Afghanistan hasn’t become the U.S.’ longest war; Vietnam still is, according to someone who should know, Richard Holbrooke, the Obama Administration’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, who also served as a young American diplomat in Vietnam.

Holbrooke spoke with All Things Considered co-host Robert Siegel Monday (we’ll provide a live link when it becomes available) and took issue with what he sees as a revisionist history being peddled by some in the media who are dating the start of Vietnam to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964.

President Lyndon Johnson got Congress to pass the resolution on what many historians consider the trumped-up pretext of a North Vietnamese attack on a U.S. warship …

Read more here.

The Richard Nixon Presidential Library will open a trove of records at the facility and online Thursday, including 265 hours of White House tapes, officials said.

The library, in Yorba Linda, California, will also open more than 140,000 pages of presidential records and 75 hours of video oral histories, officials said. The library is part of the National Archives.

The White House tapes span February 1973 to March 1973 and include a few from early April 1973. There are no transcripts for these tapes, but the library has produced a detailed subject log for each conversation, National Archives officials said in a statement.

[Continues at CNN]

Daniel Ellsberg in 2006. Photo: Jacob Appelbaum (CC)

Via Daniel Ellsberg’s Website:

Ex-Intelligence Officers, Others See Plusses in WikiLeaks Disclosures

WikiLeaks has teased the genie of transparency out of a very opaque bottle, and powerful forces in America, who thrive on secrecy, are trying desperately to stuff the genie back in. The people listed below this release would be pleased to shed light on these exciting new developments.

How far down the U.S. has slid can be seen, ironically enough, in a recent commentary in Pravda (that’s right, Russia’s Pravda): “What WikiLeaks has done is make people understand why so many Americans are politically apathetic … After all, the evils committed by those in power can be suffocating, and the sense of powerlessness that erupts can be paralyzing, especially when … government evildoers almost always get away with their crimes. …”

So shame on Barack Obama, Eric Holder, and all those who spew platitudes about integrity, justice and accountability while allowing war criminals and torturers to walk freely upon the earth. … the American people should be outraged that their government has transformed a nation with a reputation for freedom, justice, tolerance and respect for human rights into a backwater that revels in its criminality, cover-ups, injustices and hypocrisies.

Odd, isn’t it, that it takes a Pravda commentator to drive home the point that the Obama administration is on the wrong side of history. Most of our own media are demanding that WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange be hunted down — with some of the more bloodthirsty politicians calling for his murder. The corporate-and-government dominated media are apprehensive over the challenge that WikiLeaks presents. Perhaps deep down they know, as Dickens put it, “There is nothing so strong … as the simple truth.”

As part of their attempt to blacken WikiLeaks and Assange, pundit commentary over the weekend has tried to portray Assange’s exposure of classified materials as very different from — and far less laudable than — what Daniel Ellsberg did in releasing the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Ellsberg strongly rejects the mantra “Pentagon Papers good; WikiLeaks material bad.” He continues: “That’s just a cover for people who don’t want to admit that they oppose any and all exposure of even the most misguided, secretive foreign policy. The truth is that EVERY attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time.”

Motivation? WikiLeaks’ reported source, Army Pvt. Bradley Manning, having watched Iraqi police abuses, and having read of similar and worse incidents in official messages, reportedly concluded, “I was actively involved in something that I was completely against.” Rather than simply go with the flow, Manning wrote: “I want people to see the truth … because without information you cannot make informed decisions as a public,” adding that he hoped to provoke worldwide discussion, debates, and reform.

There is nothing to suggest that WikiLeaks/Assange’s motives were any different. Granted, mothers are not the most impartial observers. Yet, given what we have seen of Assange’s behavior, there was the ring of truth in Assange’s mother’s recent remarks in an interview with an Australian newspaper. She put it this way: “Living by what you believe in and standing up for something is a good thing. … He sees what he is doing as a good thing in the world, fighting baddies, if you like.”

That may sound a bit quixotic, but Assange and his associates appear the opposite of benighted. Still, with the Pentagon PR man Geoff Morrell and even Attorney General Eric Holder making thinly disguised threats of extrajudicial steps, Assange may be in personal danger.

The media: again, the media is key. No one has said it better than Monseñor Romero of El Salvador, who just before he was assassinated 25 years ago warned, “The corruption of the press is part of our sad reality, and it reveals the complicity of the oligarchy.” Sadly, that is also true of the media situation in America today.

The big question is not whether Americans can “handle the truth.” We believe they can. The challenge is to make the truth available to them in a straightforward way so they can draw their own conclusions — an uphill battle given the dominance of the mainstream media, most of which have mounted a hateful campaign to discredit Assange and WikiLeaks.

