The Washington Post today has an article on how they:
agreed to a one-day delay in publicizing the report by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, and that the paper's top editor engaged in a lengthy discussion Sunday with three top Defense Department officials in a meeting at the Pentagon.
... officials strongly objected to the publication of the full report, telling (Post representatives) in a conference call on Saturday that "if we publish it as is, it could endanger the lives of troops."
After the Pentagon meeting Sunday with (Post representatives), administration officials "did a wholesale declassification of 98 percent" of the document, ... while The Post agreed to withhold certain operational details.
Since neither the Post nor the Pentagon has released a true redacted version of the original report, it is impossible to independently confirm the Post's representation that the public, unclassified version of the report represents 98% of the original document. It is noteworthy that the Pentagon did not release a declassified version of the original report and instead reissued the report in an unclassified format. If they had declassified the report as written with redactions, the original classification markings would be readily available for all to see, as would the amount of information redacted.
It would be exceedingly useful if either the Post or the Pentagon would release a true, redacted copy of the original report. Not only then would all be able to confirm the Post's representation that only 2% of the document remained classified, but it would also be able to ascertain how restrained or unrestrained McChrystal's command was in applying classification to the original report. All too often, the phrase "endanger the lives of troops" is bandied about too freely as an excuse for the government to restrict the dissemination of information of critical importance to the nation's citizenry who are expected to bear the burden as the Afghan War enters its 9th year.
As McChrystal himself states in the "Commander's Summary" section (page 1-3) as well as elsewhere in the report when setting forth a new strategy; "These concepts are not new." There is absolutely nothing in the unclassified version of the report that has not been said before by either McChrystal or other national leaders, let alone any information that can come close to endangering the lives of the troops. What truly endangers the troops' lives is the fact that after eight years of war, our national political and military leaders are still floundering as they attempt to craft a strategy to achieve success in Afghanistan.
Rather than attempting to conceal the abysmal state of our failed strategy in Afghanistan, the administration would be better served to ensure the widest possible dissemination of this information to ensure the fullest debate possible as to whether or not this nation is to continue to engage in the brutality of war in that part of the world. Public debate about issues relating to health care reform is well and good, but national security policy decisions whose true costs in both blood and treasure dwarf anything on the domestic front deserves as much, if not more, engagement with the American people in an honest dialogue as to what has gone wrong in the past and what is the likelihood of achieving success in the future. I cannot think of a more fundamental decision that should never be made by our national leaders behind closed doors.
Furthermore, in an earlier post I set forth a new Presidential vision for limiting government secrecy. In it, I stated that President Obama must declare a vision to reduce the amount of information classified by our government by 90% from current levels. If the Post's representation that the portion of the McChrystal report claimed by the Pentagon to be truly classified amounted to only 2% of the original, than perhaps the President should up his vision to reduce classification by 98%.
Ironically, according to McChrystal's assessments, over-classification is directly impacting the success of the war strategy itself, specifically with respect to Strategic Communications. Page D-6 of the report states:
Declassification Authority for ISR/WSV (Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance / Weapons' System Video)
There has been consistent recognition of problems in using visual imagery, particularly ISR and weapons' system video, and other operational information for StratCom (Strategic Communications) purposes. Every effort must be made to identify, declassify, and exploit such material in a timely manner.
It is reassuring that there has been a "consistent recognition of the problem." It is disappointing that the problem has not been solved. This is but one more example of how classification actually harms national security. It is also one more reason why the President needs to mandate a 90% reduction in classification. The fact that a senior combatant commander can not get declassified the information necessary to discharge his wartime responsibilities is the best example that the classification system cannot reform itself. It requires firm leadership from the President on down.
Update:
With regard to General McChrystal's difficulty in getting weapons' system video declassified, at least it demonstrates that Reuters is not the only one being stiffed armed by the Pentagon in its attempts to get such video declassified as discussed in this earlier post.
No comments:
Post a Comment