I'll try to say this as respectfully as I can, but it's getting to the point where whatever Glenn Greenwald says, I feel an instinctive need to stand against it, simply on principle. It's not that he doesn't occasionally make some excellent and even necessary arguments from the left; it's that he's become the personification of a movement that's so self-righteous in its outrage, so petulant in its demands, and so destructive to its overall cause by refusing to give even an inch in its quixotic quest to see the Progressive Utopian States of America come to fruition in our lifetime that it's tough to consistently take his side. All that aloof disapproval just becomes exhausting after awhile. Throw Sirota and Hamsher into the mix and you've got the intractable left's own version of the Supremes -- only more diva-ish.
With that in mind, I had to fight the urge to automatically say that Julian Assange deserves to be put up against a wall somewhere after reading Greenwald's impassioned and completely expected defense of him yesterday morning in Salon. It was always a given that the institutional left would hail Assange as a hero given that the Wikileaks founder has made it his mission to be a perpetual thorn in the side of the U.S. government by exposing all of its supposed dirty little war secrets; you knew from the very beginning that parallels would be drawn between him and Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the infamous Pentagon Papers which proved that the Johnson administration had essentially lied through its teeth in Vietnam. So to see the left tag anyone in the established media who dares to treat this modern day Horatius at the Bridge with anything other than respect as "Nixonian" is just the next logical step.
Now understand, I damn well get the irony of the American press suddenly choosing to grow a spine when interviewing Assange, even though it all but carried pom-poms to the White House and Pentagon briefings during the lead up to the war in Iraq. I also have no doubt that more than a few of the accusations that have been leveled at Julian Assange since Wikileaks became the epochal cultural force that it is were and are a direct effort to discredit him and his work. But that said, Assange's attitude when it comes to being asked tough questions about his motives and his methods -- and the potential unintended consequences of both -- has always been one of arrogant indifference. He's fully aware that what he's doing might get innocent people killed, but he's said flat-out that he's willing to accept responsibility for that because in the end, he believes, the greater good is served by the world understanding that it's being lied to about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Assange isn't just some guy who's got a hard-on for the truth and who hates the notion of state secrets; he wants to expose and bring to justice the people he believes are immoral criminals, the people who started the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and who continue to prosecute them in one form or another.
Once again, there's irony -- this time in the fact that taking a few lives in the name of the supposed greater good was the justification the Bush administration used to take us to war in the first place. And before you summarily dismiss the implied comparison, think about this: Julian Assange now holds a staggering amount of power -- the ability to literally decide who lives and who may very well die, and which countries will face the kind of scandal that can potentially topple governments. It's almost too much privilege to be at the whim of one person. Which is why there's nothing wrong with attempting to hold Assange accountable, regardless of how pissy he may get about being asked to justify his actions or face an adversarial press. Anyone who refers to the unfortunate and unintended deaths that may occur as a result of those actions as "collateral damage" -- and Assange has, in those very words -- is operating on at least somewhat the same level as the governments which are often rightly criticized for making such blithe distinctions.
But there's another thing worth exploring here: The question of whether, in the internet age, the age of seemingly absolute media transparency, war can survive. Not just the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but any war. Now that it's almost impossible to hide the reality of what armed conflict is -- how brutal and devastating it is to those on both sides of the gun, how innocence and morality are often the very first casualties of it -- will there ever be such thing as a truly "just" war again? Julian Assange and those who laud his efforts and who believe he's entirely justified in indiscriminately spitting sensitive information into the ether -- not even filtering it through, say, a responsible press, as Ellsberg once did, but just putting it all out there and letting the chips fall where they may -- these people likely wish to see the entire concept of war become a relic of the past, a modern day impossibility, made so by the inability to keep anything a secret anymore. The problem with this, of course, is that sometimes war really is necessary; there will always be people or situations which leave you no other option but to fight. And those fights will always be ugly. Innocent people will die. Once moral people, their psyches turned inside out, will kill without cause. Governments and generals will make decisions that seem unspeakably ghastly. Because war truly is hell.
And as is the case with Assange, there will be nothing wrong with holding those who take us into battle and who put our men and women in the line of fire accountable. The issue then may be how much naiveté is displayed by those who choose to be insurgent whistleblowers to the battlefield horrors and propagandizing at home that go hand in hand with a lengthy war. Would you really believe that innocents aren't dying? That the military isn't engaging in tactics that many might see as underhanded? That the government isn't hiding some of the facts about both? Admittedly, there's an argument to be made that people like Julian Assange exist only because the press isn't doing its job; this is as true on many levels as it is unfortunate, because, once again, Assange isn't doing what he does to satisfy some lofty commitment to the truth -- he's doing it to serve his own agenda, which asserts that war, particularly in the modern age, is inherently immoral. He wears his personal bête noire proudly and pompously on his sleeve, and engages in his own kind of war in the service of its destruction, which he finds entirely justifiable.
But as with the governments which accept a certain number of casualties as the cost of doing business, Assange excuses his actions and the authority he feels he's entitled to wield by claiming that the cause he's fighting for is just. He washes the blood off his hands with one of the strongest cleansers imaginable: intellectual rationalization.
And those who blindly support him in his crusade, simply because it happens to gel with their own anti-war beliefs, can't seem to see the ultimate irony in that.
