"Wikileaks War Logs? Nothing new, move along." Sure...To November!

By Steve Hynd

I've been mildly astounded by how fast pro-war pundits have climbed aboard the "nothing new to see here, move along" bandwagon when discussing the Wikileaks document dump on Afghanistan. Like rats climbing aboard a sinking ship. Meanwhile, the rest of world is finding the leak as a new reason to focus on that quagmire.

Josh Mull:

Sure, war supporters gave it the old college try. The White House and other political leadership stressed that the leaks contained no new information, incidentally clearing up once and for all the confusion we had over whether they were ignorant or merely incompetent and negligent prosecutors of US foreign policy. Some even tried to deflect the argument on to Wikileaks operator Julian Assange, as if the leak coming from him – or Paris Hilton or Spider-Man – has anything to do with the information it contained.

But their arguments are for naught, the war is now simply indefensible. The facts are on our side, and these leaks do nothing else if not confirm and validate the criticism so far levied against the war in Afghanistan. The effect is to make the IPS headline, "Leaked Reports Make Afghan War Policy More Vulnerable," seem something like the understatement of the century. Gareth Porter writes:

Among the themes that are documented, sometimes dramatically but often through bland military reports, are the seemingly casual killing of civilians away from combat situations, night raids by special forces that are often based on bad intelligence, the absence of legal constraints on the abuses of Afghan police, and the deeply rooted character of corruption among Afghan officials.

The most politically salient issue highlighted by the new documents, however, is Pakistan’s political and material support for the Taliban insurgency, despite its ostensible support for U.S. policy in Afghanistan.

You could pick just one of those things Porter mentions and it could spell catastrophe for the war. Instead we have all of it. It does more than make the war policy more vulnerable, it puts any war supporting politician in Washington in serious electoral peril.

McClatchy's featured cartoon today explains why 102 House Democrats voted against the latest war supplemental:

Click for larger image.

Kevin Siers / The Charlotte Observer (July 27, 2010)

Update: Over at Columbia Journalism Review, they've got this for those living "inside the media-military bubble" :

 in rushing to declare what the war logs are not, many in the media have been quick to pass over what they are. Or, at the very least, what they might be: If not something “new,” “shocking,” and Pentagon Paper-esque, certainly a trove of material to add texture, detail, and anecdote—in other words, reporting—to a war that, despite the good work of some brave and diligent correspondents, has gone largely underreported in recent years. To assume, as many commentators have, that the average reader is so well-versed in the Afghan war that nothing in the reports is revelatory, is perilous—and betrays the insider mentality that journalism too often suffers from. To assume further that they would not benefit from the extra information the reports provide—and the outlets to which the documents were leaked provided in synthesized form—seems to argue against the very idea of journalism.

...If we are to agree that the war is an important story—and none of the columnists, reporters, or editorial writers are suggesting otherwise—then, in the crudest sense, this leak represents a peg. It’s a reason to revisit it. A reason to recapture the attention of those for whom Afghanistan might have fallen somewhat off the radar. Remember, it’s a big country, and not everyone is a “researcher who studies Afghanistan.”

Comments

[SRW1]

What are we allowed to infer from the claim that there is 'noting new to see here'? That the conduct of the Afghanistan campaign by the US military (and at least some of its Nato allies) was OK, because everybody knew about it, yet few felt compelled to speak up against it?

Why does the US military still feel compelled to lie in such a systematic fashion about the civilian casualties of its actions when everybody knows what is really going on?