It struck me that it would be wrong to form an opinion about the latest Wikileaks debacle without having the slightest clue what the content really offered. Others rushed to support it. Others rushed to condemn it.
My Congressman, Peter King, called for blood. That’s why we like him, he’s very predictable. Just don’t get too close when he’s on a roll, or you’ll get a shower. Besides, it’s not like you can’t guess what he’s got to say, so there’s no particular reason to pay attention to him. Reporters usually just reprint former statements and change the names. It saves on shoeleather.
I suspect that nothing in the Wikileaks dump is either new or surprising to anyone involved in the game. Countries are afraid of other countries with bombs? No kidding. People don’t trust each other, and don’t always say nice things about each other behind their back? Surprise, children. This happens. Bigtime politicians and diplomats are aware of this happening. They won’t suddenly hate us and shoot our soldiers because of it.
Did the dump compromise world affairs, or, as my guy King says, put “American lives at risk all over the world.” Nah. This was low-level stuff, sniping nonsense. A “secret” classification covers the luncheon menu. Dinner rates “top secret,” and you’ll never know about the midnight snack.
Like many of my “ilk,” I’m concerned that there are zealots in our government planning and executing nefarious, anti-American activities under cover of darkness. There’s no doubt that this goes on, and that we may never know what our government is doing with the power we’ve bestowed upon it. There’s no doubt, at least to me, that some of these things are terribly wrong, from torture to rendition to the mundane violation of constitutional rights in the cause of some zealot’s bizarre vision of freedom.
Is government, a creature that putatively exists to serve the citizenry, entitled to maintain a secret existence that defies its authority and legitimacy? To those who believe they have a higher calling, a clearer vision, than the stupid groundlings like me, the answer is “absolutely.” To those disinclined to give the government free rein to do all the nasty work behind the scenes that some Cheney wannabe deems necessary, this is our nightmare.
And yet, it’s naive and counterproductive to believe that every word, thought, idea transmitted between the people who are charged with doing the work of government should be seen by all. There must be freedom to say things privately that wouldn’t be diplomatically palatable publicly. To express honest thoughts between people on the same side is necessary, and to contend otherwise is childish.
The problem is distinguishing between things that are kept secret because they are wrong and those engaged in wrongful conduct are hiding them from the public, and things that are merely routine communications that express ideas best undisclosed.
Julian Assange isn’t qualified to make that call, and lays no such claim. He provides the forum, while others provide the content. My guy King’s call to treat him as a criminal is not merely the silliness one expects from the our little bulldog, but misdirection. It’s much easier to point the finger of blame at Assange than clean up the mess of three million people with clearance to access documents classified as “secret,” or even find out which of those millions was the leaker.
Assange is neither hero nor villain. Wikileaks is only as significant as the value of its contents at any given moment. As WindyPundit put it,
Then there’s WikiLeaks itself. Their About page professes all kinds of high-sounding motives, promising to reveal truths that evil people want hidden. It includes a list of stories they’ve broken, some of which sound pretty interesting.Yet there’s damage in disclosure that in no way relates to revealing truths that evil people want hidden. Sometimes, secrets are just secrets, and should remain secrets. Sorry, but nothing evil here. Not every secret reveals a nefarious scheme.
It would behoove us to exercise occasional restraint, maybe even discretion, in the dumping (as if we had something to do with it) or applauding the disclosure of anything and everything relating to government. We sometimes behave like kids playing on the school football team, believing that it’s always a battle between good and evil, and their side is always evil.
No one can run a government that’s completely open and apparent. The things that normal folks do, like say a curse word, snipe about an adversary (or ally), comments on the physique of a foreign national, are best kept under wraps. This isn’t to suggest that evil schemes should be kept in the shadows, but that we must maintain some degree of maturity about international and intramural relations. Everything should not be disclosed. No nation can function that way. Somehow, a distinction must be drawn that allows our nation to function while providing the forum for evil schemes to be disclosed. We need both.
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Yes, the wikileaks dump was excessive. Wikileaks, however, is not an editing service. It is an operation to record, with much of what is recorded exposure of matters ranging from significant to trivial. Still one has to make a generalized assessment of what is going on: And this is that in no way is anything wikileaks has done as threatening or destructive as what the government has been doing since the second term of the Bush the Younger administration and continues to do into the Obama administration. The excessiveness of the wikileaks dump is a response to the excessiveness of government secrecy. For me, the wikileaks dump evidences what I have long thought–and in fact have learned in being targeted for witness intimidation by state law-enforcement people–namely, that government today has somehow come to the position that it requires the prerogative to act criminally at times of its choosing. I see the wikileaks dump as a challenge to this principle government has assumed.
Scott, just as some healthy tissue is sometimes removed in major surgery, so also, in the case of Wikileaks, a very blunt tool is being used to bust the huge pustule. Secrecy is no longer the important matter. Crimes are being committed, and through Wikileaks, have come to light. I would call Wikileaks a journalistic enterprise. It has protections under the US constitution. It has revealed government malfeasance. That’s why we hear the cries of people like Mr. King. It is a crying out of one whose infected limb is about to be amputated. Thus the thrashing and irreverent, incoherent outcry. Another question to be asked are whether the US has the legal reach to do anything about it.
An interesting analogy, and apt in many respects. But then, if the healthy tissue happens to be part of the brain, the surgery may be a success though the patient dies.
“and you’ll never know about the midnight snack”…
… or the identity and sex of that midnight snack
I wouldn’t be too glib about dismissing the possibility of putting lives in danger–though it’s unlikely that they’ll be American lives. Way back in 1979, when the US Embassy was seized in Tehran, several hundred people were put up against the wall (not for a TSA grope) in Iran because their names appeared on guest lists to embassy functions. We might treat our ‘leakers’ well, sometimes even award them Pulitzer Prizes, but that’s not the norm in vast parts of the world.
I don’t believe, for a second, that Assange is interested in international transparency. Where are the Australian cables, or those from China or Russia? Israel, Egypt? Surely there must be a disaffected bureaucrat willing to spill.
What Assange did do, though, was to scoop US law. Those cables would have been declassifed no later than 25 years from their writing.
What Assange also accomplished was to complicate US diplomatic reporting for the next X years.
No one would ever expect you to be too glib about it, but if you’re inclined to raise the potential of people’s lives being in danger, you need to have more than your personal gut and a 30+ year old unrelated anecdote. Do you labor under the belief that you have deeper insight into Assange’s motives than, say, anyone else? Do you posses magic powers?
Ah – another half-assed attempt to analyze the situation with rational decision theory – where we evaluate the costs and benefits of the alternatives and maximize the expected payoff. It’s the best approach, but it doesn’t always work, because it assumes all the alternatives are known and the costs/benefits are accurately evaluated. Space shuttles do blow up on the launch pad, no? – even though many very smart people thought very hard about everything they could conceive of going wrong.
Even in speculation wonderland, it would only be fair to evaluate the complement of the releases putting “lives in danger” – what about the lives being put in danger if the releases hadn’t been made? For example, if the public had gotten accurate information about Iraq instead of being railroaded into a war that has claimed 100k+ lives?
Who cares about Assange’s motives or his sex life? He has certainly effected releases of information some of which really should be known by “people” who think they participate in “a government of the people, by the people, for the people”.
Oops – this was intended as a reply to John Burgess but put it in the wrong box and sent it off…