When WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced the massive leak of more than 90,000 classified documents, he claimed that he was exposing “thousands” of possible American war crimes. The documents show nothing of the sort. Some of the documents do detail the brutality of war, and the unsurprising fact that mistakes are made. Assange’s anti-American myopia prevented him from seeing what the documents really demonstrate: American-led forces face an especially savage enemy.

Of course, we didn’t need the WikiLeaks cache of documents to tell us this. There is plenty of evidence for the whole world to see. Still, the documents demonstrate just how pervasive the Taliban’s brutality is in this fight. The Taliban and its jihadist allies have an unparalleled lust for blood, beheading their enemies (both real and imagined) on a regular basis. It is difficult to think of a more savage act.