Wikileaks: “It’s not even close”
That quote is from the ever unbeatable civil rights blogger Glenn Greenwald on whether Wikileaks is an overall social good or not — if you were wondering, he’s answering in the affirmative. I would have to say that I agree. Greenwald has been unstoppable in covering these events, and it’s hard to say that I have anything to add — so I will just say read Glenn Greenwald.
(Quick note: many of these links are to Greenwald articles and in many occasions that relevant content is in an update or way down at the bottom of the post).
Part I
I think what has been most revealing about this new event is how our media and political class have reacted to it. Here are some thoughts on that subject:
1. It was interesting to see that some facts that people are leaving out the facts as to the nature of these documents for purposes of getting worked up. These documents are available to 3 million Americans (roughly 1% of the population). This included the 22-year-old Private First Class who leaked them, Bradley Manning. This means that, almost definitely, there are much worse documents or secrets that the government is hiding. But it also shows an increasing desire to classify large amounts of material that should not be classified in an open society/democracy. I agree with Greenwald when he says that this should be one of the major scandals of “Cablegate.”
It’s also flat-out bizarre to see facts being completely disrespected. Whether it’s Matt Lauer calling the international manhunt for Julian Assange “over” when he turned himself in to police once there was a valid arrest warrant for him in the UK… or TIME magazine being completely wrong about Wikileaks “indiscriminate” publication of the cables… or a transparency advocate/watchdog making misleading remarks about Wikileaks releasing plans for a nuclear fission device even though those plans were from 1947 and were largely in the public domain for a few years before Wikileaks released them. It’s sad to see what should be the foundation of journalism — facts — being slowly eroded.
2. As people have been quick to label Manning’s actions as treason, they have left out the fact that Manning could have sold these secrets to Russia or China. He didn’t do that, but instead released them to the public so that they could be aware of the truth at extreme personal danger to himself.
3. There was very little historical or or hypothetical precedents. Wikileaks is quite comparable to The New York Times that published the Pentagon Papers or The Washington Post that published the Watergate articles. People are concentrating on Assange’s political statements without taking into account that Wikileaks is a journalist group. They publish documents given to them — they don’t seek out documents based on their political motives which is what people would have you think — just like any other journalist outfit. Also, they do a much better job of this than anyone else.
To speak of the hypotheticals that aren’t being thrown around/taken into account, no one is pointing out how much of the same people blowing smoke out of their ears at this incident would probably quietly applaud if these were diplomatic cables leaked from the Chinese government. This really questions the authenticity of the attacks against Wikileaks as an organization.
While everyone is focusing on how bad Wikileaks is for this incident, I would like to hear their thoughts on the release of documents by Assange that showed corruption by an Kenyan official and turned an election. This is not to mention how Sarah Palin applauded Wikileaks for releasing the “climategate” documents last year, but now wants Assange hunted.
4. It is absolutely astounding how American companies have bent to the government intimidations and demands on “supporting” Wikileaks. That’s not to mention how astounding these government intimidations have been. There is a real cognitive disconnect, as Greenwald has shown, in how people are treating Wikileaks and how people are treating the New York Times, even though their actions as publishers with this recent incident have been, basically, indistinguishable.
5. It seemed to me that people didn’t concentrate all that much on Assange himself — or least less than I expected. So I was pleasantly surprised by that. Though I guess I have to lower my expectations some further notches on just how insane Christopher Hitchens is.
6. Wikileaks has been surprisingly professional this time around. I think very good critiques have been made on their failure to redact names of Afghani informants who were then at danger— though the Obama administrations deserves quite a bit of blame because they could have helped these innocents (who were also the people helping them) but put political considerations above them. I also think Wikileaks deserves criticism/rebuke for their manipulation of how the Apache helicptor video was presented.
But to date, as Greenwald notes, Wikileaks have only released the memos that other new organizations have released and used their redactions as well. I think this shows a lot of growth on their part, though it’s unfortunately not being acknowledged.
7. It’s pretty creepy how, as again Greenwald notes, establishment journalists and politicians are lock-step on Wikileaks.
As a disclaimer, I would like to point out that I don’t just blindly swallow everything Greenwald writes. Much of his writing is hard to disagree with because he is so diligent in presenting the facts and the whole; he also does a very good job of escaping a situation and looking at it from multiple views. He does include some of his own political opinions in his commentary, and some of those I do agree with and some of those I don’t agree. For instance, I agree that Wikileaks is, overall, a social good, but I would disagree with calling Bradley Manning an unparalleled hero, but I do view Manning in a positive light.
