Biggest learning from the Afghanistan Papers - failure to learn

Forty-eight years ago I celebrated release of the Pentagon Papers, purloined by patriot whistleblower Dan Ellsberg, which showed the utter failure of the Vietnam War, its secret expansion into Laos and Cambodia, and endless efforts to hide its failure from Congress and the public. I hoped its release and subsequent exoneration of Ellsberg would prevent a recurrence of senseless perpetual wars and governmental efforts to hide their utter failure to keep them going. Alas, a half century on we get the Afghanistan Papers, not purloined by a patriot, but dug up through the Freedom of Information Act by the Washington Post. In 2,000 pages spanning over 400 interviews we learn that the government, the military and the media learned virtually nothing from the lesson of the Pentagon Papers. Hundreds of thousands killed, injured or displaced, over a trillion squandered and not a word of truth on the futility, corruption, failure and disinformation that has continued this war into its nineteenth year with no end in sight.

The Pentagon Papers helped lead to the eventual collapse of US involvement in the Vietnam War four years later. Let's hope the release of the Afghanistan Papers doesn't take nearly that long in ending our involvement in this sad chapter in the United States long litany of perpetual war.