The Afghan Papers and Obama's Last Chance

I don't have the national security or intelligence industry chops to analyze the military implications of the leak of 92,000 supposedly secret documents about the Afghanistan clusterfuck.

But I know a little something about journalism, and sources who have ulterior motives for leaking documents, and the political uses of both.

I think the Afghan papers are the 21st-Century Pentagon Papers, but not for the reasons you've probably read.

Steve M. doubts this release will accomplish anything because today there is no strong anti-war movement to take advantage of it. But the big consequence of the Pentagon Papers release - besides strengthening the First Amendment guarantee of a free press - was the destruction of the presidency of Richard Nixon.

After the Pentagon Papers release, Nixon put his paranoid bugging schemes into full gear. The Watergate break-in, remember, was intended to bug the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. And Nixon won re-election in a landslide five months later.

I don't think the Afghan papers will bring down the Obama administration in the same way, mostly because this administration lacks both the mental illness and criminal character of Nixon's.

If - and it's a big if - Obama avoids the mistake Nixon made, which was fighting the release of the papers on national security grounds, even though the papers indicted previous Democratic administrations, the president might turn them to his advantage.

But only if he immediately repudiates unequivocally the atrocities confirmed by the Afghan Papers, especially those committed since January 20, 2009.

The surprise in the Afghan Papers is not that Pakistan, to whom we have given tens of BILLIONS of dollars since 2001 to help us in Afghanistan, has instead spent most of that money - wait for it - helping the Taliban kill American soldiers.

Ahmed Rashid has been writing about that since BEFORE 9-11, and liberal bloggers have been bitching about it ever since.

The only news here is that the U.S. has known about it all along, and continued to give billions of taxpayer dollars to Pakistan to help it kill American soldiers.

That, children, is what used to be known as treason.

As inexcusable as was the Nixon administration's prolonging of the war for political purposes, as horrific as were the many war crimes the U.S. committed in Vietnam, I am unaware of any evidence or even hint that the U.S. paid an ostensible ally which then used the money to help North Vietnam kill American soldiers.

The Afghanistan clusterfuck is, indeed, Obama's Vietnam. But he still has a chance to salvage it all - the country, the destructively over-extended U.S. Army, the real fight against real terrorists, diplomacy with both Iran and Pakistan, the honor of the United States of America and his own presidency.

But he has to embrace the release of the Afghan Papers as patriotism at its finest, and vow to stop the insanity before it destroys us.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....