Part II
It’s also interesting that the people are so caught up/fixated by the controversy or the novelty of the rogue website deal that they are missing the very interesting and important revelations that are in the leaked cables. Here are just a few of not:
1. Sec. Clinton had her staff spy on members of the U.N.
2. Arab leaders are really concerned with Shiite Iran as the biggest security threat, while their people barely share that concern at all but overwhelmingly see Israel and the U.S. as the biggest security threat. This shows an incredible disconnect between the rulers we support and the people who we say should democratically have a voice in their country’s proceedings.
3. We and the Yemenis have both been lying about who is doing the bombings in South Yemen.
Wow, I just realized that Greenwald wrote a similar and more in-depth list at the bottom of his Joe Lieberman post.* I’m going to stop and just turn it over to him, which maybe I should have been doing this whole time…
Part III
Anyways, this gets me to the part where I get back to the quote that I made my title of. While I’m not happy to see the debate about Wikileaks social worth take center stage after this latest leak — as I stated above —I’ll add my two cents…
1. I think it’s a really sad sign that the American people have side with the government
This was originally a place with a deep distrust of government or at least a desire for limited government. It’s hard to believe that a rise of 2% of government spending as it relates to GDP constitutes socialism but the govern, but warrant-less wiretapping is OK, the ability for the president to execute an American citizen abroad with no trial is OK, evoking the State Secrets Privilege to dismiss entire lawsuits is Ok .
This former Bush strategist has it exactly right when he writes,
In Washington’s polarized political environment, Republicans and Democrats seem to agree on a few things: That the government, in the name of fighting terrorism, has the right to listen in on all of our phone conversations and read our e-mails, even if it has no compelling reason for doing so. That the government can use machines at the airport that basically conduct the equivalent of strip searches of every passenger. That the government, for as long as it wants, can withhold any information from the public that it decides is in the national interest and is classified. And that when someone reveals this information, they are reviled on all sides, with the press corps staying silent.
2. It is true that Wikileaks as a small group of activists is releasing more classified information from whistle-blowers than the rest of the world combined. That is pretty remarkable and applaudable. Also they do it in a way that puts an emphasis on getting the truth out instead of respecting the wishes of those in power. Greenwald points outhow the American press hasn’t had such a good record on this even when it was helping whistleblowers release secretive and important files:
When the NYT learned in 2004 that the Bush administration was illegally eavesdropping on Americans without warrants, George Bush summoned the paper’s Publisher and Executive Editor to the Oval Office, demanded that the story not be published, and the paper complied by sitting on it for a full year until after Bush was safely re-elected. When The Washington Post’s Dana Priest learned that the CIA was maintaining a network of secret prisons — black sites — she honored the request of “senior U.S. officials” not to identify the countries where those prisons were located so as to not disrupt the U.S.’s ability to continue to use those countries for such projects…Both WikiLeaks and Manning have stated that The Washington Post’s David Finkel, when writing his book on Iraq two years ago, had possession of the Apache helicopter video but never released it to the public
Again, there may be legal issues here that are out of my ballpark but in all these cases the desire of these large, mainstream journalist groups to not get in trouble with the government seem to be a privileging of self-protection over loyalty to the truth. Wikileaks’ values, on the other hand, seem to balance this equation in a way that is a lot more respectable.
3.I’m partial to arguments that say that the U.S. government has more open with information between different sectors after 9/11 and this will cause them to further compartmamentalize their information and be more secretive. This is a seemingly logical argument but it’s all hypothetical.
But what I hope would be kept in mind with these arguments is that acknowledgment that Wikileaks should not be held responsible for the political effects of their leaks. Yes, they should consider how their leaks affect innocent bystanders — which is something they didn’t do with the Afghanistan war logs but are doing now — but political considerations, should not be their business. This brings me to my next point…
4. I see American foreign policy over the past decade or more to of a force for bad than a force for good, and against my hopes, Obama’s presidency have confirmed my worries that this will be a long-term problem.** I really thought Obama would bring reform, and he has in some areas, but in many areas he is entrenching — and as a liberal giving validation — to many really awful policies/ideas. But in many ways, I see that certain aspects of the American military or the foreign policy establishment have no immediate plans for being reformed and that’s really discouraging.
Posts like this one Assange’s strategy to take down the U.S. government or at least stop it from functioning properly by leaving it to its own worst impulses seem very abstract and grandiose. I can see the reasoning but I’m not sure this is actually what will occur, even if that’s what Assange hopes for.
I don’t know where I side on the reform vs. revolt side, but I think that having the truth out will probably, in the long run, be positive.
I’m susecptible to critiques about Assange’s leadership and behavior and think it would be best if there wasn’t a meglomaniac or pseudo-meglomania or whatever, and just have someone more low-key than him.
But, really, all things considered, “It’s not even close.”
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*The New Yorker’s Amy Davidson has some more good stuff in this department).
**The New Republic’s John Judis had a reaction to the Cablegate along the same lines.
