The Chris Moeller Archives

A cover blows off

Ninety-two thousand confidential documents in regards to execution of the war on Afghanistan have been leaked by the website Wikileaks. The early summaries on these documents have it that they reveal a failed U.S. military policy there, and a cover-up of the real conditions on the ground, concealed not just from the American people, but from Congress. They reveal that the White House and the Pentagon have been duped over a long period of time by our supposed allies in Pakistan-- the Pakistani government receives $1 billion in aid from the U.S. annually, but their intelligence officers meet regularly with the Taliban about how and where to attack us. And the sure kicker is this: there have been a cluster of honest-to-God American and Coalition war crimes, with evidence of 144 incidences of the killing of civilians.

This is a heroic act of whistleblowing on the part of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and his informant(s). These are your Pentagon Papers for Afghanistan. I'll yield to those who lived through Vietnam-- I didn't-- but the only ongoing difference between the two conflicts, it seems to me, is the level of public activism against them. The war on Afghanistan polls unpopularly with the U.S. citizenry, but there's been too little activism against the war. Hopefully, that trend will now be ending.

posted by CM @ 8:24 PM