^{Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen arrives in Kandahar this weekend. DoD Photo/McNeeley}

The minute Wikileaks's major classified document dump was announced, I knew Glenn Greenwald would have something to say. His piece at Salon is surprisingly brief, possibly because the leak caught him about to go on vacation. This paragraph caught my eye:

Note how obviously lame is the White House's prime tactic thus far for dismissing the importance of the leak: that the documents only go through December, 2009, the month when Obama ordered his "surge," as though that timeline leaves these documents without any current relevance. The Pentagon Papers only went up through 1968 and were not released until 3 years later (in 1971), yet having the public behold the dishonesty about the war had a significant effect on public opinion, as well as the willingness of Americans to trust future government pronouncements. At the very least, it's difficult to imagine this leak not having the same effect. Then again, since -- unlike Vietnam -- only a tiny portion of war supporters actually bears any direct burden from the war (themselves or close family members fighting it), it's possible that the public will remain largely apathetic even knowing what they will now know. It's relatively easy to support and/or acquiesce to a war when neither you nor your loved ones are risking their lives to fight it.

Emphasis mine. Greenwald is right that there's an exceptionally good chance this enormous revelation will have almost no effect on the public opinion of the war in Afghanistan. Many of us have discussed before how the worst costs of war are being endured by a small faction of the country -- those who serve in the military and their families -- and those are the kinds of costs it's very difficult to spread, without instituting a draft.

Yet I think here there's an opportunity to show Americans who are paying only passing attention to the war that there are other, broader costs that they are in fact incurring every day. The war is shown, in these 92,000 documents, to be a failure of both preparation and imagination. No one seemed to accurately grasp what U.S. troops were getting into in Afghanistan, and no one seems to have accurately pictured the effectiveness of the insurgency that's been growing. The New York Times:

The documents — some 92,000 reports spanning parts of two administrations from January 2004 through December 2009 — illustrate in mosaic detail why, after the United States has spent almost $300 billion on the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban are stronger than at any time since 2001.

[...]

The reports portray a resilient, canny insurgency that has bled American forces through a war of small cuts. The insurgents set the war’s pace, usually fighting on ground of their own choosing and then slipping away.

Sabotage and trickery have been weapons every bit as potent as small arms, mortars or suicide bombers. So has Taliban intimidation of Afghan officials and civilians — applied with pinpoint pressure through threats, charm, violence, money, religious fervor and populist appeals.

There are two easily understood costs being discussed here. The first is a dollar amount. In a year in which every campaign ad must apparently attach a "I'm Candidate X and I approved this ad but hate the deficit!" disclaimer, a frank discussion of the escalating costs and diminishing returns of investment in the Afghanistan war might be the best way of bringing the fight home. I hate the idea of reducing the complex geometry of human hatred down to dollar amounts, but I'm learning that right now, this is how Average America thinks and certainly what it responds to. So perhaps if these documents paint an accurate picture of where, exactly, those sainted tax dollars have been thrown, people will start to pay more attention. I'd like to see news reports focus more on putting those costs -- known and hidden -- together.

There's a downside to this, though. The documents show that American forces believed Pakistan was arming and directing insurgent forces within Afghanistan -- and several of the stories I've read so far are careful to highlight that the United States has sent Pakistan $1 billion in aid. Any accounting approach to the Afghanistan war could inadvertently draw upon the deep reservoirs of isolationism that still exist in the American public, which would make our tiny, tiny budgetary allowance for foreign aid very vulnerable. The United States will win absolutely no hearts and minds abroad by a complete financial withdrawal from the world.

Second, those last two paragraphs sound eerily familiar to anyone who was alive during (or has studied since) the Vietnam war. Insurgents have "set the pace" and have "bled American forces through a war of small cuts." To those who have from the very start predicted that Afghanistan would become for the U.S. exactly what it was for Russia -- a drawn-out, unwinnable conflict in an unwelcoming country -- this seems stark proof.

The reports repeatedly describe instances when the insurgents have been seen wearing government uniforms, and other times when they have roamed the country or appeared for battle in the very Ford Ranger pickup trucks that the United States had provided the Afghan Army and police force.

These documents (and I have reviewed only a fraction, in addition to the many well-reported summaries and analyses) seem to show in greater detail what we already knew: We are literally killing ourselves in Afghanistan. This release of information comes just after a new report has been published, showing that when the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) kills civilians in Afghanistan, it leads directly to higher recruitment capabilities for insurgents (while, conversely, insurgent harm to civilians seems to have little direct effect on their recruitment abilities). Every mistake coalition forces make in Afghanistan comes back to haunt them, and every victory ensures only another battle.

If the truth won't make an impression, what will? The answer, I fear, is defeat.