The Limits of Power

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both in their ninth year, are already the longest in American history. Yet mention of these conflicts remains absent from the elections which, in the middle of Obama’s mandate, will renew Congress. It’s possible that the new revelations from WikiLeaks a week before the vote will change things. The 391,832 internal documents from the American army are overwhelming. They provide the raw version, directly from the Pentagon, of the battlefield up close. This is what makes them all the more accusatory.

We can blame Julian Assange, who has often published these documents with the names of local informers or collaborators as in the case of Afghanistan, for having the same disdain for collateral damage as a strategist for the U.S. Air Force. However, these reports depict a conflict waged in defiance of the elementary laws of war and a criminal leniency towards Iraqi auxiliaries, as brutal and cruel as they were in the time of Saddam Hussein. They also show a widely privatized war in the hands of mercenaries without honesty and, above all, without law. Paradoxically, these leaks also show the transparency — even when forced — of American democracy. But now that the lies of the American war machine are thus revealed, Washington ought to assess the limits of its power and hegemony. Hopefully the Americans will realize that they cannot selectively impose their values on other people.

If so, the leaks from Assange will have accomplished their civic mission.