WikiLeaks published almost 100,000 documents about the Afghan war (here) today after giving three newspapers including The New York Times access to the documents several weeks ago. The following paragraph from The New York Times article (here) sums up what the documents show:
The documents — some 92,000 reports spanning parts of two administrations from January 2004 through December 2009 — illustrate in mosaic detail why, after the United States has spent almost $300 billion on the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban are stronger than at any time since 2001.Apparently, the documents do not directly contradict public statements by the United States, but they do make it clear that many official public statements have been at best misleading.
Another paragraph in The New York Times article that is for me particularly telling is this one:
The reports portray a resilient, canny insurgency that has bled American forces through a war of small cuts. The insurgents set the war’s pace, usually fighting on ground of their own choosing and then slipping away.Only a truly arrogant country like ours could look at the history of foreign invaders of Afghanistan and think that somehow we would be able to accomplish our goals (whatever they are).
The New York Times article contains a litany of all the problems that we have known about before - the corruption, the killing of civilians, the restrictions on our military, the lack of loyalty of the Afghan forces, etc.
We cannot achieve our objectives in this war. Way too many of our soldiers have been killed and wounded and had their lives and the lives of their families ruined. We have killed and wounded and destroyed the lives of way too many Afghans. We have wasted way too many dollars that could have been much better spent promoting peace instead of war. We need to get out of Afghanistan now. Please write President Obama now (here).
Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal
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