Pentagon Papers Redux

It's the Pentagon Papers, all over again.

The Washington Post has published a massively documented investigation of what our generals and presidents have been saying about the forever war in Afghanistan, the unwinnable war that has cost the lives of far too many young Americans, not to mention the civilian population of that country. This report reminds me so much of the Pentagon Papers, which documented all the lying that American officials did about Vietnam. It turns out that the generals and the presidents in charge of the whole sad Afghanistan effort have been doing a lot of lying, too.

The first casualty of war, of course, is truth. And why is that? One big reason is that no general or president wants to be known as the one who lost a war. Just wondering: Wouldn't they protect their reputations better by not getting us into unwinnable wars in the first place? That way, they could avoid the inevitable cycle: lie, lie, lie, and oops. The oops, of course, refers to moments like the Washington Post report, when an investigation reveals all the lying, but too late to avoid all the dying. Will we ever learn?