This is because what they're doing is effective. Ineffective things don't piss people off and trigger military disinfo campaigns. The author of the WPO blog article is an AEI member, a player in the neocon agenda: not some random pundit.

>2) Assange has more power than many 3-star generals

I'm fine with that. Assange isn't killing people. 3-star generals are.

>3) Anarchy is not the same as openness... Governments can't function without secrets

Government can function with much less secrecy than it currently does. WL is serving a public need in challenging a growing regime of secrecy that blossomed under Bush and that Obama has failed to reign in.

>4) If Assange wants to play this game, he should think long and hard about where it's going to lead him... If he would rather have millions of little secrets offline and out of sight, that's what we're going to get.

Opsec has a cost. The more expensive it is to keep the secrets needed to maintain questionable military practices, the less chance these practices will continue.

>There's a certain amount of cocky self-promoting asshole about Assange. As much as I want the maximum amount of liberty, freedom, and openness, this isn't the way to make it happen.

I'll take a self-promoter over a murderer any day.

Yes he is. The information he released in the latest round of "secrets" gave away informants to people that can (and will) kill them.

If he gave information about locations of jews to the Nazis, would we say it was freedom of information?

"Government can function with much less secrecy than it currently does. WL is serving a public need in challenging a growing regime of secrecy that blossomed under Bush and that Obama has failed to reign in."

That's because Obama knows the importance of secrets.

"I'll take a self-promoter over a murderer any day."

Wikileaks failed to remove actual names. I don't see a difference.

Here's an excerpt from an interview with Assange...

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2010/s2968342.htm

TONY JONES: Well, not according to the Pentagon. They're accusing you of revealing the identities of Afghan informants and putting their lives at risk. Afghan's president, Karzai, agrees with that he says 'the breach is extremely irresponsible and shocking.' Your response to those comments.

JULIAN ASSANGE: Well we have yet to see clear evidence of that. I mean the London Times is also making this allegation today and in a quite disingenuous way, for example they mention some informers' names they say they had found and with a headline Afghan informer already dead, but when you actually read the story what you see is in fact that individual that they're mentioning died two years ago.

So there's a little bit of media manipulation occurring here. In terms of the Afghan government, it's in their interests to sort of play up the irresponsible, irresponsibility of the United States that they say has been involved in sort of collecting and permitting this data to release, be released.

Now we contacted the White House as a group before we released this material and asked them to help assist in going through it to make sure that no innocent names came out, and the White House did not accept that request.

TONY JONES: So you're saying that you offered the White House a chance to go through the documents, or officials from the White House a chance to go through the documents and single out names of people at risk. Is that correct?

JULIAN ASSANGE: Yeah that's right. Now, of course we did not offer them a chance to veto any material, but rather we told them that we were going through a harm minimisation process and offered them the chance to point out names of informers or other innocents who might be harmed and they did not respond to that request which was mediated through the New York Times who was our, acting as the contact for the four media groups involved in this.

The person who released the information.

I don't read a lot of HN lately, but this is the most irrational thread I have seen on HN for a long, long time. Quite frankly it makes me sad.

I'm not going to wave my hands around and say we're turning into reddit.

I don't see the need.

1) The level of false amnesia regarding all things Taliban, Afghanistan and Al Qaeda. There are some very not nice people there that would kill rape and murder every single person on the planet until they could convert the survivors to their particular brand of Islam. This is not a fantasy, this is their stated intent and has been demonstrated throughout the world for at least the last 10 years through a policy of terror attacks against soft targets from subways to nightclubs that have killed thousands of civilians. Anybody who pretends otherwise is a moron. I'm sorry to go to name calling, but I simply cannot have a productive debate with anybody too stupid to understand this.

2) The same idiots who think that our collective response should be...? What exactly? Whatever it is it certainly shouldn't be a military response followed by nation building.

