WikiLeaks fuels negative war debate

While Pakistan's covert support for the Taliban has been reported for years, experts say that revelations about this support contained in documents made available by online whistle-blower WikiLeaks add to existing skepticism over the efficacy of the U.S. engagement with Pakistan.

“The documents underscore the depth of Pakistani support (for the Taliban) and frustrations within the American military about that,” said former CIA analyst Bruce Riedel, now with the Brookings Institution, a Washington think-tank.

“This definitely makes it more complicated for the Obama administration,” added Riedel, who led a White House review of Afghanistan and Pakistan policy early last year.

But Riedel said the bottom line was that the United States has no choice but to work with Pakistan even if revelations such as those made by WikiLeaks make it tougher to retain U.S. congressional and public support for the effort.

The 91,000 secret documents detail events in the war between 2004 and December 2009. That was the month when Obama announced a new counterinsurgency strategy and troop surge intended to turn around the war that began in 2001 in retaliation for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

But critics of the war may cite the documents as evidence that the U.S. war strategy will fail even with the 30,000 additional troops Obama last December ordered to Afghanistan.

“These WikiLeaks should not be used to say the strategy is doomed to failure,” said Lisa Curtis of the conservative Heritage Foundation think-tank. “It is too early to say that.”

'Encourages the Enemy'

Curtis said part of the problem in sustaining U.S. public support for the war is that the Obama administration's message is “very confused.”

“They need to stop talking about a timeline. It disheartens our allies and encourages the enemy,” she said, referring to Obama's pledge — criticized by many U.S. conservatives — to start pulling out U.S. troops by July 2011.

Afghanistan expert Anthony Cordesman said the timing of the leaks rather than their content may be the most damaging aspect for the White House, as Obama's team seeks to change what media experts call an increasingly gloomy war “narrative.”

“The president has a messaging problem,” said Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.

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