[Infowarrior] - WikiLeaks and AfPak: What "Everyone" Knows

[Richard Forno]

WikiLeaks and AfPak: What "Everyone" Knows
James Fallows is a National Correspondent for The Atlantic. A 25-year veteran of the magazine and former speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, he is also an instrument-rated pilot and a onetime program designer at Microsoft.

Jul 26 2010, 3:31 PM ET

I lack the background knowledge about Afghanistan and Pakistan to put the new information in full perspective, not to mention lacking the time to read more than a little of the vast data dump. Therefore only these points about the still-emerging significance of what's now on public record:

1) "Everyone" knows this already. People who have been very close to this story say that little of the information is "new," in a fundamental sense. See the Atlantic Wire's summary here, Mother Jones here and here, and (splenetically and amusingly) Andrew Exum here. Fine.

2) But not everyone actually did. Notwithstanding #1, information that may be old news to insiders may seem a revelation to the broader public. Whether from George W. Bush or Barack Obama, presidential speeches about Afghanistan have not emphasized the mixed loyalties of the Pakistani security services, the frustrations of dealing with tribal leaders and corrupt officials, the extent of civilian casualties, and other items that, according to insiders, "everyone" already knows. At this stage it's impossible to say whether a vast, somewhat hard-to-digest compilation of raw reports, released in the middle of summer, will mean that "everyone" in a broader sense comes to share this insider perspective.

3) And that's the possible similarity to the Pentagon Papers. Afghanistan is different from Vietnam, Barack Obama is different from Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, the raw battlefield intel from WikiLeaks is different from the inside policy memos of the Pentagon Papers, and so on. But the basic similarity of the cases involves the question of what "everyone" knows. By 1971, anyone who had been really following the Vietnam war already "knew," or could guess, much of what was in the Pentagon Papers. The Papers mattered because of (a) the confirmation that the government had known about the problems for a very long time, and (b) the spreading of that understanding to the broader public. If the WikiLeaks documents, coming during what is already the deadliest month ever for U.S. troops in Afghanistan, really do mark a shift in mainstream opinion about the war, it will be because everyone [general public, press, and politicians] will now recognize what "everyone" [insiders] already knew.

Below and after the jump, a reader message about the awkwardness of even discussing "winning" this kind of war. The reader writes ....

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http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/07/wikileaks-and-afpak-what-everyone-knows/60411/