While Obama has most often been compared — presidentially at least — to Kennedy, might he have a Nixonian streak?  Daniel Ellsberg, the former US Marine and military analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers during the War in Vietnam.  While the leaked docs dealt with the Johnson administrations conduct in the conflict, they started the domino effect that both brought down a President and ended a war.

Before the Obama administration starts obsessing on the Afghan War Diary whistle-blowers they might take a moment to reflect on the fact that that's the very tack that led Nixon down the path to Watergate. And while that analogy may seem a stretch, consider that the Obama administration, which made a point of transparency coming in, has turned out to be more aggressive than the Bush administration in seeking indictments for unauthorized leaks.

In fact, according to the Times:

In 17 months in office, President Obama has already outdone every previous president in pursuing leak prosecutions. His administration has taken actions that might have provoked sharp political criticism for his predecessor, George W. Bush, who was often in public fights with the press.

The Obama administration seems determined to replay history — and not the history of Camelot, but it's very messy aftermath. 

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs took the old "national security" stance when confronted with the leak, saying "I think there's no doubt this is a concerning development in operational security, and as we said earlier, it is — it poses a very real and potential threat to those that are working hard every day to keep us safe." 

This stance chillingly signals a rationalization and justification for pursuing and prosecuting whistle-blowers.  While you'd hope Obama is smarter than this, it won't surprise me a year or two from now, with the administration in shambles, if we get a "mistakes were made" moment from Gibbs to echo Nixon Press Secretary Ron Ziegler's.

Ellsberg, who now teaches at MIT, when asked his thought on the latest from WikiLeaks told Larry King:  "the analogy to the war I was helping to expose is very close."

When King asked Ellsberg, "How do you respond to the White House's assertion that this leak puts U.S. forces in danger?" Ellsberg replied:

You know, the people who put U.S. forces in harm's way, 100,000 men and women are — in Afghanistan — are the last two administrations, but particularly this one with a decision to escalate the war. It's — I think it takes a lot of — I don't know what to say, chutzpah... for people who made the reckless, foolish, and I would say, irresponsible decisions to escalate a war that I'm sure they know internally is as hopeless as these new revelations reveal it to be.

Chutzpah is something we are not used to in our current Commander-in-Chief.  Unfortunately, it seems wasted on a lost cause.  The knee-jerk reaction from the White House does not bode well for Obama or the nation.  It seems to indicate that Obama & Co. will forge ahead in Afghanistan, at great cost, despite the fact that it's obviously a no-win situation. 

That this is an open secret only makes it worse.