Frank Rich: Like Pentagon Papers, WikiLeaks Marks Beginning Of End In Afghanistan

by Glynnis MacNicol | 11:06 am, August 1st, 2010

» 12 comments

Past is prologue. Everything old is new again. These seem to be themes permeating this week’s Sunday Times op-ed page. Maureen Dowd devotes her entire column to a (admittedly not terribly conclusive) comparison between Holly Golightly, and Betty Draper. Frank Rich meanwhile draws further comparisons between the release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 and this week’s WikiLeaks dump, right down to the White House (ish) wedding that a accompanied both.

IT was on a Sunday morning, June 13, 1971, that The Times published its first installment of the Pentagon Papers…But if we were titillated that Sunday, it wasn’t immediately clear that this internal government history of the war had mass appeal. Tricia Nixon’s wedding in the White House Rose Garden on Saturday received equal play with the Pentagon Papers on The Times’s front page. On “Face the Nation” the guest was the secretary of defense, Melvin Laird, yet the subject of the papers didn’t even come up.

The same can definitely not be said about WikiLeaks…it has dominated today’s shows. Rich also notes that like the Pentagon Papers the WikiLeaks boasted no big reveal, but that the long-term effect may be similar.

No, the logs won’t change the course of our very long war in Afghanistan, but neither did the Pentagon Papers alter the course of Vietnam. What Ellsberg’s leak did do was ratify the downward trend-line of the war’s narrative. The WikiLeaks legacy may echo that. We may look back at the war logs as a herald of the end of America’s engagement in Afghanistan just as the Pentagon Papers are now a milestone in our slo-mo exit from Vietnam.

Frank Rich, Maureen Dowd, New York Times, Wikileaks

Bootleghaircut

I’m not sure I buy rich’s theory no more than I believe the war in Afganistan is “winding down.”

And let’s not fool ourselves that we are ever leaving Iran or Afghanistan. We may fight to liberate but rarely do ever actually leave.

The Green Zone is a permanent structure.

Food for thought.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Matt-Herrick/100000969560328 Matt Herrick

Many commentators have compared Obama to FDR, Carter, and LBJ. I see him increasingly as Nixon, suspicious of the media, secretive, promising to end a war he ultimately escalates….
http://www.facebook.com/people/Bill-Adkins/1585417987 Bill Adkins

I think Rich overstates and compares apples to oranges. You, too, Matt. I know that the Bush Administration lost sight of the goals in Afghanistan within days of the invasion and never fully engaged Pakistan utilizing the fiction Pakistan was an ally. These leaks simply reveal the idiocy of the Bush strategy there. And now the Republicans want to cut and run, folding America’s hand there without ever fully playing it. Time mag in this story http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2007269,00.html and it’s cover photograph reveal the fallacy and why the Taliban should be exterminated for the vermin they are. To abandon Afghanistan (and we should dump that shill Karzai) to the Taliban would be worse than George HW Bush’s snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in ’91 and the abandonment of Saddam’s opposition and the Kurds to his abuses.
JimBob

I get Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd confused with each other.
felixw

Only at the New York Times would covering Broadway openings entitle someone to pretend to be an expert on foreign policy. And Rich was an awful drama critic before he decided to become worse-than-awful at political commentary. The fact that the Times gives this unstable and biased person such a big platform to write on topics about which he knows next-to-nothing tells you a lot about how out-of-touch the Times editors have become.
http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Broadway/603685657 David Broadway

Wikileaks obtains a copy of Tony Hayward’s resignation letter. Read it here.

FUNNY

http://www.dailygoat.com/?p=2195
Vietnameravet

What concerns me is the level of corruption these leaks reveal. If the Afghani people are more interested in feathering their own individual tribal nests than in creating a strong and acceptable central government then there is a real similarity to Vietnam and we will either leave in defeat or be there forever…neither of which is a very pleasant alternative.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Steve-Holmes/1299184145 Steve Holmes

If Obummer actually WERE about “change”, he wouldn’t “need” something like “wikileaks” (which seems to be FAKE and operated by SOME government in the first place) to get out of Afghanistan.

But then again, Obummer REPEATEDLY LIES!
http://none pyrope

I guess I’m waiting for something that will never happen–that those who leaked the classified documents will be hanged for treason.

That said, just as we should have learned in Vietnam, if you’re not going to fight to WIN a war, and do so as expediently as possible, don’t sacrifice the lives of those who truly are our best and brightest in some political meanderings. The lives and the blood of our citizens are too precious to waste.
http://none pyrope

JimBob said:
I get Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd confused with each other.

Frank Rich is the one who appears to be more sober.
http://none pyrope

Bootleghaircut said:
I’m not sure I buy rich’s theory no more than I believe the war in Afganistan is “winding down.” And let’s not fool ourselves that we are ever leaving Iran or Afghanistan. We may fight to liberate but rarely do ever actually leave. The Green Zone is a permanent structure. Food for thought.

We are still in Japan and Germany–some 65 years after the war, but I’m sure you and I would both like to see our troops back home from the Middle East. Probably where we differ is how it should be accomplished. My thoughts are that the US should win a decisive victory, but I don’t think many Americans have the stomach to face just how that might be accomplished. In case you’re wondering, I go with the Sun Tzu philosophy: Bomb the bastards back into the stone age, take care of Iran and Nort Korea at the same time, and warn any other tin-horned dictator that we would do the same to them if they so much as even fart in our general direction.

Basically, I know of nothing that is more hateful and despicable than war, but if you’re gonna fight war, you’re a damned fool if you don’t do so in a way that ensures the most expedient of victories.
More Liberty

Matt Herrick said:
Many commentators have compared Obama to FDR, Carter, and LBJ. I see him increasingly as Nixon, suspicious of the media, secretive, promising to end a war he ultimately escalates….

Em….not sure if you know this….but Nixon did end the war in Vietnam.