AS A free-lancer for Rolling Stone -- a leftist magazine that began as a shill for rock bands -- brought down the commander of anti-jihadist forces in Afghanistan, so WikiLeaks may help to do for the rest of the enterprise. Think Daniel Ellsberg and the classified "Pentagon papers" and the help they gave to collapsing the American effort in Vietnam.
The other day on a TV panel, Ellsberg and the Rolling Stone guy (Michael Hastings) said America has no business being in Afghanistan. WikiLeaks' top hombre, Julian Assange, agrees. Blathering on about "war crimes" committed by NATO forces, he posted on the Web 91,000 illegally acquired Pentagon e-mails labeled secret -- and has helped reporters reach all his intended conclusions about them. As Ellsberg wanted U.S. troops out of Vietnam, so Hastings and Assange want them out of Afghanistan. Only then (goes the line) will war crimes committed by American forces stop.
Based in Sweden and hence beyond the easy reach of American law, WikiLeaks long has been a semi-secret operation regarding its methods of information acquisition. But its founders' ideology and intent scarcely can be anything but hostile to the Western (American) military offensive to throttle al-Qaeda and the Taliban -- and to rid the world of jihadist terror. Honk once if the release of classified American military e-mails advances American interests. Honk twice if they aid the enemy.
ALL THIS is huge. Leaked East Anglia e-mails demonstrating intellectual fraud in the case for global warming as man-caused. Leaked JournoList e-mails showing collusion among "mainline" pressies and leftists with partisan axes to grind. And 91,000 leaked U.S. military classified e-mails made public clearly to complicate -- no, to end -- the U.S. war against jihad.
The Obama administration has reacted angrily to the leaking of the classified e-mails. Yet is that anger genuine? Will it last? Keep in mind that this is an administration led by a peacenik who, as a candidate, suggested we should leave Iraq and bomb not Afghanistan but Pakistan. That candidate, now president, publicly agonized last fall over whether to fight on in Afghanistan -- indeed whether victory is possible. He answered commendably yes on both counts. Still, he remains a president reluctant to link terror to radical Islam, or to employ -- or sanction within his administration -- use of the term jihad.
Will the WikiLeaked e-mails now fuel doubts among the public about the American role in Afghanistan -- and so wobble the knees of the president? That was the intent of Daniel Ellsberg, a patron saint of the leftist breed into which Barack Obama was born and raised -- and currently leads.