The number of people here, right here, on Hacker News of all places, who obviously have commanded military and intelligence operations against non-uniformed combatants blended in to the local populace (and by the comments we have quite a few 3 and 4 star super generals with decades of counter insurgent operations experience), who know exactly the capabilities and limitations of not only the modern armed forces of industrialized nations, but all of the intelligence capabilities of the target countries. This is not a board about startups, the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies should come on here and discuss serious strategy, this place is a gold mine! Imagine, all these experts, on one board, and all they want to do is startup tech business and make iPhone apps! Amazing.

By the number of these self-same experts, my reading of their comments is that apparently the response to a global terror campaign is supposed to be a petition and letter campaign, sent to the Taliban HQ and 12345 Terror Lane, Springfield, Afghanistan, asking them to please kindly reconsider a policy of killing the infidel in foreign lands as part of a plan to establish a global Caliphate. Apparently this kind of thing is not only possible, but works! With the vast historic precedent put forth by all the experts here, it's amazing how misguided NATO is with their silly sniper teams and drones. Silly NATO!

Anybody who wants to talk about how Iraq was a stupid war and diverted resources from the real problems will find my agreement. Likewise if you want to talk about how the Afghan war was mismanaged, underfunded and stupidly run by incompetent bureaucrats for the better part of a decade.

But the response to the wikileaks leak should not be "OMG You mean when we conduct counter-terror operations with the combined might of NATO forces civilians might die! Holy crap, I didn't sign on for that! Let's pull the hell out and resume being terror targets because that was so much better!"

The United States (along with other European countries including Russia and other non Islamic countries like India) is a terror target irrespective of what it does in Afghanistan. If you are an American, you are (in the abstract) a terror target already and have been for a long long time. The odds of you specifically dying in a terrorist attack are (and always were) very slim.

No amount of destruction in Afghanistan will change that. Americans will die in future terror attacks whether you pull out of Afghanistan or not.

And no you don't have to have a "solution" before you say "This is not working". By that logic civilians could never decide to end a war. That is hardly democracy. There was no "solution" to Vietnam when America quit. That happened because American civilians made a decision they didn't want to keep paying in blood and treasure to "win" a faraway quagmire of a war.

"Pull out" is just as valid a suggestion as "stay on". You'd still be fighting in Vietnam if "stay and fight till victory" were the only choice to end a foolish war. A suggestion has to be opposed with reason, not rhetoric like "But ... But .. that will make us terror targets" and "Our generals surely know what they are doing (if American history is any indication this is a very dubious claim)" or "You aren't a general How would you know?"

The 9/11 attackers were Saudi but you guys went to war with Iraq. The present day epicentre of Islamic terror is Pakistan/Saudi Arabia but you guys are fighting in Afghanistan, all the while funding the Pakistanis who fund the Taliban. Wtf? A war in which you fund the people trying to kill your soldiers, and your ally's intelligence services train and provide safe havens for your enemies is not winnable.

The next Islamic terrorist attack could come from Somalia or Yemen or the United Kingdom or the Balkans or Saudi Arabia, or Iran or Indonesia or Turkey or Egypt.

Are you going to war with all of them (and stay a few decades in every ungoverned badland on the planet)? If not why do you want to stay in Afghanistan? What is the plan for "victory"? And how is "victory" defined anyway?

I (personally) want America to win (I am in general very pro American and I take some flak for it locally) but "stay on till the Taliban is no threat" is an impossible goal for victory. You don't have enough money (trillions more), or the time it would take (many decades) or the fortitude to absorb the required casualties (tens ofthousands ), to have even a low chance of success.

Absolutely no disagreement from me. But we have to decide to either passively be the victim, or at least try and do something. Pulling out and sticking a target on our foreheads is the plan of naive and ignorant idiots with a deathwish.

