The Pentagon clearly wants to make the Wikileaks release of thousands of Afghan war logs about Julian Assange and not about the war itself. If they can keep the focus on the leaks, not the content, they feel can make it through the controversy unscathed. Hence you have Bob Gates and Mike Mullen accusing Assange of having blood on his hands. This is particularly ironic coming at the close of the deadliest month for US troops in Afghanistan of the entire nine year-long war.

What’s curious about the Gates and Mullen comments is that they don’t focus on the release of the names of Afghan informants, which actually did take place and has reportedly had dire consequences for those people, but the effect of the leaks on US troops, which it’s hard to envision at all. I guess it’s easier to fearmonger about American boys and girls rather than Afghans.

Assange struck back yesterday:

Gates said Thursday that the massive leak will have significant impact on troops and allies, revealing techniques and procedures.

Assange rejected that assessment Friday, saying in a release that Gates “has overseen the killings of thousands of children and adults” in Afghanistan and Iraq [...]

“Secretary Gates could have used his time, as other nations have done, to announce a broad inquiry into these killings,” the statement said. “He could have announced specific criminal investigations into the deaths we have exposed. He could have announced a panel to hear the heartfelt dissent of U.S. soldiers, who know this war from the ground. He could have apologized to the Afghani people.

“But he did none of these things. He decided to treat these issues and the countries affected by them with contempt. Instead of explaining how he would address these issues, he decided to announce how he would suppress them.

“This behavior is unacceptable. We will not be suppressed. We will continue to expose abuses by this administration and others.”

In addition to trying to make the Wikileaks release about Wikileaks, the war machine is succeeding in getting the media to double back to the familiar argument that we must think of the plight of Afghan women in determining whether to withdraw, as if our purpose for invading and occupying Afghanistan was to protect the rights of women.

Women’s precarious rights in Afghanistan have begun seeping away. Girls’ schools are closing; working women are threatened; advocates are attacked; and terrified families are increasingly confining their daughters to home.

Right, and this is happening while US forces are escalating.

For women, instability, as much as the Taliban themselves, is the enemy. Women are casualties of the fighting, not only in the already conservative and embattled Pashtun south and east, but also in districts in the north and center of the country where other armed groups have sprung up.

And I wonder what’s causing all this instability, surely not a nine-year occupation.

Interviews around the country with at least two dozen female members of Parliament, government officials, activists, teachers and young girls suggest a nuanced reality — fighting constricts women’s freedoms nearly as much as a Taliban government, and conservative traditions already limit women’s rights in many places.

Women, however, express a range of fears about a Taliban return, from political to domestic — that they will be shut out of negotiations about any deals with the insurgents and that the Taliban’s return would drive up bride prices, making it more profitable for a family to force girls into marriage earlier.

I’m glad they at least approach the nuance here – war zones are as debilitating to women’s rights as any repressive regime, for example. It may seem like I’m callously dismissing what women in Afghanistan go through, but I’m not. All I’m saying is that the Johnny-come-lately feminists justifying endless war with this argument aren’t being scrupulous, and that it’s completely unclear whether: a) US military forces can even stop the Taliban from taking over large swaths of the country and repressing women, especially since they’re doing that right now; b) women’s rights under the current ruling government we’re backing have really advanced in any major way, or c) the best way to protect women in Afghanistan is to rain bombs on their country for nine years, instead of engaging in a major refugee program or bring education to the population.

The point is that these war defenders don’t want to have an argument about women’s rights or even human rights, they want to have a point they can throw back in the faces of those who find the war unwinnable and counter-productive. And because they cannot justify it through the actual mission, they find an Afghan woman and use her as a human shield.