The Afghanistan Papers and the Perils of Historical Analogy
The Afghanistan Papers and the Perils of Historical Analogy by David V. Gioe – Lawfare
On Dec. 9, 2019, the Washington Post released to great fanfare what it presumably hoped would be a bombshell along the lines of the New York Times’s explosive “Pentagon Papers,” published in 1971, and indeed framed the coverage as such. Their so-called “Afghanistan Papers” (note the similarity in the nomenclature) were internal documents produced by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) as part of their ongoing documentation project to identify lessons learned during the war. In the documents, senior military and civilian government officials revealed in retrospect their unvarnished doubts and candid frustrations about the war during interviews with the SIGAR—an agency the primary purpose of which is to eliminate corruption and duplicative U.S. efforts in Afghanistan. Along with the story, the Post released the original documents and a 17-minute video explanation.
Although some journalists were quick to embrace the Washington Post’s characterization of its reporting as “new Pentagon papers,” like New Year’s Eve fireworks, after a bright flare, everything was as it had been by the following day. It seems clear, more than a month after they were first published, that the Washington Post’s Afghanistan Papers were a resounding dud. While Congress did call Special Inspector General John Sopko to testify on Jan. 15 about the troubling details revealed in the documents, the Washington Post was the only major newspaper to cover the testimony. This is not to say that the Post’s reporting is unimportant or that it is better not to have access to the primary source documents that they secured legally. As a historian, I will be the first to welcome newly declassified documents as a window to understanding how the U.S. government assessed and grappled with its longest war. But what explains the lack of broader interest on the part of the American people? Why didn’t this trove of declassified documents catch fire like the Pentagon Papers during Vietnam, or like the more recent documents pilfered by Chelsea Manning and published by WikiLeaks in 2010, or the Snowden files published by several outlets in 2013?…