So far, the question of whether Americans can “handle the truth” has been an academic rather than an experience-based one, because Americans have had very little access to the truth. Now, however, with the WikiLeaks disclosures, they do. Indeed, the classified messages from the Army and the State Department released by WikiLeaks are, quite literally, “ground truth.”

How to inform American citizens? As a step in that direction, on October 23 we “Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence” (see below) presented our annual award for integrity to Julian Assange. He accepted the honor “on behalf of our sources, without which WikiLeaks’ contributions are of no significance.” In presenting the award, we noted that many around the world are deeply indebted to truth-tellers like WikiLeaks and its sources.

Here is a brief footnote: Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII) is a group of former CIA colleagues and other admirers of former intelligence analyst Sam Adams, who hold up his example as a model for those who would aspire to the courage to speak truth to power. (For more, please see here.)

Sam did speak truth to power on Vietnam, and in honoring his memory, SAAII confers an award each year to a truth-teller exemplifying Sam Adams’ courage, persistence, and devotion to truth — no matter the consequences. Previous recipients include:

– Coleen Rowley of the FBI
– Katharine Gun of British Intelligence
– Sibel Edmonds of the FBI
– Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan
– Sam Provance, former Sgt., US Army
– Frank Grevil, Maj., Danish Army Intelligence
– Larry Wilkerson, Col., US Army (ret.)
– Julian Assange, WikiLeaks

“There is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, nothing hidden that will not be made known. Everything you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight; what you have whispered in locked rooms will be proclaimed from the rooftops.”
– Luke 12:2–3

As of Monday, June 7, 2010, the U.S. will have been in Afghanistan for 104 months, more than eight-and-a half years, surpassing the war in Vietnam. In his December 2009 West Point speech, President Obama announced a U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan would begin in July 2011. However, he set no end date, leaving open the possibility that U.S. combat troops could remain there indefinitely.

The call for a firm withdrawal end-date comes as Congress debates spending another $33 billion on troop escalation in Afghanistan.

www.rethinkafghanistan.com

“It is a real tragedy that Afghanistan has now become the longest war in American history.  This war has gone on long enough, and it’s time to end it.  We have already spent almost $300 billion dollars on Afghanistan and have lost over 1,000 American lives, all for a war that is not making us safer.” Director, Robert Greenwald, Brave New Foundation

“I think of this war as Vietnamistan. It’s essentially the same form of war: fighting people who are mainly motivated by the determination to expel foreign invaders from their country.” Daniel Ellsberg, Former US Military Analyst, RAND Corp

“[President Obama] has not promised or pledged how many troops he promises to take out or leave behind, so it’s very ambiguous. I wouldn’t be surprised if we are in this region for the foreseeable future.” Malou Innocent, Foreign Policy Analyst, Cato Institute

“Afghanistan becoming the longest war in our history forces us to ask: Just how long is long enough? How much money is too much? How many more lives is this worth? The answer is that the war in Afghanistan has already cost us too much – and it’s up to Congress to bring home the troops and refocus our priorities.” Matt Holland, Online Director TrueMajority/USAction

Google, which moved its search engine out of China last month after claims of cyber attacks on human-rights activists, says it has detected software targeted at critics of bauxite mining in Vietnam.The computers of tens of thousands of people who downloaded Vietnamese language software might be infected with malicious software that spies on users and hijacks computers to disrupt websites, Neel Mehta, of Google’s security team, wrote on Google’s online security blog on Tuesday.

”While the malware itself was not especially sophisticated, it has nonetheless been used for damaging purposes,” Mr Mehta wrote. ”Specifically, these attacks have tried to squelch opposition to bauxite mining efforts in Vietnam, an important and emotionally charged issue in the country.”

The Vietnamese and Chinese cyber attacks were comparable as they demonstrated the use of unsolicited software for political objectives, he wrote.

[Read more at the Sydney Morning Herald]

When discussing the Vietnam War or comparing it to America’s other conflicts, such as the current one in Afghanistan, the “other” Vietnam War is rarely mentioned. This is very unfortunate, because it might be just the correct path to pursue in seeking a peaceful solution.

And much like President Barack Obama, who inherited the hostilities in Afghanistan, then-President Johnson inherited the Vietnam War. As the war dragged on, some personal aides claimed Johnson was never more ecstatic over Vietnam than when pledging to send billions of dollars to help toward construction and agricultural projects and the economic growth of Southeast Asia and the Mekong River region.

[Read more at Truthout]