The surprising Lt. Colonel Davis

Moisés Naím / El País

You may not have heard of Lt. Colonel Davis of the US army, who now works at the Pentagon, after several tours of duty in Iraq and more recently, Afghanistan. Davis just returned and wrote a report that begins thus: “Senior ranking military leaders have so distorted the truth when communicating with the US Congress and American people in regard to conditions on the ground in Afghanistan that the truth has become unrecognizable. This deception has damaged America’s credibility both among our allies and enemies, severely limiting our ability to reach a political solution to the war in Afghanistan. It has likely cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars Congress might not otherwise have appropriated had it known the truth, and our senior leaders’ behavior has almost certainly prolonged this war. The single greatest penalty our nation has suffered, however, has been that we have lost the blood, limbs and lives of tens of thousands of American Service Members with little to no gain to our country as a consequence of this deception.” And this is just the public version of his report. He also produced a confidential version, for a few congressmen and senators with security clearances.

A few days ago Col. Davis published an explosive article in the respected Armed Forces Journal. In “Truth, Lies and Afghanistan,” he writes: “I witnessed the absence of success at virtually every level. […] How many more must die in a mission that is having no success?” And it was only after distributing his report to members of Congress, publishing the article and giving some interviews, that Davis informed his superiors. This, I told him, might seem to be the behavior of someone who doesn’t care about being cold-shouldered out of the Armed Forces, or court-martialed. “Not at all,” says Davis. “This is my life and my career, and I want to go on with it as long as I can serve my country.” He also emphatically rejects the accusation that he is driven by political calculations, or that his conclusions are based on anecdotes and not on the rigorous information that those who are running the war have. Michael Hastings, Rolling Stone’s military correspondent, who obtained and posted the non-confidential copy of Davis’s report online, says that “this is one of the most important documents published by an active-service officer in the last 10 years.”

What are the implications of all this? That the Afghanistan war is going badly is no surprise. The surprise is that, according to Davis, it is going even worse than we thought, and much worse than we are told in the far from encouraging reports from top American officers. Naturally, the other surprise is that an officer on active service has decided to run the risk of breaking the rules, disseminating his devastating evaluation of the situation, and denouncing what he considers the mendacity of top Pentagon officials. Even more surprising is the fact that Davis has not yet been punished for his actions. A Pentagon spokesman hastily denied an NBC report that an investigation had been opened against Davis.

One possibility is that the colonel enjoys the support and protection of a group of senior military officers, and is in some way acting as their spokesman, something that Davis stridently denies. Another possibility is that the Pentagon fears that a reprisal against Davis might spark a wave of protest, and only serve to boost the visibility and influence of his views.

Lastly, another surprise is that Colonel Davis does not believe that the US ought to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan in 2014, as President Obama has promised. For Davis, the strategy ought to be to leave strong military bastions located at strategic points, while changing the nature of the mission. The troops, he says, ought to concern themselves mainly with capturing — or killing — terrorists that may be using the country as a base of operations. This is a crude way of saying that there is no hope of Afghanistan developing into a peaceful, prosperous and democratic nation.