Jay Rosen makes a number of good observations about the Wikileaks release, including this one:
[…]Here’s what I said on Twitter Sunday: “We tend to think: big revelations mean big reactions. But if the story is too big and crashes too many illusions, the exact opposite occurs.” My fear is that this will happen with the Afghanistan logs. Reaction will be unbearably lighter than we have a right to expect— not because the story isn’t sensational or troubling enough, but because it’s too troubling, a mess we cannot fix and therefore prefer to forget.Last week, it was the Washington Post’s big series, Top Secret America, two years in the making. It reported on the massive security shadowland that has arisen since 09/11. The Post basically showed that there is no accountability, no knowledge at the center of what the system as a whole is doing, and too much “product” to make intelligent use of. We’re wasting billions upon billions of dollars on an intelligence system that does not work. It’s an explosive finding but the explosive reactions haven’t followed, not because the series didn’t do its job, but rather: the job of fixing what is broken would break the system responsible for such fixes.
The mental model on which most investigative journalism is based states that explosive revelations lead to public outcry; elites get the message and reform the system. But what if elites believe that reform is impossible because the problems are too big, the sacrifices too great, the public too distractible? What if cognitive dissonance has been insufficiently accounted for in our theories of how great journalism works… and often fails to work?
James Fallows has an interesting comparison between this leak and the Pentagon Papers.
Julan Assange of Wikileaks is still presenting at a lengthy press conference in London. The Guardian has an ongoing summary here.
Violet
FWIW, in the first five minutes of the Today Show, they compared the Wikileaks release to the Pentagon Papers. That’s the comparison that’s starting to be made in the MSM, so that could easily become the conventional wisdom.
Many people may not know what the Pentagon Papers were, but they probably know they were A Big Deal. That’s not the kind of thing you can sweep under the rug.
amorphous
Very Sully here today.
K. Grant
I would guess that a reason for a lack of immediate reaction is not that the story is too big, but too big to digest immediately. It works against the folks screaming on the idiot box 24 hours a day, because in order to really wrap your thoughts around it you are going to have to study it for a while.
These stories need time to seep into the ground, be absorbed, and then weeks or months later stuff starts to happen. This is anti-Breitbart material, not the content but the way in which it is reported and delivered.
Be patient. It will sink in, it simply takes a bit of time.
Bnut
I’m really not about to get into the Vietnam-AfPak debate. However, I will say that LBJ did indeed say during the election of 64 that he would not bomb North Vietnam and would not increase the number of ground troops. We know how that turned out. Obama made no such promise about Afghanistan during his run to the WH.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@amorphous: And as of 30 minutes ago Sullivan still hasn’t commented on it.
Comrade Javamanphil
It will be interesting to watch this play out. You can see the mentality Rosen is discussing in the Wall Street stories. Madoff was one man running a ponsie scheme. Everybody could get outraged about this because the solution was easy. Jail for Madoff. When the corrupt entity is Wall Street itself…well, the solution becomes rather too large (or horrific) to even contemplate for many and so they get to keep on being the banksters that eat what they kill: namely us.
wilfred
The most important reaction will be raising consciousness about the Occupation of Afghanistan and why we persist in it.
We have 56 dead this month. Oh well, what can you do?
mclaren
This applies to all the unustainable social trends that are currently destroying America. Our insatiable oil addiction, our freeway+car culture (especially in places like Southern California, which would simply grind to a halt if you removed cars), the disappearance of the American middle class courtesy of globalization, the relentless infinite upward spiral of costs in our broken for-profit greed-drivel cartel-operated corrupt collusive medical devicemaker-doctor-hospital-health-insurer medical system, our out-of-control military-industrial complex that keeps spending more and more money and getting us into more and more pointless wars we can’t win, the financialization of the American economy by a corrupt and uncontrollable Wall Street Ponziconomy.
How can you fix these problems?
The only way to fix ’em is to break the system that creates them. But that would mean such radical change that people are terrified.
End the era of the freeway and the car? People can’t imagine it, they don’t know how they would live.
Shut down the U.S. military and abandon our foreign wars as lost causes? Voters can’t conceive of the possbility so they reject it.
End globalization? Americans can’t imagine driving to Wal*Mart and encountering an empty building with newspapers blowing through the deserted parking lot, so they don’t even contemplate it as a possibility.
dmsilev
@Comrade Javamanphil: Re: the Wall Street thing, there was an interesting article in the paper a couple of days ago about a little-remarked-upon provision that allows people who are whistle-blowers to Wall Street illegalities to get a fraction of whatever fines the SEC/etc. levies for the transactions.
