Political Pressure on Pakistan Policy

The lead article in today’s New York Times, “Document Leak Adds to Pressure on White House,” describes continuing fallout on the release of classified military papers showing continuing ties between the Pakistani intelligence agency, ISI, and the militants the United States is fighting in Afghanistan. The revelation shows the ineffectiveness of American aid to Pakistan in encouraging a counterterrorism operation by the Pakistani government.

The documents also describe other failures in the Afghan war and are starting to increase Democratic opposition to the policy in Congress. The Democratic leadership, who supports our current policy of short-term escalation of the troops, is rushing to hold a vote on a war-financing bill before the rank and file insist on a more thorough evaluation.

The release of the documents has initiated a review of the war earlier than the Obama administration had hoped, initially scheduled for the end of this year. Meanwhile, mounting U.S. casualties in the conflict are making matters even worse.

There was some criticism of the organization that published the documents, WikiLeaks, but they claim to have redacted all sensitive information, as did The New York Times who subsequently published the piece. In fact, the Administration’s quarrel seems to be more with the content of the documents, contravening the effectiveness of their troop increase and aid to Pakistan, than the actual fact they were published in the first place.