2) No amount of destruction in Afghanistan will change that. Americans will die in future terror attacks whether you pull out of Afghanistan or not

Absolutely no disagreement again. But we have to decide to be active or passive participants in our own fate. After a long time of a rather passive policy towards Islamists, we've chosen to be active participants. Now that we're down that road we can take a number of different strategems:

a) we can take the ultra-right approach and kill every man, woman and child in Afghanistan through systematic carpet bombing and turn Afghanistan into a nuclear glass making factory, the "get 'er done" method. I think most reasonable people see this as the last bastion of morons on cowards.

b) we can carpet bomb Afghanistan with leaflets and letters asking them nicely to please stop thinking about killing us through a systematic campaign of nightclub bombings and airplane suicide pilots as part of an effort to bring forth a particular kind of global Caliphate. If you're old enough to remember events post 1980, you'll probably understand that this is hopelessly, childishly naive, suicidal and stupid (which mystifies me why this appears to be the majority course of action here on HN considering the average intelligence people here normally display).

c) we can try some other, middle, path that involves defusing the threat by improving conditions for the average "Mohammed" via a policy of specific nation building (as much as one can do in Afghanistan) and eliminating imminent threats from people that want to do us harm.

I think c is the right path, I think c is what we're trying to do. You'll get no argument from me that c is not always the path we've followed, particularly under the prior administration (and as the data shows). The problem I think is that we were trying to do c as run by people who thought a. I'm hoping that that situation is reversing itself under a hopefully non-moronic new leadership.

But you are simply, factually incorrect in thinking that the policy or actions is or ever was to pound Afghanistan back into the stone-age.

3) And no you don't have to have a "solution" before you say "This is not working".

Yes you do in this kind of case. In fact I'd say in most cases you can't do that in any capacity in life. "This is not working" can't be followed with "everybody stop whatever it is your doing!", is must be followed with "we should do this instead". Standing still is the same as going backwards because events outside your control will always overcome and move past you.

I hope that the new strategy is in fact a new strategy and not simply a doubling down on the past 9 years of incompetently run failure. We'll find out.

4) By that logic civilians could never decide to end a war. That is hardly democracy. There was no "solution" to Vietnam when America quit. That happened because American civilians made a decision they didn't want to keep paying in blood and treasure to "win" a faraway quagmire of a war.

When I grew up, my "uncle" was a South Vietnamese General ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nguy%E1%BB%85n_Ng%E1%BB%8Dc_Loa... )who fled after the fall of Saigon and spent most of his remaining years trying to secure passage into the U.S. for his friends and family. I grew up steeped in tales of the end of that conflict. The Vietnam conflict solved itself, the U.S. (and the South Vietnamese) lost, full-stop.

More importantly, the two conflicts are not comparable in the way you are attempting to compare them. You may as well be comparing the Battle of Hastings to the Seige of Stalingrad. The Vietnamese Communists were not sending suicide bombers outside of Vietnam to your city to blow up a strategic civilian target as part of an effort to terrorize people into converting by the sword and establish a global Caliphate.

5) "Pull out" is just as valid a suggestion as "stay on". You'd still be fighting in Vietnam if "stay and fight till victory" were the only choice to end a foolish war. A suggestion has to be opposed with reason, not rhetoric like "But ... But .. that will make us terror targets" and "Our generals surely know what they are doing (if American history is any indication this is a very dubious claim)" or "You aren't a general How would you know?"

In what way would a passive response to the threat of global terrorism not be the same as sticking a target on our foreheads? If I came to your house, burned it down and started killing your family unless you converted to some particular brand of religion I happen to have chosen, you think the correct response is a shrug of the shoulders and/or do what I say? Is your brilliant stratagem to simply ignore me as I do this and hope I go away and get pushed around in the meanwhile?

I'm sorry but my and your respective worldviews are not even in the same room. I can never be convinced that the appropriate response to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda should be "meh".

6) "The 9/11 attackers were Saudi but you guys went to war with Iraq. The present day epicentre of Islamic terror is Pakistan/Saudi Arabia but you guys are fighting in Afghanistan, all the while funding the Pakistanis who fund the Taliban. Wtf? A war in which you fund the people trying to kill your soldiers, and your ally's intelligence services train and provide safe havens for your enemies is not winnable."

