I don't care how many visions of 1970s glory the media is having right now -- that's not the moment we're living in. This document cache is not the new Pentagon Papers, for the simple reason that it emerged at a moment when old-school wingnuttery (with a few new bells and whistles) has come roaring back to dominate our politics. There needs to be a strong anti-war movement to make this document cache politically meaningful, and there isn't one; there needs to be even a modicum of anxiety on the part of Republicans about the political usefulness of old-fashioned right-wing bombast, and there isn't any such thing. So this matters only to historians.And he's got a point. So far we're not really learning anything truly new here if you have cared to dig even a bit under the headlines: Pakistan's ISI is helping the Afghan insurgency, we've killed a lot of Afghan civilians, the Afghan government is corrupt as hell, billions in aid dollars are missing, and war is hell. We knew all that already.
And this won't change a damn thing.
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