Wikileaks Is NOT Transparency – It Is Political Gamesmanship
It’s very rare that I take on one of my own, but I was completely taken aback by Joe The Prophet’s post on Wikileaks of earlier today.
There were several excerpts in that post that left my skin crawling.
- “I am a 100% supporter of Wikileaks.org.” 100%, huh? Not one single question about their motives, or what’s at stake? “Transparency” is the new political buzzword to accompany the advent of globally-networked technologies in the 21st century, in much the same way that “independence from foreign oil” has been a buzzword since the days of the Nixon Administration, when Saudi Arabia took charge of OPEC, and oil prices skyrocketed – note that not in 40 years has America actually found that independence. It is designed to alleviate fears – not to become a manifest reality of political life.
- “…I have yet to see any direct proof that it [has compromised American troops on active duty].” Aside from the fact that you fail to recognize that we classify information to protect our human and physical assets in the first place, exactly what constitutes “proof?” How many bodies do you need to see? How many coffins with American flags draped over them before you realize what a categorically bad idea Wikileaks is?
- “In April, Wikileaks released video of a U.S. helicopter attack on civilians.” And according to this Benjamin Friedman piece from CATO @ LIBERTY, Julian Assange is playing politics with the war in Afghanistan, calling the video “Collateral Murder” despite the pilots’ obvious attempts to comply with the rules of engagement:
- “This has bad news written all over it for the President choosing to continue the Afghan war, but it doesn’t mean much better for the Republican party.” You’ve already fallen for the political gamesmanship angle, without considering the consequences for the men and women on the ground!
My problem with WikiLeaks is its practice of stamping its politics on its leaked documents. For example, in April, when it released that gruesome video of U.S. Apache helicopter pilots in Iraq enthusiastically killing civilians that they mistook for insurgents, WikiLeaks titled the video “Collateral Murder,” despite the obvious efforts of the pilots to comply with the rules of engagement.
Now rather than simply put its documents on the web and let people draw their own conclusions, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange holds a self-congratulatory press conference where he declares “it is our experience that courage is contagious” and compares the document release not just to the leak of Pentagon Papers but to the opening of the Stasi archive in East Germany. Certainly U.S. forces in Afghanistan have committed war crimes (it would be hard to run a war of this scale and avoid them completely) and spun the war’s progress. If these documents reveal more of those doings, that’s a good thing. But even the harshest critic of the war’s conduct ought to be able distinguish it from the activities of a Stalinist secret police force. I bet that the Stasi, faced with a similar leak problem, would have found a way to plug it by now.
Grandiosity is also evident in Assange’s recent response to transparency advocate Steve Aftergood’s critique of WikiLeaks seeming lack of privacy standards. In one paragraph, Assange irrelevantly brags that he spoke before European parliamentarians, asserts that “WikiLeaks not only follows the rule of law, WikiLeaks is involved in creating the law,” announces its opposition to “plutocrats and cashed-up special interests” (not secrecy?), and then claims to have inspired Senate legislation to make Congressional Research Service reports public, even though bills to that effect predate his organization’s existence by nearly a decade.
I come from a long line of military veterans. My father, in fact, did classified work for the US Air Force (when he wasn’t caring for the fighting force as a staff cardiologist). His stint in missile launch command has since been declassified, and so I can talk about it here. Many of the military’s successes are also classified. Why? Because if you find a tactic that is successful, you don’t want information about its execution falling into the wrong hands, lest it be exploited.
"Classified" is NOT subject to interpretation!
Has nobody stopped to think that the only classified information Wikileaks has divulged has reflected poorly on the United States? Has nobody considered the political motivations? I’m guessing Joe The Prophet hasn’t, since he writes of the organization he supports 100%, “The organization has grown in popularity/notoriety, and the U.S. government doesn’t know if it’s a mere fad organization that got lucky, or the start of a trend that would be devastating to government secrecy.” The government has – in many cases, particularly relating to national security – very compelling reasons for keeping secrets! And when did hunting down Osama bin Laden become an issue of political popularity? Is Joe The Prophet advocating mob rule? If so, let him defend it!
Not since the 4th grade when I took piano lessons while the rest of middle school played football have I liked fighting. I do not like war, and I wish that we, as a nation, weren’t eyeballs deep in two of them. But to herald Julian Assange and Wikileaks as some sort of courageous and heroic raconteur of the evils of the American Empire is reckless.