Agreed on all points. The U.S. response to the threat of terrorism was unfortunately crafted by ignorant, moronic, incompetent assholes who will probably never have to answer for the badness they spread across the planet. The good news is that I hope that if any good comes from the wikileaks leak is that it demonstrates conclusively how bungled and mismanaged the whole affair was quantitatively. My hope is that the new leadership is hopefully more competent to formulate a response that doesn't involve throwing a dart at a map of the world.

7) The next Islamic terrorist attack could come from Somalia or Yemen or the United Kingdom or the Balkans or Saudi Arabia, or Iran or Indonesia or Turkey or Egypt. Are you going to war with all of them (and stay a few decades in every ungoverned badland on the planet)?

None of these countries are the other. Yemen is not Somalia, Egypt is not the U.K., etc. Each place deserves it's own response. If it's the U.K. we'll probably sit down and have a chat about improving investigative responses. If it's Somalia we'll probably adopt a more "kinetic" approach. Afghanistan, in 2001, was not a place we could go and sit down and have a productive negotiation, "please stop harboring terror groups that conduct suicide operations outside your borders that kill thousands of civilians" was not a viable course of action.

8) If not why do you want to stay in Afghanistan? What is the plan for "victory"? And how is "victory" defined anyway?

I don't want to stay, it's a waste of time, lives and resources. There is no plan for victory. That is the definition of quagmire, one that we are all unfortunately in. Last I checked, the U.S. was not the only target of an Islamist terror campaign.

If I arbitrarily single you out and start beating you with my fists, do you try and make me stop? Or do you, randomly, stop being defensive and let me beat on your a little more? What's your definition of victory in a situation like that? My beating of you is arbitrary and random (in so much as you in particular are the target), there's no reasoning or convincing me that I shouldn't do that. If you want me to stop, you have to stop me. And even if you do, I might come back in a day or two and do it again. What's your strategy? You cannot talk me out of it, you cannot prevent it, you have to be where you have to be, and I have chosen you as the person to strike. You seem terribly sure that there's a way out of this type of situation that doesn't involve you fighting back.

9) I (personally) want America to win (I am in general very pro American and I take some flak for it locally) but "stay on till the Taliban is no threat" is an impossible goal for victory. You don't have enough money (trillions more), or the time it would take (many decades) or the fortitude to absorb the required casualties (tens ofthousands ), to have even a low chance of success.

Again, surprisingly, I don't disagree with you. Any sort of conclusion to this will not be a military one, but a soft one. Going back to the previous analogy, you have to figure out how to make me stop arbitrarily beating you, and once you do that, you have to implement that plan, and then see if it works, and all the while I'm beating you about the head and shoulders, so you have to defend yourself while you get your soft plan in place. We simply can't roll into Afghanistan, bomb a few caves, hold elections and wipe our hands. All that does is establish an environment that will devolve into exactly what we had before.

In real life, I suspect there are a lot of options between those extremes (and a few beyond them). You could have just bombed/droned or even better captured the top leadership of AQ (at Tora Bora for example) and hung them from lamp posts wrapped in pigskin and never said a word or claiming credit. The message would have been delivered loud and clear, with you still free to hunt down the Saudi and Pakistani financiers. You could probably still grab the lot from Quetta and Riyadh with a few strategically placed billions in the right Pakistani and Saudi pockets or a private ( and believable) threat to cut off all aid to Pakistan and impositions of weapon and other embargos unless OBL and co are trussed up and delivered to you. The generals will all fall over themselves to obey.

I still disagree with you on civilians not being able to say "enough" to their governments without putting a complete military and strategic plan in place. No government would ever get criticized or elected out by this logic.

And as for comparisons of wars, there will always be differences in any two wars. But there are also similarities and lessons to be learned.