Predictably, some in the business community are “concerned”.
Killing the beast in one fell swoop may be too much to ask for, but this might serve as a bit of a brake on the worst of the nonsense.
dms
General Stuck
@mclaren: Bravo, senor smoldering rubble. But I would also recommend the immediate destruction of American Idol, that diabolical opiate of the masses.
roshan
OT,
EPA whistle blower – Oil spill health concerns
Brien Jackson
@Violet:
From what I’ve seen of these documents, they’re nothing like the Pentagon Papers, at least to the degree that they don’t expose some sort of massive illegality/malfeasance on the part of the government.
Brien Jackson
@K. Grant:
I think the lack of immediate reaction is because there isn’t anything all that revelatory here.
K. Grant
@mclaren: Without a moment of snark, I ask – so, what concrete steps would you take to start the transition on some of these? Second question – can you, without hyperbole, explain what you would like to see instead that actually doesn’t necessitate 50 years of severe pain? And if it does necessitate severe pain, can you state that the pain will be worth it?
Again, I am not being a noodge here, I really would like to read how one goes about addressing and achieving significant social change in an environment where even the most incremental change (say – health care/insurance reform) is greeted with howls of rage and utter ignorance.
By the way, I have just returned from two months in Europe, and in those two months I was in a car (taxi) a grand total of four times. I would love, love, love the kind of easy public transportation systems that they have in Europe here in the US. It would be the first thing I would want to do with stimulus money – spend it all on creating safe, efficient, and punctual mass transit – bus, rail, actual bike lanes, and foot paths.
Brien Jackson
@wilfred:
Oh for fuck’s sake.
Violet
@General Stuck:
American Idol is destructing all by itself. Ratings were way down this season and it was beaten in ratings by at least one other show for the first time since the first season. Tour dates have been canceled, which, if not a first, is not typical. Simon Cowell has left the show, and despite their best efforts to find a replacement, it’s going to be impossible to fill his shoes. The show will probably continue, but it’s going to be a shadow of its former self.
In case you haven’t seen it, this video of a typical American Idol fan reacting to this year’s final results announcement is…educational. Definitely NSFW. Remember, these people vote. At least for American Idol.
El Cid
@Brien Jackson: For that matter, I can hardly post-Pentagon Papers governments ever commissioning an internal study of a war policy including such basics as the motivations of US policies, which politicians did what at what time for what reason, and how this conflicted with public presentation.
Why ever put such things down in print in a format which might one day be discovered?
Joey Maloney
I’m going to disagree. I think reaction has been light because nearly everyone who would drive that reaction, who would do the follow up and shape it into a coherent story that even non-news-nerds can follow and understand how it affects their lives – that is, tv “journalists” and newspaper “columnists” – are simply too fucking stupid to understand the story and its importance. Too stupid, or at best too intellectually lazy and impatient to put in the work to master the material. Or too compromised in one way or another to be willing to work against their masters’ interests.
wilfred
It’s true that there’s nothing particularly interesting for anyone who still follows Af business regularly. Besides, after McChrystal’s ‘We’ve killed an amazing number of people” comment resulted in nothing there’s little hope that Homelanders will be roused from torpor by this:
Still, what’s a heaven for?
wilfred
@Joey Maloney:
With the exception of Tom Englehardt few bloggers ever come close to talking about Afghanistan, other than reacting to the occasional MSM story.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/
valdivia
HFS! Are these people ever going to give up or what?
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/adam_serwer_archive?month=07&year=2010&base_name=by_far_the_most_pathetic_thing
Sorry that was OT.
General Stuck
Well, we have known for awhile that the Afghan war turned south quite a while ago under Bush’s neglect. And that it is governed by corrupt disparate war lords, and btw, have you heard, that Obama has set a withdrawal date. Comparison with the systematic lies told the country about Vietnam is silly, especially given the vast difference of media that exists between then and now.
edit – not to mention the vastly different reasons we had for entering both wars.
Punchy
Just yesterday, the KCStar had an article about how a senior AF airplane mechanic lost his security clearance b/c he whistleblew on a shitton of fraud and graft in the AF. Now they have him painting silos and water-scrubbing sidewalks on the base instead. AF has no desire to fix the probs….too many people getting paid. Pretty sure this explains the military-industry complex as a whole.
With the economy, banksters, wars, teabaggers, and immenent Republican control of Congress, this country is in a death spiral, and there’s nothing that’s going to pull it out.
