or reading newspapers outside Afghanistan at the time were given the entirely misleading impression that the Taliban had been militarily defeated, never to fight again.
[...]
In November 2004, [...] the US Marines stormed the insurgent held city of Fallujah west of Baghdad. The battle was heavily reported by embedded reporters and television crews as an American victory and an insurgent defeat. But as this battle was raging insurgents over ran the larger city of Mosul in northern Iraq, seizing some 30 police stations and $40 million worth of arms. So few American troops, and hence no embedded journalists, were there that this significant defeat was barely reported.
[...]
The new US strategy and 30,000 US reinforcements sent to Iraq in 2007 are believed by many Americans, including generals, to have turned the tide of battle there. But the decisive military event in Iraq in 2006-7 was that the Sunni Arabs, who dominated the anti-American insurgency, were decisively defeated in a savage sectarian civil war with the Shia. [...] As US military casualties fell, newspapers and television stations happily reported, often brushing aside the objections of their own correspondents in Iraq, that what had happened was a triumph for American strategy.
The largely mythical US success in Iraq is now to be replicated in Afghan towns like Marjah and skirmishes there will be heavily reported. A NATO spokesman says the people of the town will soon “feel the benefits of better governance, of economic opportunities and of operating under the legitimate authorities of Afghanistan.” But according to a leaked cable from the US ambassador in Kabul Karl Eikenberry to President Obama three months ago, no such Afghan authority exists at any level. Instead he warned that US troop reinforcements, which are now going into action, will only ensure “an indefinite, large-scale US military role in Afghanistan.”
Well, that's what that "government in a box" is for, isn't it?
....and hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
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