

In defense of Wikileaks - greatgoof
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/10/25/is_wikileaks_a_good_thing_or_not

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greyman
There is also a good summary of the leak in this Spiegel article ->
[http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,druck-72402...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,druck-724026,00.html)
(in English).

It's quite revealing just how brutal the war in Iraq has been, with all
parties willing to commit atrocities (al-Qaeda, Iraq police and U.S. army).
It's definitely a much stronger image than media have been serving to us about
the war.

Also, for those who feel some sympathy towards al-Qaeda, the reports about
their decapitations practices are also quite enlightening. ("A document dated
Nov. 3, 2007, for example, relates that an Iraqi woman approached US troops to
tell them that Islamists had cut off her baby's head. The officers sent out a
few soldiers to look into the matter. The report ends: "Confirms baby is
decapitated."").

~~~
dennisgorelik
That's such a good article from Sipegel. I submitted it as a separate article
on HN:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1835767>

------
loewenskind
>It is also increasingly clear that the U.S. taxpayer is funding a vast array
of clandestine activities of which they are only dimly aware

Increasingly clear? This book was published in the _early thirties_ [1]. This
has been _totally_ clear for decades for anyone who cared to look. The quest
is; what (if anything) can be done to _make_ people care what the government
is inflicting on other peoples in their name and with their money?

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket>

~~~
rokamic
I was going to question that idea too. That book you just brought to my
attention is amazing. A man in that time, speaking out like that? Wow.

~~~
hugh3
Remember, there was a huge strain of aggressive pacifism in the US in the
1930s, which is how the US stayed out of World War 2 until 1941. Come to think
of it, there was a pretty huge strain of aggressive pacifism in England as
well, which is how Hitler got as far as he did.

The 1930s was pretty much peak hour for pacifism. We'd just had World War 1 to
remind us that war was a terrible thing, and hadn't yet had World War 2 to
remind us that war wasn't the worst possible thing.

One could argue that the more popular pacifism gets the more likely war
becomes, but it would be overly trite and based on an insufficient sample.
It's a good line though.

~~~
greatgoof
I'm not so sure about the Aggressive Pacifism. From the Wikipedia article
about the book --> The book is also interesting historically as Butler points
out in 1935 that the US is engaging in military war games in the Pacific that
are bound to provoke the Japanese. "The Japanese, a proud people, of course
will be pleased beyond expression to see the United States fleet so close to
Nippon's shores. Even as pleased as would be the residents of California were
they to dimly discern through the morning mist, the Japanese fleet playing at
war games off Los Angeles."

~~~
hugh3
Well, I didn't say that _everyone_ in the 1930s was a pacifist. Obviously
plenty of people weren't.

Wikipedia on 1930s pacifism: _The British Labour Party had a strong pacifist
wing in the early 1930s and between 1931 and 1935 was led by George Lansbury,
a Christian pacifist who later chaired the No More War Movement and was
president of the PPU. The 1933 annual conference resolved unanimously to
"pledge itself to take no part in war". "Labour's official position, however,
although based on the aspiration towards a world socialist commonwealth and
the outlawing of war, did not imply a renunciation of force under all
circumstances, but rather support for the ill-defined concept of 'collective
security' under the League of Nations._

------
sausagefeet
I think I agree with this article for the most part. In my opinion, for
important things you need people on pushing the extremes so you can get to the
healthy middle. My friend often quotes to me "If you get what you asked for,
you didn't ask for enough", and I think people who make the extreme claims
(there should be no secrets, all software should be open source) are helping
us people that actually want a middle ground.

------
retree
A good article. Too often I feel the debate about wikileaks has become
polarised.

On the one hand you have those saying everything should be open and available.
And then on the other hand you have those who say that nothing should be
leaked because it puts people at risk.

There is no doubt that, in the world, there are some very unpleasant people
who want to harm/kill other people, and for that reason surely some things
should be kept secret? But then surely those trying to protect us should be
held accountable? There is a fine line, and people draw that line at different
points.

Wikileaks provides a valuable service, but I do find it ironic that, for an
organisation that tries to cut through and destroy government PR/propoganda,
Julian Assange is very good at using similar PR to further his goals.

John Young of Cryptome has been very happily leaking documents without the
whole "not staying in the same place for than 2 nights" mentality that Assange
has.