Sure the Vietnamese didn't have a Caliphate (but communism also had an impossible goal) , but the United States getting into a battle with high moral aims impossible to fulfill militarily ("Make you and me safe from communists" - Make you and me safe from Islamists") and no clear victory definitions or path, relying on technical superiority, staying and bumbling around long enough for initially friendly host population to turn hostile, rogue units killing innocents and the resulting back lash, leaks of "classified material", presidents campaigning to stop the war and then escalating once in office, loss of prestige worldwide,deep divisions in American society people foolish enough to trust the United States left twisting in the wind and generally getting sucked into a quagmire certainly sounds familiar.

And all this has nothing to do with why Assange should necessarily take the US side in a dirty war when the USA administration doesn't care to vet the material before publication. The witch hunt in the name of "saving innocent informants" is the height of hypocrisy.

That said this thread is overly long so I'll stop contributing. Politics and HN don't mix well. Cheers and have a nice day|!

Cheers.

Specific examples would be great.

>If he gave information about locations of jews to the Nazis, would we say it was freedom of information?

The jews weren't attempting to occupy Germany at the time so probably not the most fitting comparison.

>That's because Obama knows the importance of secrets.

Absolutely. The truth can be politically damaging.

>Wikileaks failed to remove actual names. I don't see a difference.

Most people recognize the difference between dropping bombs on civilians and revealing the names of those involved in the killing trade.

We don't even need 1 person to die from stupid non-sense like this. I understand that we need transparency, but you are not playing a game right now. The probability of a death related to 'leaks' just magnified. There is no denying that. Considering I served in this war, what doesn't absolutely need to be said shouldn't be said at this time. It's like we're playing russian roulette here.

So obviously the names should have not been leaked, but I doubt that was in any way intentional. I would personally wonder how is wikileaks to know who are the informers - but perhaps they should have been more careful and not leaked any names at all.

That such a mistake, possibly due to negligence and ignorance was made - lets remember it is a really new organisation and quite inexperience and no one has done this before so they are kind of pioneers - does not justify the imprisonment of the person, or the shutting down of the website.

The rest of the leak was useful and has focused the attention of the public and also perhaps has highlighted that things are a bit of a mess. So, if the results is that the war ends no later than it absolutely needs to and your friends get to come back home perhaps sooner than otherwise and that the government is put under pressure to get things right there, then I think that's a good thing.

I do however think the fault is ultimately of the government even if something bad does happen. This information did not need to be kept secret, except of course for the names of the informants, and they should have been put in the public domain by the government itself.

This leak is over a year old. They're not going to get much in the way of here-and-now. But now we have a leak that goes into detail about how we operate. It's already a pain in the ass fighting people that look the same. We don't need to shed any light onto how we do what we do.

That's not the point. The point is that if information was given to the Germans, it would have resulted in many deaths. Occupation has absolutely nothing to do with it.

"Absolutely. The truth can be politically damaging."

Can I have your social security number, address, phone number, mother's maiden name, and when you are going to be away from your home? We have no secrets around here

"Specific examples would be great."

This tells me you haven't read any of the documents released.

Occupation doesn't generally happen without bloodshed. Involving oneself in occupation is an investment in bloodshed. The jews who died during the Nazi regime didn't make a choice to involve themselves in bloodshed.

>Can I have your social security number, address, phone number, mother's maiden name, and when you are going to be away from your home? We have no secrets around here

If I were involved in attempting to use force to extort land or resources, I would assume the risk that my identity would be exposed. This is one reason I don't involve myself in these things.

>This tells me you haven't read any of the documents released.

That makes two of us, evidently.

And the people in the documents didn't ask wikileaks to release the names to the world and potentially to their enemies. Bloodshed could be avoided, but wikileaks is willfully looking the other way.

"If I were involved in attempting to use force to extort land or resources, I would assume the risk that my identity would be exposed. This is one reason I don't involve myself in these things."

That's like saying, because you gamble at a casino, it's an accepted risk that you will lose all your money (after we just found out that the casino has been cheating at all of the games).

