July 25, 2010, Game changer?
A huge cache of classified military documents from soldiers in the field and other military personnel providing a never before seen view of the Afghan war has evidently been leaked on Wiki-leaks, and previews have been given to England's Guardian, to the New York Times, and Germany's Der Spiegel.
Among the details released are the larger than expected (which by me was thought to be "pretty large") extent that Pakistani intelligence services have been helping the Afghan insurgents, , , the White House condemned the release of any and all information that might tell the public what the Government is up to the "classified information" that might embarrass it, such as extensive discussions of hit squads and, of course, the dependence on killer drones operated from Nevada... and lots of other embarrassing details that show, surprise, surprise, that the Afghan war is a mess, and probably unwinnable.
The rather grim picture of the war in the graveyard of empires Afghanistan defies the standard propaganda narrative that the Obama Administration,has been putting out. Having adopted the Bush "surge" idea as if throwing more men and materiel at an intractable problem foolishly thinking that was a good idea, Obama now owns the Afghan war, just as he owns Guantanamo, state secrets and the other abominations on which he elected to double down rather than to dial down. There is no doubt that rather than correcting the "issues" that have been identified, the Obama Administration will, instead, chose to go after "the leakers" with all of its energy.
Will this be like the Vietnam era leaks that dramatically changed public opinion as to that conflict? I have to put a question mark on that-- this is a huge development and will take a while to sort through. My gut feeling is that corporate America-- which wants the military industrial complex (can we rename the DoD the Dept, of Overseas Homicide?) to go all-out in Afghanistan, Iraq and the other more than 100 foreign countries in which our military is deployed-- has effectively controlled enough of the media to control the "public dialog" on this; coupled with Obama's popularity among what I'll call "rooting interest progressives," who believe that principles are irrelevant if violated by "their team"-- will keep this from being the explosive "game changer" that it should be.
But one can hope.