The War Logs

I've spent some time reading through the Times' jaw dropping expose on the Wikileaks document dump and I wanted to make a few comments before I read any other commentary on the matter.  And before I clogged my brain with internet chatter from the pundits.

The documents provide an insurmountable amount of information.  They are the paper trail of war and its vast complexities.  A war that has gone on far longer than necessary. Judging from what I've read, everything contained in them is exactly why voters wanted a completely different direction in Afghanistan when they elected Obama as president.  Yet everything we've seen so far from the new administration has been a carbon copy of his predecessor.

People know that Pakistan is covering for al Qaeda.  We know this.  We knew this long before the leak.  People also know that there is nothing to win in Afghanistan.  It's a zero sum game.  We can't possibly kill enough people to change things.  Nor can we continue to expect that eventually hearts and minds will succumb by killing fathers and sons.  As these documents prove, we end up killing daughters and mothers along the way breeding hatred even deeper.

We wanted something different.  By different we meant better.  And what we have right now is the same sorry continuation of the policies that created this sprawling war in the first place.