The much-ballyhooed Wikileaks release of some 92,000 classified war documents has raised anxiety about the feasibility of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
But unlike the Pentagon Papers, to which this document dump has been clumsily compared, it does little in the way of offering new insights on the war. Hopefully, though, it will leads to a greater dialogue about what we’re doing in Afghanistan and when we’re going to get out.
The Pentagon Papers revealed how Lyndon Johnson’s administration lied to the American people about the nation’s strategy in the Vietnam war. They were a comprehensive military history of the Vietnam war, which included high-level communications and official secrets including the covert bombing of Laos and Cambodia.
If anything, the disjointed slew of Wikileaks reports shows us the Obama administration has been telling the truth about the war.
Treachery by Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence? That’s disturbing, but old news. Afghan civilian casualties? A horrible, but already known, effect of the war.
Furthermore, the documents cumulatively serve to remind us why the Obama administration chose to recalibrate its Afghanistan strategy to pursue one centered on counter-insurgency. It’s designed to create stability and isolate militants who seek to usurp the authority of the recognized government.
The chaos in the detailed reports confirms that the insurgency in Afghanistan was growing stronger between 2004 and 2009. They also show that U.S. and NATO military forces didn’t have sufficient resources to pursue their mission.
The U.S. strategy, adopted in December, is an effort to win the hearts and minds of the local people and get them behind efforts to root out the Taliban. It included a commitment to increasing troops in the short term, with a troop drawdown to follow.
“You can’t kill your way out of an insurgency,” Gen. David Petraeus has said.
Whether this strategy will succeed is an unanswered question, and doubts are on the rise.
Several key ingredients for success still are missing, including the lack of a credible central government in Afghanistan, and a competent local force of army and police. With U.S. deadlines approaching for potential troop withdrawal, the pressure is on.
The real impact of the Wikileaks documents is to rekindle old debates about the U.S. strategy in the region.
Such discussion should pound home the serious implications of getting involved in a war to begin with. You can’t just invade a historically unstable country such as Afghanistan and expect to waltz out quickly.
The U.S. has been pursuing this war for nearly nine years, racking up huge bills while never asking the American people to sacrifice to pay for them.
The U.S. has suffered loss of life, a drain on our economy and questionable tactical gains. Those are troubling conclusions, but the truth is we didn’t need the Wikileaks documents to tell us that.
