As we’ve seen, the first reaction of the US government and its media bootlickers was to lie that the documents were the work of “pro-Russian elements”. Then, they shifted to smear: attacking the young airman who leaked them as a far-right racist. Now, the narrative has shifted to, “How was this allowed to happen! Leakers must be punished!”
What they’ve striven mightily to avoid talking about is what the leaked papers reveal about the war in Ukraine.
And no wonder.
The more significant issue is whether President Biden and his proxies are telling the American people the truth about the Ukraine war. After all, Biden has never explained our national interests in that war other than to acknowledge we’re helping to protect Ukrainian “democracy” and to keep the Russians from gobbling up more of Europe.
Last year, President Biden soberly promised at a NATO summit “We are going to stick with Ukraine … as long as it takes to in fact make sure that they are not defeated … by Russia.” That sounds too much like LBJ and the Vietnam war.
Fox News
And so do the lies exposed by the new Pentagon Papers.
The original Pentagon Papers were a Department of Defence assessment of the progress of the Vietnam war up to 1967. What they showed was that the White House had systematically lied to Congress and to the American people about the objective, conduct, and progress of the war.
Which brings us to another war, half a century later.
Classified Pentagon documents leaked last week paint a grim picture of the trajectory of the war in Ukraine […] they mostly confirm existing battlefield assessments that cast doubt, in the eyes of US intelligence officials, on any major breakthroughs in a widely expected Ukrainian spring offensive.
The leak also shows that US propaganda has likely grossly inflated Russian casualties. At the same time, the narrative of plucky little Ukraine punching well above its weight is busted.
The key shortfalls on the Ukrainian side – artillery pieces and munitions, as well as air defences – have been well known for some time. What has also been obvious for some time, and was reconfirmed in some of the leaked documents, is that Ukraine has been mostly relying on Soviet-era artillery equipment and stocks of ammunition have begun to run dry.
At the same time, western equipment has been slow to be delivered and training of Ukrainian forces has taken time. And the western capacity to produce shells in excess of current Ukrainian consumption has yet to be built.
Add to that delays in training and equipping the troops needed for a counter-offensive and the likelihood of well-entrenched Russian defences. The low expectations of at best modest territorial gains in a Ukrainian spring offensive do not come as a surprise.
Far from the trumpeted media narrative that a planned spring counter-offensive is set to finish the wicked Russkies once and for all, the gloomy conclusion of the leaked documents is that the war will continue to grind on well into next year.
Russia, according to some of the leaked documents, has failed to secure significant foreign military aid […] Russia’s own military capabilities, however, will increase over time. The country has vast resources, including manpower. Its economy has been weakened but not mortally wounded. And Putin appears to be no less in control of the country and its security apparatus […]
Ultimately, both sides are likely to match each other’s increases in capability over time and the current stalemate will continue, albeit at a higher level of mutual attrition.
The Conversation
So, the spectre that has hung over the war from its earliest days is only going to loom darker: How does this thing end? How long will Western taxpayers (especially in the US) tolerate hundreds of billions being poured into the maw of a corrupt former Soviet republic, simply to bloody Russia’s nose? Even more pertinent to American voters in an election year: with the revelations that the US indeed has troops on the ground, how long will the White House be able to sell a direct confrontation with Russia, as bloody and interminable as Vietnam?