All Quiet on the Afghan Front

The grim details contained in the WikiLeaks revelations may strengthen objections to the war in Afghanistan. That’s understandable, but wrong nonetheless.

No doubt about it, the affair is scandalous. When WikiLeaks, along with prestigious media in three countries, published more than 90,000 classified documents concerning the war in Afghanistan, it was a disaster for the U.S. military and the administration in Washington.

President Barack Obama and his administration have to fear that the often gruesomely detailed and obviously authentic depictions from the front lines will strengthen public rejection of this war because it shows it from its dirtiest side. This public reaction may be understandable and, from the WikiLeaks point of view, even desirable. Based on the contents, however, that would not be justifiable, because examined dispassionately, what journalists were able to extract from the jumbled mass of documents doesn’t justify a new assessment of the situation in Afghanistan. With the exception of a few new findings concerning Pakistan’s role, the documents haven’t revealed anything decisively new thus far. Most of them deal with the admittedly gruesome but by no means surprising details of individual incidents.

The raw facts were already known: that the military engagement in the Hindu Kush wasn’t going optimally — to put it mildly — isn’t likely to come as a surprise to either the American or the German public. Civilian casualties and botched military operations have been reported ad infinitum by the media. And the fact that the German army, due to new military and training strategies, will be increasingly involved in dangerous combat is by no means new. Even Minister of Defense Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg had already announced that the number of German soldiers killed is likely to increase rather than decrease.

WikiLeaks’ action may serve to show the horrors of the war in Afghanistan to the world, but it’s not a valid argument against involvement there.