"That makes two of us, it seems."

There are actual names in the documents released. I'm not going to make your point for you. If you want to continue to look foolish, it's fine by me.

If someone is an informant for an occupying force they have assumed a role in the occupation. This involves risk.

>That's like saying, because you gamble at a casino, it's an accepted risk that you will lose all your money (after we just found out that the casino has been cheating at all of the games).

If you decide to gamble, you put your money at risk. You know the odds are stacked against you: you just don't know to what extent. The rational choice is not to play.

Isn't this true? Why is this being downvoted? Anyone who informs for one side in war against the other has involved himself in the war and can be expected to be punished if the other side got to know about it. This was true during the American War of Independence and is no less true now. Reconciliation might happen after the war, not during the war.

This applies to people informing against the Taliban as well as against the American/NATO occupation force. Which side is "good" is somewhat irrelevant. Which side you find "good" probably depends on where you were born more than anything else.

Stop to think about what the scenario entails. If X occupies Y, the Xes kill the Ys in great number. Releasing information that kills Xes, and thus moves the occupation closer to an end, prevents the killing of more Ys. Every soldier kills some to prevent the death of many—it's all about the numbers.

The story I've heard is that Wikileaks attempted to contact the White House, so the two parties could go through the documents and remove references to informants. The White House declined the offer. Has any evidence emerged to suggest this is untrue?

Wikileaks failed to remove actual names. I don't see a difference.

See above.

Right, so like little children that aren't responsible, they released all of the names instead.

"See above."

see above

Godwin's law so soon in this thread? Not helpful.

Don't know your history? not helpful.

It's directly applicable.

While we've got a time machine handy: If he gave information about the location and plans of Vichy officials to the French resistance, would we say it was an act of espionage/treason/terrorism and/or murder?

Here's what I'm wondering: when did it become fashionable to stick up for the Taliban? The Taliban aren't the Sandinistas. The Taliban aren't the North Vietnamese Army. They aren't even Hezbollah.

It is conceivable --- even directly observable --- that countries can survive and thrive led by any of those movements, however much we may disagree with their politics and practices and the mechanisms they used to take power. Say what you will about Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but women can go to medical school in Iran and (presumably) Lebanon.

I've read a little bit about the history of Afghanistan leading up to the Taliban. I know it was a disaster, and I know the Taliban took root in part because they managed to impose some semblance of order over a country governed essentially by banditry. But as near as I can tell, the Taliban is objectively evil. Apart from consolidating the warlordism in Afghanistan, what possible virtue can there be to defending them?

Outing innocent informants and getting them killed --- which I know hasn't been reported to have happened yet --- is bad no matter where it happens. But I don't have much of a moral qualm about directly opposing, say, the Iraq war. But I don't understand how you can construct a worldview that permits you to cheer on something that assists Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who may be the closest thing the Earth has to an actual comic book supervillain.

There's a lot of secrecy and dissembling and corruption in the world. You have to choose your battles. Wikileaks chose a really crappy one this time.

Nice strawman. Calling the folks who recklessly fire on civilians murderers may be a bit exaggerated. Human error happens and human error when the human is on the trigger of a 30 mm cannon is usually disastrous, but automatically siding those who propose a less reckless fight with the Taleban is a flaw of logic.

When you are in position of using lethal force, you must use it responsibly, with great care.

Also, removing the Taleban from power in Afghanistan was necessary, but empowering corrupt local powers is, most definitely, not the best way to employ the resources consumed in this invasion. People die in wars and we owe them to make wars short, clean and effective, so that no more people need to die other than absolutely necessary.

This whole situation is appalling. It reeks incompetency and corruption from top to bottom. It's unworthy of the high ideals that are, or, at the very least, should be, the core philosophy of the groups we authorize to use lethal force against our fellow humans.

Corruption should be eliminated.

Corrupt local replacements for the Taliban should be thwarted.