~~~
hugh3
I'd trust Julian Assange a lot more if I thought that his goal were _actually_
some sort of obsessive-compulsive desire for openness of information, rather
than fighting against US interests.

~~~
rhizome
You don't need to trust Assange, he's only providing facts.

------
esponapule
I am thankful the world has wikileaks

------
DanielBMarkham
_But unless you're willing to believe that the people in charge are always
right and that their lies are therefore justified (and if you think that, you
haven't been paying attention), you ought to be in favor of any mechanism that
brought more facts to light._

First, I'm a huge fan of leaking information. We have a thousand times too
much secrecy as we can stand already. People who leak things -- especially
things that the government finds inconvenient for political reasons -- should
be praised.

Having said that, this author is arguing at the extremes. I am not in favor of
using any mechanism to bring facts to light. Murder? Bribery? Torture? Nope, I
expect leakers to come forward honestly, not under duress. Do I support the
selective leaking of information by foreign intelligence services? Nope,
because the purposeful leaking of information to sway public opinion is called
propaganda, and it's the most effective when it's true information. Things
exist in a context.

Because of the context question, it's actually _better_ that wikileaks dumped
thousands of records. If, say, there had only been a couple hundred, folks
could easily charge that the docs were hand-picked.

Second, and this is more important, as much as I love leaking and openness, I
am not a child. Some amount of secrecy is necessary for a government to
function. Salary negotiations, diplomatic memos, military threat assessments,
signals intelligence -- lots of things need to be keep secret. Even if you
have a complete bunch of idiots in charge of running things, that doesn't mean
that _any_ method used to dump _any_ kind of secret information is good. And
that's exactly the point the author is making in the quote above.

I hate to say this, and I know you guys are going to downvote me for it, but I
can't help but think that this all gets back to political affiliation: if you
don't like the politics, then leak the information. It's the good guys against
the military-industrial complex. If you like the politics, then it's a crime
to leak the information. It's the zealous idiots against the sane organization
of humanity into governmental structures.

I don't buy any of it. Not everything has to be open, and we must have an
extreme amount of more public information available in order to function
intelligently as voters. Both of these views can coexist. That doesn't mean
that what Wikileaks did is right: in fact if they get somebody killed? I'd
view them more as another combatant rather than a player for good in all of
this. I have to draw the line with leaks -- whether I like the politics or not
-- with getting people killed. After all, one of the main reasons we have an
executive branch is to put people in charge of making sensitive decisions
based on secret information that get people killed. Looking over their
shoulder every minute is not part of our role in a democracy. Checking up on
them and getting as many facts as we can? Sure. But not micro-managing.

If the executive branch didn't have secret information and make sensitive
decisions that large portions of the population didn't believe in? There would
be no point in having it. The president is nothing special -- he's just
another schmuck -- but he does have a defined job and he needs the tools to do
that job. Secrecy is part of the tools he needs, no matter how much we wish it
weren't so.

~~~
potatolicious
I found that particular quote to be incredibly disingenuous:

> _"But unless you're willing to believe that the people in charge are always
> right and that their lies are therefore justified (and if you think that,
> you haven't been paying attention), you ought to be in favor of any
> mechanism that brought more facts to light."_

This reeks of "if you're not with us, you're against us" bullshit. So, because
I am not in favor of complete carte blanche leakage of everything using
whatever immoral means necessary, I'm suddenly a sheep that believes the
government is always right?

No thanks author guy, I live in a world with shades of grey as opposed to some
juvenile form of black and white.

~~~
anigbrowl
Ironically, this kind of misplaced self-assurance was what led us ( _qua_ 'the
west') to trash our own standards on issues like torture and human rights in
the first place.

Though Assange has a propagandist air which I find troubling, these leaks
basically strike me as a good thing. The accumulated insults to conscience and
intellect over the course of the Iraq war have long eclipsed any legitimate
strategic interests that were at stake. I think a period of review and self-
examination is in order.

~~~
potatolicious
I'm still on the fence about WikiLeaks. Assange gives me a bad vibe - and the
handling of the "Collateral Murder" video was hamfisted and strictly
unprofessional. As you said, the propagandist air bothers me greatly.

There's leaking the truth, and then there's the deliberate omission of one
truth for another in order to advance an agenda (in this case, the complete
omission of the after-action report that states without a doubt that the
insurgents in the video _were_ armed, and a RPG _was_ present in the group).

The mass leak of Iraq War documents recently is much more balanced (if only by
law of large numbers), and has done _some_ to assuage my concerns about
WikiLeaks' responsibility as an organization. Nonetheless, I cannot help but
shake the feeling that WikiLeaks is acting in its own interest as opposed to
ours, and with an egotist like Assange in charge, I'm not sure how responsible
we can trust them to be.

------
rokamic
<quote>I believe that human beings are more likely to misbehave if they think
they can shield what they are doing from public view.</quote>

I do not agree. I think that people are more likely to misbehave when they
want to misbehave, regardless of a shielding mechanism.

~~~
anonymous245
For a politician "shielding from public view" is the same as "shielding from
consequences". Do you agree?

If you still disagree with the quote, then you're saying that people will
misbehave regard of consequences.

------
melonakos
I did a very similar blog post back in August and took the other side, here -
<http://www.melonakos.com/2010/08/02/wikileaks/>

