Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Marjah Offensive Aimed to Shape US Opinion on War

by Gareth Porter, February 24, 2010

"Senior military officials decided to launch the current U.S.-British military campaign to seize Marjah in large part to influence domestic U.S. opinion on the war in Afghanistan, the Washington Post reported Monday.

The Post report, by Greg Jaffe and Craig Whitlock, both of whom cover military affairs, said the town of Marjah would not have been chosen as a target for a U.S. military operation had the criterion been military significance instead of impact on domestic public opinion......

"This is all a war of perceptions," McChrystal said. "This is not a physical war in terms of how many people you kill or how much ground you capture, how many bridges you blow up. This is all in the minds of the participants."

McChrystal went on to include U.S. citizens as well as Afghans among those who needed to be convinced. "Part of what we’ve had to do is convince ourselves and our Afghan partners that we can do this," he said.

The decision to launch a military campaign primarily to shape public opinion is not unprecedented in U.S. military history. When President Richard M. Nixon and his National Security Adviser Henry A. Kissinger launched a major bombing campaign against the North Vietnamese capital in late December 1972, they were consciously seeking to influence public opinion to view their policy as much tougher in the final phase of peace negotiations with Hanoi....."

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