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Wiki what? Leaks of no real surprise
Wow. Shocking. After reading several takes on the WikiLeaks.org reports on the Afghanistan War, I can only respond with this: Tell us something we don't know.
Was anything in this report a surprise to anyone?
It certainly isn't the Pentagon Papers of the war, as some have compared it to. The Pentagon Papers significantly impacted public opinion against the Vietnam war in 1971, when its key aspects were published in a nine-part report in the New York Times. The papers, photocopied by Defense Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg, outlined a campaign of deliberate misinformation (lies) from consecutive administrations from Truman to Johnson, and made public secret bombing raids into Cambodia and other military unspokens.
The WikiLeaks' "revelations" don't have the policy-shaking, nation-chilling impact that the Pentagon Papers had during the Vietnam era. That was a time when a much deeper trust in government existed, when most people got their news from two sources: Walter Cronkite and their daily newspaper -- before talk radio, the Internet and cable news. We are a much better informed populous now -- at least we have no excuse not to be -- and we are much, much harder to shock.
And in this "enlightened" day comes the WikiLeaks telling us aspects of the Afghanistan war such as: Pakistan is an untrustworthy ally; many of the law enforcement officials we're training and paying are really Taliban agents; and the drones we are increasingly using are often having unintended casualties.
What's next, someone going to leak that it can get hot in Kandahar?
Fact is, every time an innocent is killed in this war, we create opposition. Maybe the only thing worse than a deplorable ruling power is an outside force with a foreign culture occupying your land and killing (albeit unintentionally) local residents. Would you be any different? Neither sounds appealing.
Leading Democrats note that most of the "problems" raised in the leaks were from the earlier years of the war, not to blame President Bush, per se, but to separate the era between when the Afghanistan effort was a back-burner conflict compared to the Iraq war. Now, more focus, more money and more troops have been committed -- hopefully leading to fewer mistakes.
Many say that President Obama's 2011 timeline to start pulling troops out of the region feeds the insurgency and hampers the war effort. It may. But it also says we're not going to play this game forever. Just as the case is in Iraq, Afghanistan needs to want change and make it stick, to have its own courage to defeat the Taliban. In the 21st century, the West can no longer impose its will on a nation with a nearly opposite, even deeper-rooted culture.
But like the WikiLeaks report, that's not saying anything we don't already know.