Not so much a "Runaway General" as S.O.P.

A report that Lt. General William B. Caldwell unleashed his PSYOP team on visiting U.S. politicians in Afghanistan, from Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings, is being considered a bit of a bombshell. Here's the meat of the piece:

Under duress, Holmes and his team provided Caldwell with background assessments on the visiting senators, and helped prep the general for his high-profile encounters. But according to members of his unit, Holmes did his best to resist the orders. Holmes believed that using his team to target American civilians violated the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which was passed by Congress to prevent the State Department from using Soviet-style propaganda techniques on U.S. citizens. But when Holmes brought his concerns to Col. Gregory Breazile, the spokesperson for the Afghan training mission run by Caldwell, the discussion ended in a screaming match. �It�s not illegal if I say it isn�t!� Holmes recalls Breazile shouting.

But the drive to push style over substance via propaganda should come as no surprise to most. Just consider Caldwell's previous career path.

From 2002 to 2004, during the critical run-up to and disasterous immediate aftermath of the Iraq invasion, he was senior military assistant to the deputy secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz and was almost certainly an insider with knowledge of the workings of the Office of Special Plans which stovepiped intelligence to gin up the case for war. That was also the period when Wolfowitz turned down NATO help in Afghanistan, saying that  "We can do everything we need to" - a decision one might presume his senior military assistant had some input on.

In 2005 he was commander of 82nd Airborne when it was tasked with cleaning up after Dubya and FEMA's incompetence in post-Katrina New Orleans, leading to debates about Posse Commitatus and whether battle-hardened troops with assault rifles were best suited to facing down looters on American streets.

By 2006, though, he was handpicked by the Bush White House to be spinmeister in Iraq, becoming  Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategic Effects and spokesperson for the Multi-National Force � Iraq.

Indeed, although Caldwell from 2007 to 2009 at Leavenworth in charge of the Army's training, his senior career up until he was posted to Afghanistan in charge of training Afghan security forces has been far more about spin and presentation than actual training.

I've even had my own run-in with Caldwell's staff, who appear to glean the internet for negative comments about him. See this post, this post at Small Wars Journal and the comments to both for details. Apparently Captains under Caldwell's command have nothing better to do than make snarky and inaccurate attempts to rebut blogposts by C-list bloggers which criticize the good general.

But readers should also be unsurprised because, well, this is what the military does. It did it in Iraq (partly under Caldwell's leadership) and it is doing it again in Afghanistan. Michael Cohen notes:

Did everyone just forget about the ongoing manipulation that went on in the Summer and Fall of 2009 to convince President Obama to support escalation - the leaks to major newspapers, the strategic review utilizing well-placed DC thinkers, the public smackdown of civilian leaders by four-star general, the failure of our military leadership to provide civilian leaders with alternatives to a population-centric COIN strategy? Or how about the more recent attempts to whitewash the White House's December strategic review or plant news stories about how well things were going in Afghanistan and it was imperative that the June 2011 drawdown date be finessed in order to maintain "momentum" against the Taliban?

For two years now, since this President took office, the US military leadership has been lobbying and yes, manipulating their civilian bosses to support a population-centric COIN operation, higher troop levels and a steadfast commitment to stay the fight in Afghanistan. That civilian leadership has abdicated its responsibility on strategic decision-making to the military has only exacerbated the problem. But only a blind person would deny that this is what has been taking place.

And Jim White at FDL takes the same argument further.

What should not be missed when contemplating the illegal and immoral aspects of this information operation directed against the citizens of the country and high level government officials is that it is just one more instance in an ongoing pattern of information manipulation and outright deception on the part of the military in recent years. A few recent examples include the use of retired generals posing as independent military analysts to spout information coordinated by the Pentagon, intentional deception to cover up Special Operations troops digging bullets out of the bodies of pregnant women they killed in a night raid and the more recent claim by General Petraeus that parents intentionally burned their children in order to exaggerate injuries received in a US attack, to name just a few.

Just about every honest analyst watching Afghanistan closely has concluded that theres more smell than steak to US happy-talk nowadays. In fact, one insider put it very bluntly:

It has been said many times before, but the gap between rhetoric and what people experience is mind-boggling and ultimately leaves you feeling speechless. How often do you want to keep pointing out that media reporting is being manipulated; that the gap between what policymakers believe privately and what they propagate in public is so vast that it must hurt their brains (not to mention their conscience); that the definitions of success are being defined by what can be achieved and measured, rather than by what could be relevant.

It is impossible to escape the suspicion that all this is being done not just because it is policy to deceive the American public but also because the truth would hurt careers. Still, "it happens all the time" doesn't stop it being illegal. Lt. General Caldwell's actions should be investigated and if Hasting's article is found to have substance then he should be formally charged.