More than 90,000 secret US military records have been leaked to the media, revealing hidden details of the war in Afghanistan, newspapers report.
The documents are said to include unreported killings of Afghan civilians as well as covert operations by US special forces against Taliban leaders.
UK daily The Guardian and the New York Times say the records were shown to them and to German weekly Der Spiegel by online whistle-blower Wikileaks.
Do we think this would have happened in China or Russia? I have no idea whether any of this compromises national security, but I sure don’t like the idea of some guy in the bowels of the national security establishment thinking that his decision on what’s best for the public’s need to know should trump all efforts to keep the information classified.
I don’t know what this will do for national security; I fear it may impact our troops and I hope not. But I like to think that in the bowels of govt there are people with a sense of right and wrong and the “right side” of these releases outweighs the “wrong side”. Recall in the Vietnam war we had the Pentagon Papers released. I don’t recall they made that debacle any worse. Just allowed sunshine into the festering wound.
I suggest that while the current White House regime decries the release of these documents, perhaps they are actually behind it, hoping for a outcry that will demand an end to troops in Afghanistan, which is what they want anyway.
Whoever is responsible for the unauthorized release of classified documents should be prosecuted to the extent of the law.
As I reflect on this I keep thinking of Pogo’s famous saying.