Pentagon Papers Redux?

No.

With the release yesterday by WikiLeaks of 75 MBs of 92,000 classified military documents about the ongoing war in Afghanistan, many in the media are saying the information, like the release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, will undermine popular support for the war and make current Obama Administration policy in the region politically untenable.

Cooler heads know war is hell and that no war was ever won by equivocating and second-guessing every tactic and moral choice.  Compromises are made, policies and strategy are reset, and people with common sense know to keep their eyes open and their mouths shut.  Remember the World War II slogan Loose Lips Sink Ships?  Remember the practicality and expediency of Russia as our ally in World War II?

As reported today in The Wall Street Journal:

"That is why it is so disconcerting, if also predictable, to see the usual political suspects seize on the media hullabaloo to claim the Afghan effort is hopeless. The political left, which can't forget Vietnam, is comparing the Wikileakers to Daniel Ellsberg and even the Tet offensive. Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry, who pays close attention to the region and has led the fight for more U.S. aid to Pakistan, nonetheless declared that, 'However illegally these documents came to light, they raise serious questions about the reality of America's policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan.'

"As informed as he is, Mr. Kerry can't possibly have learned all that much from these documents. His statement is more worrisome as a signal of political panic, a desire to placate his party's growing opposition to President Obama's war effort."

And in The New York Times:

"ANYONE who has spent the past two days reading through the 92,000 military field reports and other documents made public by the whistle-blower site WikiLeaks may be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss is about. I’m a researcher who studies Afghanistan and have no regular access to classified information, yet I have seen nothing in the documents that has either surprised me or told me anything of significance. I suspect that’s the case even for someone who reads only a third of the articles on Afghanistan in his local newspaper."

Watch WikiLeaks' editor Julian Assange, self-proclaimed journalist and activist (and convicted hacker) preen before the digerati at TED, where he describes himself with the messianic analogy that "capable, generous men don't create victims, they nurture them."



For those who make the simplistic argument that the war against the Taliban is unjust and unwinnable, here's a graphic reminder of the stakes.  If that doesn't move you, watch what the Taliban do to their own daughters.