WikiLeaks on U.S. War in Afghanistan

Much ado is being made in Washington about the 91,000-plus U.S. military documents that the whistleblower website, WikiLeaks, leaked (via the New York Times, London Guardian, and Germany’s Der Spiegel) on Sunday. These documents purportedly give an unvarnished and unprecedented, bomb-by-bomb account of how U.S. soldiers fought the Afghan War from 2004 to 2009.

But despite the hype, the leaking of these documents pales in significance to the release of the famous Pentagon Papers, which exposed the policy misgivings top-level political and military officials had about America’s involvement in the Vietnam War.  Not least because, back then, the government and military exercised such control over the dissemination of information that what the Pentagon Papers revealed was truly shocking and newsworthy – given the rosy scenario those officials were painting of the progress of this war.

By contrast, what Wikileaks revealed about the folly, fog, and horrors of this war is, frankly, old news. Not least because the internet has provided the means for every foot soldier and crack reporter to “expose [the] true Afghan war” – to quote the London Guardian’s misleading headline.

For  example, the highlights in WikiLeaks’s “secret files” pertain to the fact that this war has become an unwinnable mess; that soldiers complain about the lack of resources and wonder why they’re fighting to win the hearts and minds of people who are just trying to kill them; that the military routinely discount the number of civilian casualties; that Iran has been arming Taliban insurgents; and that Pakistan has not only been providing refuge to al-Qaeda terrorists but also aiding and abetting Taliban attacks on U.S. troops.

But a cursory search of this weblog, under the term “Afghanistan”, will reveal that even I have written commentaries on all of these so-called secrets over the past five years, citing them as reasons why this war is just another Vietnam.  Moreover, even on the most controversial point, namely of Pakistan’s treachery, no less a person than Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been raising very damning and undiplomatic questions about Pakistan’s loyalties over the past year:

I believe somewhere in this government are people who know where Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida and where Mullah Omar and the leadership of the Taliban are. We expect more cooperation (from Pakistan) to help us bring to justice capture or kill those who brought us 9/11.

(Clinton, Times of India, May 10, 2010)

This is why the claim by the White House that the release of these documents compromises the war strategy is so demonstrably disingenuous. After all, I doubt that any revelation could be made about the conduct of the Afghan War that could make it any more of a costly mess – in terms of lost lives and treasure – than it already is.

That said, this leak, reportedly the biggest in U.S. history, could actually serve an important purpose. Because this documentation of the utter futility of the Afghan War might finally precipitate the kind of mass anti-war protests that finally forced the U.S. government to declare victory and retreat from Vietnam. But I doubt it.

Meanwhile, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (pictured above) has now made quite a name for himself. I just hope he realizes that he is now as much a wanted man as Osama bin Laden. And I doubt Assange has a secret intelligence agency like Pakistan’s ISI to protect him….

NOTE: Assange, an Australian computer hacker turned self-professed internet activist, operates WikiLeaks pursuant to the credo that governments and corporations should have no secrets.  But this is as foolhardy as it is dangerous. Indeed, it is naïve to think that “total transparency” is the only way to combat corruption and unethical behavior – as he professes.

Frankly, it’s a reflection of Assange’s self-importance and self-righteousness that he believes the people of the United States want (in fact need) him to expose their government’s secrets.  But I think he would do better to target totalitarian regimes in those parts of world where oppressed people could truly benefit from his transparency crusades.

Related commentaries:
Afghanistan: Snatching defeat from hands of victory
Please, spare us the al Qaeda obituaries
Iran arming America’s enemies in Afghanistan