On Wednesday, President Trump seemed to blast the publication of reports prepared by the Office of the Inspector General on the continued troubles of American military operations. But there are good reasons for those reports to be public. Just look at what happened when they weren’t.
During a televised Cabinet meeting, Trump told his newly acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan: “Some I.G. goes over there who — mostly appointed by President Obama, but we’ll have ours too — and he goes over there, and they do a report telling every single thing that’s happening and they release it to the public.”
He added, “What kind of stuff is this? We’re fighting wars, and they’re doing reports and releasing it to the public. Now the public means the enemy. The enemy reads those reports: They study every line of it. Those reports should be private reports.”
Speaking directly to Shanahan, he added, “I don’t want it to happen anymore, Mr. Secretary. You understand that?”
We understand where Trump was coming from. He’s concerned that our government is spilling our military secrets. As the Washington Examiner’s Jamie McIntyre put it, Trump seems to be asking: “It’s bad enough the war in Afghanistan is not going well, but do we have to blab it to everyone and give encouragement to the Taliban?”
We understand why government officials might want to be left alone to sort out our endless nation-building mess without losing face and taking tons of criticism.
But keeping the bad news private would be even worse. To understand why, it’s worthwhile to go back and flip through the now-declassified Pentagon Papers detailing U.S. failures and lies to the American public on Vietnam.
Those documents, prepared before the passage of the Inspector General Act of 1978 and the subsequent creation of the Department of Defense Inspector General in 1982, were originally classified, kept from both Congress and the public.
The papers, officially the Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force, detailed information that lawmakers and the public deserved to know about the costly war in Vietnam that was still underway. They revealed that four administrations, from former Presidents Harry S. Truman to Lyndon B. Johnson, had misled the public on the intentions of the war effort and that the war had expanded well beyond what Americans were aware of. For example, even after the Defense Department found that the reason for continued U.S. involvement involvement in Vietnam was “70 percent to avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat,” young men continued to be drafted and sent overseas.
When the documents were finally leaked in 1971, they helped turn public opinion against the war, ultimately leading to the withdrawal of troops. Had that information been available sooner, that would likely have prevented the expansion of the war, stopped needless casualties, and forced a re-evaluation of objectives and priorities.
As the U.S. again remains embroiled in forever wars, the public still deserves some level of military accountability and basic knowledge of how the conflicts are proceeding. Without consistent reports on the current status of Afghanistan, it’s not hard to imagine how a similar situation to Vietnam could develop, whereby men and women continue to put their lives in danger to support a doomed mission while the public remains ignorant as to the probability of victory.
The Washington Examiner has frequently relied on reports produced by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan to understand just how much U.S. efforts have cost and what their success has been. That’s important information for the public to know as they assess the decisions of the politicians they vote for and the policies they support.
Importantly, those reports do not, as Trump suggested, give away information to our enemies. They are heavily redacted based on strict national security concerns. They offer details on topics such as the success of training or eradicating poppy cultivation — not troop movements or covert operations.
If Trump or Shanahan find that the process of redacting is inadequate, they can try to improve that system. But we hope the White House and the Defense Department understand the value of the Inspector General’s work and the importance of its availability to the public.
In the heat of the moment, the transparency that inspectors general provide may seem damaging to a president or an administration’s reputation. But in fact, such transparency bolsters the credibility of all presidents. It is key to keeping government accountable to the people it claims to serve — especially as those same people are asked to risk their lives for its wars.