Incompetancy is bad and should be rectified.

Now, all those things being true, help me understand how it can be OK to arm the Taliban with lists of probable informants?

There is need for secrecy in war. But when this secrecy becomes a shield to protect those who should not be fighting (or commanding) it, for they are reckless, corrupt and incompetent, it's time to end it.

I am not for the indiscriminate release of information, but there has to be a middle-ground and organizations like Wikileaks provide it.

Keep in mind the US government knew what documents would be leaked before the Taleban could get access to them.

I sure hope you have enough space for the huddled masses of Afghanistan in your house since an awful lot of them are "informants".

And that's why the handler should never disclose personal data on the informant. If you can't trust the analysts down your chain, you can't protect your sources and, ultimately, yourself.

The fact the other side won't honor this ideals is what separates you from them.

When there are two groups of killers involved in a conflict recognizing the killing of one group doesn't mean one is excusing the killing of the other group.

If you are familiar with the history of the Taliban you are likely aware of the role the US played in their rise to power (http://nyti.ms/ddOTcu). The Taliban would likely not exist without the support of the US. The US didn't nurture the Taliban for the good of the people nor are they attempting to control Afghanistan for the good of the people.

Please understand, I think that this article we're all commenting on is all the way at the crazytown other end of the spectrum on this issue. The notion that the US should be allowed to kidnap people in friendly countries and haul them back to the US for military trials is also repellent.

If I could believe that eradicating the abuses of the Taliban is in some way part of the mission I might agree, but I fail to see any reason to believe that whatever regime the US installs post-Taliban will be any different.

For one, I think they would be better off had the Soviet Union succeeded invading it. They would have some industry, mining operation, separation between religion and state and so on. It's not like the Taleban ever were "freedom fighters".

The Soviet Union would get rid of the Taleban for free.

It's, in fact, the kind of poor judgment that minimized the threat the Taleban presented and made it worth to defeat the soviets by any means possible that worries me. Had the Taleban been properly groomed and supported (and "westernized") after driving the Soviets out, the world would be a far better place now.

The Taliban are themselves a direct and overt reaction to the warlordism and banditry that followed the Communist puppet regime in Afghanistan. They were formed to remove the status quo that American support for the Mujahideen created.

I understand some of the power politics involved in, for instance, disfavoring Massoud and arming Hekmatyar and how decisions (and, more importantly, negligence) in handling that stuff hurt the west in the long run. Still, though.

It's a drastic oversimplification to say that the US created the Taliban.

It also seems pretty irresponsible to suggest that the world would have been better off if the Soviets had succeeded in surpressing Afghanistan. It very well might have been worse.

Calling someone a murder means you assert that they have murdered.

Don't make a leap of logic and then try to tell other people what they 'risk implicitly' doing.

The fact that you took this nonsense as far as you did makes me wonder whether you have some emotional need to justify these murderers, or if it's just part of your job.

The Taliban might have been evil, but it doesn't mean that the replacements will be any better. As near as anybody who isn't a jackass can tell, the US has inserted ourselves into a pair of century (millenia?) long sectarian conflicts. Government barely exists 100 miles from the Kabul. These warlords were fighting each other before the Taliban, somewhat subjugated by the Taliban, and will be fighting each other again after we finally leave. All we've done is inflicted horrendous collateral damage on whoever happened to get in our way while mouthing trite bullshit about democracy. In order to leave the citizens of the country in a position that will be, at best, no better than under the Taliban. And probably much worse. We've killed how many in order to install some thug and his drug / warlord brother atop the heap?

As for Wikileaks, after Bush decided to run black prisons and endorsed the torture at Abu Ghraib, I frankly stopped believing anything out government says. Obama, with his support of the Afghanistan war and Bush era spy laws, has more or less endorsed Bush' view of civil liberties and demonstrated that the US government is worth the trust of exactly nobody. I'll believe what the government says when Bush is executed for war crimes, and there are a long line of US Generals up there with him. In light of those facts, Wikileaks is a force for good. Since we've demonstrated that morality and probability of success have no impact on our decisions, perhaps Wikileaks can damage the war effort enough to get us out of Afghanistan. Frankly, the less Americans trust their government, the better.

