Guilt Assanged

The U.S. says Wikileaks has put lives at risk.

Assange's Useful Idiots

Christopher Hitchens on the founder of WikiLeaks:

The cunning of Julian Assange's strategy is that he has made everyone complicit in his own private decision to try to sabotage U.S. foreign policy.

248,500 Secrets To Go

Cautioning that WikiLeaks has so far released only a tiny fraction of its purloined national security documents, the Nixon Center's Paul Saunders hints that President Obama's plumbers should consider the nuclear option:

Bluntly, Washington must make an example out of WikiLeaks and its enablers, whether companies or private citizens in the United States or other countries. This should not be limited to law enforcement alone, though that may be the only option in some cases. Foreign governments’ cooperation in these efforts should be a talking point in every conversation the United States has with them about WikiLeaks.

Julian Assange's Nonlinear Thinking

Julian Assange's cloudy, self-satisfied prose reminds me of the Unibomber's:

The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive "secrecy tax") and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption.

Hence in a world where leaking is easy, secretive or unjust systems are nonlinearly hit relative to open, just systems. Since unjust systems, by their nature induce opponents, and in many places barely have the upper hand, mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance.

In opposing the decisions of a self-appointed know-it-all about what secrets should remain as such, I'm not expressing fear and paranoia. I'm worried about the rational conduct of the government's business and the safety of those who live under tyrannical governments and yet are willing to provide U.S. contacts with valuable information.

In view of Assange's implied desire to nonlinearly hit less open or unjust systems, I'll be looking forward to reading more news from Beijing and the Kremlin. But does Wikileaks even have sources in those governments who are willing to take the risk of nonlinearly hitting their bosses? That's why Assange's whole argument is bogus. Logic as well as Wikileaks' pattern make clear that the governments of free nations are far more likely to be the victims of leaks, which means that it's those regimes, and not authoritarian or totalitarian ones, that will experience "minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms."

Besides, if Assange got the secret Moscow and Beijing papers, would he have the guts to publish them? Palin and Huckabee talked about hunting him down. Putin and Hu might actually do it, and once they caught him, extradition probably wouldn't be an issue.

Anglileaks

Thanks to Wikileaks, we know that the British ambassador to the Vatican warned that the Pope's shepherd-stealing could lead to anti-Catholic discrimination and violence in England.

Holy Sheik

I'll leave aside the inappropriateness of "an Australian journalist and Internet activist" deciding which classified documents pertaining to the security of my country should be made public. On this question, I trust Barack Obama a lot more than Julian Assange. I'll bet Obama's beginning to develop an appreciation of Richard Nixon's frustration over the Daniel Ellsberg's leak of the Pentagon Papers (which led to the Plumbers, which led to Watergate). I also appreciate the care the New York Times put into its decision to publish 100 of the leaked documents, some of them redacted at the request of the Obama administration.

Beyond the appalling fact of the leak itself, so far the biggest story seems to be this:

[T]he cables reveal how Iran’s ascent has unified Israel and many longtime Arab adversaries — notably the Saudis — in a common cause. Publicly, these Arab states held their tongues, for fear of a domestic uproar and the retributions of a powerful neighbor. Privately, they clamored for strong action — by someone else.

And this:

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia...according to another cable repeatedly implored Washington to “cut off the head of the snake” while there was still time.

The king is shown here. Other Arab leaders concur with his view.

The sheiks rarely utter a public criticism of Iran and yet privately urge the U.S. and Israel to start a war that could end up making Iraq and Afghanistan look like sideshows. What's the basis of these warmongers' inauthentic public solidarity with Tehran? They're Arabs and the Iranians, Persians, so they're not bound by ethnicity. Both Saudi Arabia and Iran are tyrannies that practice apartheid against women, but that's probably not it. Within Islam, Sunni and Shiites are rivals, which could be part of the reason the sheiks want the mullahs snuffed. But they'd never have said so openly, because far more important is their ostensible mutual hatred of Israel -- which, these documents make clear, the Saudis actually hate somewhat less than they hate Iran.

So what's the right U.S. policy? It's certainly not fighting a war for the sake of the Saudis' interests or regional standing, oil or no oil. Do we go to war preemptively to stop the Iranian nuclear program for our own or Israel's sake, as Lindsey Graham and others have advocated? Only if we think the Iranians are lunatics who would invite the obliteration of their civilization by using their bomb, against Israel or any other U.S. ally or interest. But if the Tehran leaders are rational like everyone else in the world, then they can be influenced, bought, and if necessary deterred. That should be the basis of U.S. policy, just as in the Cold War, when the Soviet Union threatened our interests far more than Iran does.

As for whether Israel launches a strike, is it too naive to say that that's Israel's business?