Wikisteria: Don’t Take Anti-War Bait

Lisa Curtis / July 29, 2010

The aim of releasing thousands of classified documents on the Afghanistan war on the WikiLeaks Web site was apparently to undermine American public support for the war. The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, said he wanted the world to see the “true nature of the war” and equated the WikiLeaks Afghanistan archive with the release of the secret files of the East German police following the fall of the Berlin Wall.

But an initial look at a handful of the thousands of released reports reveals no shocking information but rather a mix of both operational battlefield information and unverified spot reporting, the credibility of which is impossible for the average U.S. citizen to determine.

Commentators are essentially using the so-called “Afghanistan War Diaries” to re-emphasize their own positions on the war. The reports provide details and context on the day-to-day conduct of the war, but they are only pieces of information that do not lend themselves to sweeping generalizations about the efficacy of the overall war effort. (more…)