Secret Wars: What Obama and the Media Don’t Want You to Know

Hilary Clinton once jabbed at President Obama: “You campaign in poetry but govern in prose”. Today the appropriate reformulation would be: you campaign publicly but govern privately. Despite grandiose promises to be the most transparent administration in American history, essential information regarding our foreign policy engagements only makes its way to the light of day in a slow drip, and even then tortured by mendacious spin. Despite the ubiquity of modern media, our armed forces wage secret wars in shadows and suffer untold losses, unreported by either the Obama administration or its media minions.

Exhibit A: on September 14th, American forces in Afghanistan suffered what has been called by one military expert “arguably the worst day in [Marine Corps] aviation history since the Tet Offensive in 1968” and the most debilitating hit a squadron of this kind has absorbed since World War II. More than two dozen Taliban fighters, many of them disguised in American military uniforms, attacked Camp Bastion, the home of a Marine Corps VMA-211 squadron. The damage done to the fleet of specialized combat aircrafts was devastating, destroying 8 of 10 Harrier AV-8B’s, an astounding 7% of the total carrier fleet reduced to smoldering rubble by charging suicide bombers with explosives strapped to their chests. Squadron Commander Christopher Raible was killed in the surprise offensive. It has been confirmed that US and NATO forces killed 14 of the attackers but it is still undetermined if any survived or escaped or how many precisely were involved in the attack.

All available evidence indicates that this was a meticulously strategized and professionally executed attack, as tactically sound as it was bold. This has lead to expert speculation that the invaders were somehow trained or supported by either the Pakistani-sponsored Haqqani network, which has a significant presence in Afghanistan, and that it acted on intelligence provided either by careful and long term reconnaissance or inside information. It has also been hypothesized that the assault was motivated to specifically target Prince Harry, who was stationed at British-run Camp Bastion as part of a helicopter regiment and was planning on celebrating his birthday the next morning.

According to John Gresham, an expert at the Defense Media Network, some of the damage done is literally irreparable:

“Eight irreplaceable aircraft (the AV-8B has been out of production since 1999) have been destroyed or put out of action – approximately 7 percent of the total flying USMC Harrier fleet. Worse yet, the aircraft involved were the AV-B+ variant equipped with the APG-65 radar and AAQ-28 Litening II targeting pods – the most capable in the force. Given the current funding situation, it’s likely that the two damaged AV-8Bs will become spare parts “hangar queens” and never fly again. A Harrier squadron commander is dead, along with another Marine. Another nine personnel have been wounded, and the nearby Marines at Camp Freedom are now without effective fixed-wing air support. The USMC’s response to this disaster will be a telling report card on its leadership and organizational agility.”

However, despite the extraordinary significance and impact of the attack, one could scour main stream media outlets in vain for so much as a parenthetical mention. Entire news cycles are devoted to this or that ersatz gaffe Romney may or may not have made at a private fundraiser, but a historic military loss goes almost entirely unnoticed. And this jarring omission is not some singular anomaly but only a moment in a pattern of governmental secrecy made possible by the media’s willing compliance. It takes a concerted and coordinated effort to successfully suppress information so dramatic.

And by stymieing the general public’s knowledge of such spectacular failures, the Obama administration also conceals an unfolding narrative of our waning influence in a region that neither respects nor fears our military might. Camp Bastion is located just northwest of the city Lashkar Gah, situated within the Helmand province whose security has rapidly deteriorated since Obama took office. It is virtually never reported that 1,491 American troops have been killed since Obama became Commander in Chief, 70% of the overall American death toll. (Remember the media obsession with tracking the American casualty count while Bush was President?) In response to the receding power of American forces in the region, the International Security Assistance Force, the unit responsible for training Afghan national forces until they achieve operational self-sufficiency, has been suspended. Since one of the principal aims of the American military presence in Afghanistan is such training, this is tantamount to a surrender.

Exhibit B: In the Daily Beast, Eli Lake reports that despite vehement statements to the contrary, the Obama administration knew that the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi was perpetrated by terrorists within 24 hours. Three different intelligence officials have come forward anonymously to reveal:

• US intelligence almost immediately identified at least some of the attackers using social media and their political associations: “I can’t get into specific numbers but soon after the attack we had a pretty good bead on some individuals involved in the attack.”

• Just as quickly, American intelligence was able to pinpoint their respective locations: “There was very good information on this in the first 24 hours. These guys have a return address. There are camps of people and a wide variety of things we could do.”

• They also had both the operational information and resources in place to strike back: “We had two kinds of intelligence on one guy. We believe we had enough to target him.”

• American intelligence officials have also been analyzing an intercepted communication between a high-ranking Libyan politician and members of the February 17th militia, some of whom were tasked with security detail at the consulate. Evidence has emerged that an Al Qaeda affiliate, Ansar al-Sharia, was attempting to both bribe and threaten the militia to participate somehow in strike on the embassy. One of the intelligence officials referred to the attack as a “catastrophic intelligence loss” and lamented: “We got our eyes poked out.”

In the Federalist papers, Alexander Hamilton famously argues that the president requires secrecy, some immunity from the otherwise relentless democratic demand for transparency. But that secrecy is only granted as essential to the proper exercising of executive powers, not to conceal mounting evidence of incompetence and failure. Our nation is at war, and especially at the height of an election season, the citizenry needs unvarnished information to adequately judge the wisdom of our engagements, and the prudence of the Commander in Chief who presides over them. It is hard for them to consummate their basic civic duty as long as our wars are fought clandestinely, beyond the reach of their vigilance, and as long as the press abets their deliberate concealment. Our troops deserve better, and our citizens should demand it for them.

Category: Featured, International