The Leak and the Ripples

There has been severe political fallout of the wiki leaks incident as expected. The leaks bought out in front of the world six years of top secret United States military documents. This will further weaken the United State’s President Barack Obama’s bid to stay in Afghanistan. The wiki leaks have revealed that the war effort in Afghanistan has given poorer results than what the government was making it look like. The civilian as well as military casualties have been much higher than what the government has revealed. Another shocking revelation of the Wiki leaks is the fact that all the aid that has been given to Pakistan I being used by Pakistan to kill United States marines.

The debate over the United States presence in the Afghanistan has heated up as the congress questions how the war is being fought. There is a widespread fear that there might be strong democratic opposition to the war. More than the democrats the government needs to fear its mandate because the popular public sentiment is going against the war especially with this incident. For now all eyes are on the vote on the crucial war financing bill to be held on Tuesday. Also under scrutiny is President Obama’s appointment of General James N Mattis to head the military central command at Afghanistan. General Mcchrystal’s removal had created a huge uproar. The government had decided to have a review on the war at the end of 2010, but with this leak it might have to do it much sooner. If it doesn’t then it is quite likely to lose public support. The Obama administration is caught in a web of problems. The President has two choices, he either has to explain the Congress and the American people that the war is headed in the right direction, or has to move to the proposed limited presence in Afghanistan very fast. The first option seems tough now after this leak, but if anyone can pull it off it has to be President Obama. The second choice seems illogical as we all know that the presence of American troops is necessary to stabilize Afghanistan, a sudden drop in numbers of US troops could have deadly long term repercussions.  Recently Richard Holbrooke Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan had stated that he Afghanistan war effort came down to a matter of national security. But the situation is too complex to rely on that alone. How the government will handle the situation the leak has put it in would be interesting to see.