U.S. providing little information to judge progress against Islamic State by Nancy A. Youssef.
From the post:
The American war against the Islamic State has become the most opaque conflict the United States has undertaken in more than two decades, a fight that’s so underreported that U.S. officials and their critics can make claims about progress, or lack thereof, with no definitive data available to refute or bolster their positions.
The result is that it’s unclear what impact more than 1,000 airstrikes on Iraq and Syria have had during the past four months. That confusion was on display at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing earlier this week, where the topic – “Countering ISIS: Are We Making Progress?” – proved to be a question without an answer.
“Although the administration notes that 60-plus countries having joined the anti-ISIS campaign, some key partners continue to perceive the administration’s strategy as misguided,” Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., the committee’s chairman, said in his opening statement at the hearing, using a common acronym for the Islamic State. “Meanwhile, there are grave security consequences to allowing ISIS to control a territory of the size of western Iraq and eastern Syria.”
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Nancy does a great job teasing out reasons for the opaqueness of the war against ISIS, which include:
- Disclosure of the lack of coordination between any policy goal and military action
- Disclosure of odd alliances with countries and “groups” (terrorist groups?)
- Disclosure of timing and location of attacks might be used to detect trends
The first two are classic reasons for openness. If the public knew what was happening in the war with ISIS, it would well have Congress defund the war as being incompetently lead. Take it up some other time with better leadership.
But the public can’t make that call so long as the government remains a closed (not open) government and the press remains too timid to seek facts out for itself.
I don’t credit #3 at all because ISIS should know with a fair degree of accuracy where bombing raids are occurring and when. Unless the military is bombing sand to throw off their trend analysis.
Lack of openness from the government, about wars, about torture, about its alliances, will lead to future generations asking Americans: “How could you have supported a government like that?” Are you really going to say that you didn’t know?