To be sure, there are embarrassing revelations in the thousands of cables, often raw files. Arab governments are urging the United States to strike Iran; the United States and South Korea are gaming China’s reaction to a collapse of North Korea; the portraits of heads of state aren’t flattering.
This no doubt will complicate some relations as well as American diplomacy for a while. Despots probably will go out of their way to distance themselves publicly.
Still, rather than exposing ineptitude, a reading of a fair portion of the documents suggests that they actually reflect well on U.S. policy and diplomacy. Pressure to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons isn’t effective if China, which gets much of its oil from that country, is opposed. U.S. efforts to cut a deal with the Saudis, who fear Iran, to possibly supply more oil to China come across as shrewd.
Most of the cables, along with the good gossip, reflect similar professionalism, probably to the consternation of the WikiLeaks crowd.
Take a moment to think over the sensitive U.S. diplomatic and military documents that could have been revealed over the past half-century. There would have been reports of attempted assassinations, bribes and the procurement of prostitutes for foreign leaders, or the illegal use of torture. ...
In this light, the analogy to the 1971 Pentagon Papers, which exposed the internal deliberations of Vietnam War decision-making, appears strained. Those documents chronicled years of deliberate lies and misrepresentations that caused a debacle resulting in the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives. There’s nothing comparable in the WikiLeaks.
But if this were all, I suppose I wouldn't have bothered blogging about it again. No, this is the part that struck me:
It is worth considering this when measuring the cries to lynch Mr. Assange. Mike Huckabee, a Republican presidential hopeful, wants him executed; others want to lock him up at Guantánamo Bay. His actions may be offensive; it’s not clear they’re prosecutable under the almost century-old Espionage Act.
Um, excuse me? Huckabee wants him executed? Has Huckabee completely lost his mind? Or is this just part of some get tough campaign, trying to make up for pardoning that guy who went on to kill four policemen? He does, after all, want the Republican nomination for president, which means he must show he's at least as loony as his rivals.
But either way, this is completely insane. Heck, it's insane to want to lock Assange up in Guantanamo Bay. Let's keep in mind that he's not an American, so all that idiotic ranting about treason is completely nonsensical, too. Frankly, it would be idiotic even if he were an American, but it's doubly so now.
The guy who stole these diplomatic cables should be prosecuted (though certainly not executed). But to my mind, WikiLeaks should not be liable at all. Why should it? Just because a lot of powerful people are pissed off?
Governments need to keep secrets, but they'll inevitably take it too far. Groups like WikiLeaks serve a useful function in keeping that under control. It's still illegal, of course, for Americans who are sworn to secrecy to leak such things, so that will keep most people from doing it (if their own good judgment doesn't). And so we end up with a balance.
Shutting down WikiLeaks - which is the whole point of the attacks on Assange - would be a matter of prior restraint, which has long been considered unconstitutional in America (except in strictly limited circumstances). In general, people can say or publish what they want. If it's libelous, an incitement to violence, or otherwise illegal, they can be charged with a crime and punished. But we don't let the government stop them from speaking in the first place.
When it comes to national security, there are exceptions. But the real danger in America is that our political leaders might decide to make everything an exception, all in the name of "national security." After all, that's pretty much what the Bush administration did. Whenever they met opposition to anything they wanted to do - sadly, all too seldom - they invoked national security.
Remember, this is why they tortured prisoners! Do you really think the Gestapo and the KGB didn't rationalize their own vile actions as also being necessary for "national security"? Face it, that's a loophole that can justify anything, if you let it. And that's why, in modern democracies, we need to be extremely cautious about such arguments.
In this case, there was harm done, but it wasn't anything disastrous. The man who stole these cables should indeed be punished, but the hysteria about WikiLeaks itself is just pique from government leaders who were embarrassed by the disclosures. Come on, get over it!
And in America, I'd say that we can be proud of our diplomatic corps. WikiLeaks has shined a light into a dark, hidden, secretive part of our government and found... hard-working diplomats who do their best for our country. Imagine that! Yes, we were shown things I don't much like, but nothing all that serious. In general, I'm relieved.
And I guess I'm rather proud of my country. Are these the worst secrets WikiLeaks can expose? That's all they've got, out of a quarter-million diplomatic cables? Remember earlier revelations about assassinations, torture, the whole Abu Ghraib mess? Now that was troubling! This was just mildly embarrassing, at most.
In fact, I'm thinking we should be thanking WikiLeaks for showing the world just how clean - mildly smudged, at worst - our government is!
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