Brien Jackson
@General Stuck:
I would add that you just can not compare Afghanistan to Vietnam on any level from a moral standpoint. Vietnam was an illegitimate, immoral, imperialist effort from the beginning. The US thwarted international attempts to unify Vietnam and reneged on several promises of unified elections because they fear Ho Chi Minh winning, and instead decided to support, diplomatically and materially, the horribly brutal South Vietnamese government under Diem. When that didn’t work, they called in the US military to cow the North and suppress Northern sympathizers in the South. Whatever anyone thinks of the strategic case for or against the Afghan war, from a “moral” standpoint it was a legitimate response to 9/11, legal under international law and sanctioned by the international community. It’s important to remember that.
El Cid
@valdivia: For those who don’t follow valdivia’s link, follow the link. It’s to an Adam Serwer piece on American Prospect re. American Spectator’s Jeffrey Lord.
It’s one of those ‘are you shitting me pieces’ in which he’s angry that Sherrod accused Southern segregationist murders of being “lynching,” and in defense of the maligned murderers, argues that “lynching” only applies to hangings and not beating Negroes to death.
Lord:
Okay. Her credibility and veracitudinousness has all been just blowed up. Why?
Yeah. How dare that unbelievable racist call it ‘lynching’ when they didn’t hang Bobby Hall but beat him to death?
(In any case the silly fetishist argument that lynchings were defined as being with ropes was nonsense anyway.)
But, god-damn it, don’t you dare slander my segregationist white Southern murderous forbears with the dread charge of lynching when all they’s doin’ is beatin’ black people ta death in a violent white mob! How dare you!
peach flavored shampoo
But illegal under U.S. law, right? Doesn’t Congress have to formally declare a war? Did I miss this w/r/t Afghan and Iraqi wars?
El Cid
Moderation check!
Brien Jackson
@peach flavored shampoo:
No, Congress does not have to formally declare war.
roshan
@mclaren:
Change is on the way!
phastphil
This just confirms our already held deep feelings about Afghanistan, but didn’t have the concrete information and data.
Viva BrisVegas
The time to win in Afghanistan was 2002/2003, but Bush was too busy at the time playing T.E.Lawrence to bother.
Since then all our soldiers have been doing over there is providing live fire training for the Taliban.
mcd410x
IMO, you can apply this to every problem our country faces. The “too” that is missing in this statement may be “too late.”
Nick
@General Stuck:
Oh you mean that thing that dominated the news this morning, live from New Orleans, where there’s afucking econological disaster a few miles away, but of course the bigger story is Tommy Joe from Tuscaloosa with the abnormally perfect blonde hair standing in the middle of a city where a thousand people died fives years ago for some reason, singing “Me and Mrs. Jones” after his four hour drive.
wilfred
@Brien Jackson:
So? The war against the Taliban was over in weeks. The last 8 years has been a military occupation in support of a corrupt regime. Sound familiar?
It’s almost impossible for some Americans to understand but not every Afghan opposed to the American occupation is a member of the fucking Taliban. Wogs also have feelings of patriotism, and are motivated to strike back when their relatives are killed or humiliated. The Vietnamese saw their war as a war of Independence; Ho said as much in the 1950’s, beleiving that Americans would see it as such. Anyone ever hear from members of the ‘insurgency’ how they feel about their country being occupied?
Continued justification of this occupation in the name of destroying the Taliban needs to come up with some metrics. You can start with saying how many American dead justify the effort.
Brien Jackson
@wilfred:
No, right or wrong from a strategic standpoint, the American presence does not fit the definition of an occupation. Not even close. And the insistence on over the top rhetoric like this doesn’t much help you make your case.
wilfred
@Brien Jackson:
It is perceived as such by a a great number of Afghans, who fail to appreciate pedantic distinctions about strategy and moral legitimacy.
As for my case, nothing will help it more than Americans learning more about Afghanistan and our activities in that country.
And metrics?
El Cid
Outside of perhaps catching bin Laden and leaving, what is the actual argument for ‘victory’ in 2002 or 2003 in Afghanistan if that includes the fantasy of setting up some sort of stable, Taliban-immune centralized state? I can certainly see all sorts of efforts to do things dramatically better than under the wildly lunatic Bush Jr., but I think anything much else is pretty much dreaming.
Face
Then what do you call it? If we’re not occupying the country to install a gov’t favorable to Americans, to root out elements of the population acceptable to the locals but hostile to the Americans, and unwilling to leave despite the want of the locals, what besides an occupation do you call it?
El Cid
Protectorate?
