Jules Witcover
The leaking of 91,000 classified documents on the Afghanistan War is being compared, imprecisely, with the Pentagon Papers leak of 39 years ago that unmasked official U.S. deceptions about the Vietnam War. The latest document dump merely provides more raw material with which to make similar accusations.
The Pentagon Papers were a careful compilation of reports and analysis by military officialdom that often clashed with the rose-colored Nixon administration contentions of seeing light at the end of a tunnel when there was little of it. They were intentionally leaked by Pentagon official
The latest release from an international organization called WikiLeaks through three news outlets, according to quick review by experts on the Afghan War, has uncovered little new, but rather fleshes out old stories with eyewitness accounts of various military failures and excesses.
Yet the timing may prove to be critical as
Inasmuch as the Taliban insurgency in
The WikiLeaks documents cover only the period from
In the end, the American commander in
Since then, the continuing debate in
Gen.
The latest, massive leak of classified documents -- painting as they do a picture of widespread U.S. military problems in combating the Taliban insurgency, including alleged liaisons between the Taliban and Pakistani intelligence -- can only add to American concerns at home that the Afghan War has become a fool's errand.
But the Obama administration can claim that its torturous re-evaluation of Afghanistan War policy that led to the 30,000-troop surge ordered seven months ago was a corrective response to the failures of the earlier period. It can be expected to argue to
In any event, it remains to be seen whether the latest classified documents leak will add significant fuel to an already growing anti-war sentiment, comparable to what the Pentagon Papers achieved against the American involvement in
Obama's strategy from the start called for a reassessment by the end of this year as to whether it was working. Nothing that has just been disclosed is likely to dissuade
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At War with the Weather: Managing Large-Scale Risks in a New Era of Catastrophes
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(C) 2010 Jules Witcover