Follow Chez Pazienza on Twitter: www.twitter.com/chezpazienza
The illegal and unnecessary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan HAVE killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and thousands more so called "terrorists", most of who were probably paid mercinaries trying to feed their starving families.
The author clearly feels (or rather is paid by) those who wage wars from behind their desks are more valuable than all the innocent blood spilled in the name of spreading peace and democracy.
The Author can't seem to see the ultimate irony in that!!
I don't understand how people don't feel betrayed by Assange and the others on the wiki-leaks team. Are they really this naive about the world? About war? About their own 'morality'?
The Iraq war is wrong, no doubt. But that's not what this is about. Don't you all get it? It's about the self-serving agenda of a few individuals who either actually believe in utopia or who are out there to make a name from themselves...and who in the process of releasing these documents are endangering the lives of so many people throughout the world. If the leaks are indeed based on a rudimentary belief in what the leakers conceive of as 'justice' and 'truth', then it reflects a basic ignorance of the realities of international geopolitics.
Is this the consequence of living in an industrialized nation? Of being so privileged you can't see past your own nose? The arguments supporting wiki-leaks are based on economic elitism and class/racial privilege at work - a complete lack of experience of life outside your own bubble. It is not intellectual honesty.
Who is more accurate?
The US gov/MIC/MSM has demonstrated to America & the world that time and time again that none can be trusted. Individual`s (So-called whistleblowers) are necessary to bring to light the shameful acts the AM gov perpetuates in the name of [ ...enter your choice words of wisdom here....].
You should consider being the spokesperson for Boeing, Lockeed, Martin Marietta, Northrup Gruman, Raytheon, Gen Dynamics,........
However, when one cuts through the propaganda and boils his words down to the bottom line, the picture he paints is not quite so rosy.
He obviously sees the necessity for perpetual warfare, and the prospect of peace is something he views as an altruistic impossibility.
He seems to think that we need to be lied to, not only in the lead up to war but also in the execution of said wars. What is truly amazing is that he seems to acknowledge that, without the lies, we would not accept, let alone support, those wars, and that, therefor, the lies are justified.
In criticizing Wikileaks, his main concern seems to be that what was revealed could lead to some American deaths, as if American lives are somehow vastly more valuable than the lives of innocent civilians of other countries. He conveniently overlooks the fact that the only American lives that would be lost are those of the very people who are slaughtering the innocents of other countries.
It is truly sad that someone like Mr. Pazienza has a public forum to express his views. In a more civilized time he would, at best, be confined to an institution for the criminally insane or, at the very least, marginalized from civilized society.
"The issue then may be how much naiveté is displayed by those who choose to be insurgent whistleblowers to the battlefield horrors and propagandizing at home that go hand in hand with a lengthy war."
It was propaganda consisting of lies which lead the US into Iraq and it was more lies that were propagated allowing the US to conduct the Iraq and Afghanistan war(s) as we have. How can exposing the truth about how we were mislead and what we've been doing since this all started, be called propaganda?
The mentality displayed by the author of this piece is the real threat to more lives being lost and senseless wars continuing. It's people with this sort of mindset which led us into the Iraq war in the first place. Do the ends justify the means? Total death estimates due to the Iraq invasion are estimated at somewhere around a million at this time. How some of the guilty propagandists who led us into Iraq sleep with that truth, I don't know. May they're making more propaganda trying to convince theirself they weren't partly responsible?
> Julian Assange now holds a staggering amount of power -- the ability
> to literally decide who lives and who may very well die,
You were doing so well but you decided to veer off into foolishness,
Assange has no power, it is the release of the information that has
power, as the truth should, and as to free citizens it should.
It seems to me that no one was "holding Assange accountable" and that
would involve something different that asking him about some personal
attacks.
That said, Assange could indeed have said the charges are not true instead
of walking, but viewers have been conditioned to laugh at those who say
that because it is so often untrue.
Yes, and he should be fully aware that what he's doing might actually save more lives in the long run. Of course this may not matter to some if, in their view, one human life has more value when compared to another.
I suggest that you watch the entire UK Channel 4 production of Dispatches: Iraq's Secret War Files and read the "open letter on required responses to the upcoming Wikileaks Report" that Iraq vet Josh Stieber wrote. Pfc. Stieber was a true believer when he went to Iraq. After you consider this input, I'd like to hear if your above conclusions would remain the same.
Here are links to Dispatches:
Part 1 http://youtu.be/METSuKyY-t4
Part 2 http://youtu.be/3zuRGEwbyPw
Part 3 http://youtu.be/zsTOTHVm18k
Part 4 http://youtu.be/zW0yCdNDZ_g
Part 5 http://youtu.be/yHVE5maBoj0
Josh Stieber's letter: http://bit.ly/d6KvHC
I think the issue here is about "just" battle and "moral" warfare. I personally could not give a toss about invading troops suffering at the hands of Assange's revelations. I fully understand that people die in wars. But I believe only in necessary wars that are fought with the Geneva Conventions in mind and which subject themselves to the transparencies and legalities required by authoritative world bodies.
None of this exists in regards to our invasion of Iraq. We are going to have to take some hits to learn these lessons, and they are going to have to be hard, painful, catastrophic hits to ensure that they are indeed, learned.
When we start fighting "fair," people like Assange will not have the kind of power you fear.
There's lots on yours, but I don't but his seem squeaky clean