Brien Jackson
@wilfred:
That has nothing to do with anything.
numbskull
@Brien Jackson:
Hee-larious.Tell us another one, General Westmoreland.
Corner Stone
@Brien Jackson: Hmmm
6.
the seizure and control of an area by military forces, esp. foreign territory.
7.
the term of control of a territory by foreign military forces
Brien Jackson
@numbskull:
Again, the comparison is absurd. The South Vietnamese government never had international recongnition or legitimacy, the Afghan government, for whatever its faults, does. There’s nothing that says they can’t fight against an insurgency, or that foreign governments can’t aid them, so, again, the American operation doesn’t remotely meet the definition of an occupation, and the silly rhetoric is undermining your case.
Brien Jackson
@Corner Stone:
We don’t formally, or even practically, control Afghanistan.
General Stuck
@Brien Jackson: If a “great number of Afghans”, other than Pashtun ones were that unhappy with our doings there, we would be fighting a country wide Mujihadeen, not just the Taliban. Afghans, on the whole, have a long history of going wolly on perceived invaders and occupiers like the Soviets.
No doubt many non Pashtun, non Taliban are pissed at our mistakes killing civilians, and Karzai’s government. But they obviously despise the Taliban more, and remember well what it was like when they ran things.
Corner Stone
This has to be the most hilariously funny thing I will read all day.
I will pee myself if something more laughable is found and quoted.
Svensker
@wilfred:
You think that? Well, there’s yer problem, rytchair.
Corner Stone
@Brien Jackson: Are you telling me that our foreign military presence does not possess both supreme air space control as well as the ability to physically move to and occupy any ground space in that country?
What part of the battlespace could we not move into if we so chose?
Paula
Well, one could argue that a few months ago Wikileaks had actual video footage of a potential war crime being committed and that yielded … what?
Now, we have thousands of reports that the avg citizen (myself included) will hear about a lot for the next few weeks but probably not actually read through.
Meanwhile, there was that story a few weeks ago about how the US military had been invited by the govt of Costa Rica, ostensibly for some war-on-drugs related excursion. Only a few lefty sources thought that was worth mentioning, and even then it wasn’t so much to get any action going as to get their choir to hyperventilate over a morning cup of outrage.
So … not holding my breath for anything substantial. No matter how much Amy Goodman intones that This Is A Very Big Story That Will Raise Consciousness About Afghanistan, the American people have a good history of rationalizing these things and/or being distracted by domestic issues.
Alan in SF
The reaction of the public to a masive revelation — whether the “Surveillance State” project in the Post or the AfPak papers in the NYT — must inevitably be tempered by the fact that neither political party and no national leader offers a vehicle to oppose the offending policies.
Anyone seen the antiwar movement since 2006?
Alan in SF
@General Stuck:
You’re undoubtedly right; on the other hand, we have a massive advantage in terms of manpower, firepower, surveillance, training, and logistics. And we’re losing. So.
Bob Loblaw
@Brien Jackson:
Apparently, the Karzai administration is a wholly autonomous polity in control of its military, judicial, and infrastructure behavior. And that diktats from the American embassy and central command have no relation on their policies. We’re just the financial backers and legmen. The decision making is an Afghan problem. Thanks Brien.
chaseyourtail
The story is now about Wikileaks itself rather than the war in Afghanistan. But somehow I don’t think Julian what’s his name minds it this way – the guy is a first class preener.
Paula
@chaseyourtail:
I do find it interesting that the debate over the legality of the info overshadows what the leak supposedly reveals. But then, that’s not Assange’s fault. The media and the administration are always going to respond to these things by questioning their validity.
Mike M
I’ve not read any of the material posted on WikiLeaks, and given what I’ve heard so far about the material, I probably won’t. There are apparently pages upon pages of operational reports from the field that demonstrate that our forces have been struggling to make any sort of progress for quite some time. Hell, everyone knew that much when Obama and McCain were having their debates, and most knew it well before.
I heard a snipit of an interview with the head of WikiLeaks while listening to NPR. He suggested that there was evidence of war crimes in the material without mentioning any specifices, but didn’t point to any significant revelations, or in fact, any revelations at all. While the press has said that the documents paint a far more bleak picture than the administration or the Pentagon, no one I trust is suggesting there is some huge disconnect between what’s happening and what we’re being told. By that measure, there is no comparison with the Pentagon Papers.
chaseyourtail
@Paula: I do find it interesting that the debate over the legality of the info overshadows what the leak supposedly reveals. But then, that’s not Assange’s fault
chaseyourtail
@Paula:
I want your quote in the blue box darnit.