Thanks for what is the most insightful treatment of the war logs that I have read to date. In particular, I was struck by the following passage which I think gets right to the heart of the matter:

‘The problem for me is that we tend to be obsessed by the details to the detriment of the wider narrative. To put it another way: while it is important to bring individuals to justice for specific episodes, we must not lose sight of the bigger context that gave rise to these episodes in the first place. To fail to understand this would be akin to policing individual crimes without pausing to ask how crime itself might be tackled.’

Even in media outlets that are highly sceptical of the value of the Afghan mission, I have yet to see this kind of critical questioning. Instead, there is a continuing focus on the minutiae of the data and the horrible revelations contained within. This serves to geograph the issues as either being unique to Afghanistan itself or as a function of the way in which the mission has been (dis)organised. Thus, by assuming that these revelations are particular, the dominant narrative avoids asking the very kinds of probing questions that your analysis demonstrates to be absolutely essential at this time.