Soldier wrote detailed report claiming US generals ‘have so distorted the truth … the truth has become unrecognisable’
“I am ”“ how do you say it? ”“ persona non grata,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Daniel Davis, as he sat sipping a coffee and eating a chocolate sundae in a shopping mall, just a subway stop from the Pentagon.
The career soldier is now a black sheep at the giant defence department building where he still works. The reason was his extraordinarily brave decision to accuse America’s military top brass of lying about the war in Afghanistan. When he went public in the New York Times, he was acclaimed as a hero for speaking out about a war that many Americans feel has gone horribly awry. Later this month he will receive a Ridenhour prize, an award given to whistleblowers that is named after the Vietnam war soldier who exposed the My Lai massacre.
Davis believes people are not being told the truth and said so in a detailed report that he wrote after returning from his second tour of duty in the country. He had been rocketed, mortared and had stepped on an improvised explosive device that failed to explode. Soldiers he had met were killed and he was certain that a bloody disaster was unfolding. So he spoke out. “It’s like I see in slow motion men dying for nothing and I can’t stop it,” he said. “It is consuming me from the inside. It is eating me alive.”
…LCOL Davis’ perspective the cynic in me does rather wonder what the difference would have been if high command had been exquisitely honest to the public. If that last 10 years have taught me anything it is that the dynamic range of the untrue drek the public will accept is exceeded only by that of what folks copiously pump out in the brave, new Internet-mediated media world.
“800 channels and nothing’s on, 8 million talking heads and no reality visible.” ~ some cynical guy
I also wonder what the difference would have been if high command had made it explicit to the American public in 2002 that there was a possibility they’d still be engaged in Afghanistan a decade later myself.
“The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential.”
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
…in large part the folks that would still be in Afghanistan a decade later would be UN / NATO. The implicit model appears to have been Kosovo – they could see themselves still having some presence there, but nothing near this large as best I can tell.
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” ~ Steve Jobs
There is big money to be made in war and the people that make the big money have lots of money to throw around. I just watched the movie The Whistleblower. It’s about a private contractor in Bosnia who’s members are involved in sex trafficking. The contractor has a lot of influence at the highest levels so there is little interest in the truth. It’s all about money.
Always plan your wars on best case scenarios. What could possibly go wrong?