As a greater stretch, I also object to the notion that the conflict in Afghanistan is illegitimate. I've no doubt that it's been prosecuted badly, and to the extent that "badly" involves corruption and murder of innocents --- while I might not be happy to see this happen --- I can understand the moral calculus behind leaking information about criminal activity in the conflict.

But opposing the conflict for it's own sake, because "it's not about defense", strikes me as dangerously close to tacit support for the Taliban.

How is crap like this getting upvoted? New Guys, here at Hacker News we vote up and down based on intelligent, civil, primarily unemotional comments. Calling out "neocons" and randomly throwing "murderer" around is not what we vote up here. Please think, a lot of us are ex-Reddit and we don't want Hacker News to become Reddit, or else we'd be at Reddit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Enterprise_Institute

For me this single point is one of the most powerful and clarifying.

2- Many of the rest of us unfortunately have to live with the decisions of 3+ star generals. I'm not sure why Assange is any more of a threat than they are - indeed, in my view it is quite the opposite: the generals are responsible for more death than a deranged Assange could dream of if he were to dream of such a thing.

3- There is zero chance the Wikileaks will gain access to and release all secret information. So fear of anarchy is nothing more than a trope. Considering the amount of information marked as secret by the gov't that actually appears to show the gov't in a negative light vs. information of genuine safety for human life, this Wikileaks release is but a drop in the bucket. This emphasizes the canard of "anarchy".

4- Perhaps the gov't should think long and hard about what it elects to withhold from the public. Assange is not responsible for gov't openness. If the gov't decides to increase the amount of information it withholds, perhaps you should think long and hard about who you are voting for.

Assange's personality is essentially meaningless. He's not running for public office.

If there's a gate, there's a gatekeeper. There is no doubt in my mind that I would rather have Julian Assange and the Wikileaks staff be that gatekeeper than the U.S. government and military, who have a track record of keeping horrifying, god-awful secrets regarding their own misconduct.

    U.S. government and military, who have a track record of
    keeping horrifying, god-awful secrets regarding their own
    misconduct.

Theres nothing wrong with pointing out that one way is just as bad as the status quo. Telling people they can't object without proposing a solution won't change the fact that your solution is still wrong.

In my short lifetime, hundreds of thousands of people, many of them civilians, have died in Iraq. Tens of thousands, many being civilians, have died in Afghanistan; we continue to kill several civilians per day. We have spent God knows how much money to date on both combined. They have completely undermined our moral standing in the world. Those are not potential costs. Those are the real costs of our military's actions, and I honestly can't imagine how anyone could defend them as being justifiable or reasonable. Nothing we even dreamed of accomplishing is worth that much.

That seems to me like a really big destructive force, and barely anything stands in opposition to it. It's a lot bigger than 100 Afghan informants who are at risk of retribution. If anything can put the fear of God into the people responsible for making these decisions, it's worth a huge price, and I think that shining a huge light on the military's actual actions is a pretty good start.

Wikileaks fucked up badly, in my opinion, by not redacting identifying details from the documents. They will indeed have some blood on their hands if retribution arrives. However, it seems to me like the benefit of Wikileaks' continued operation dwarfs the cost of their fuckups.

I hate to put people on the spot with "well, what would YOU do." But Daniel's post implies that there is some wise oversight that can expose just the right secrets, without exposing the dangerous ones. I don't think that's realistic, unless he has some particular scheme in mind. I think the choice is between total control and some degree of anarchy, and I would take as much anarchy as I could get on that spectrum.

Neither way is perfect - but that's far different from your equivocation. "Hundreds of people" possibly identified through the Wikileaks release pales in comparison to the tens or hundreds of thousands collaterally killed by the U.S. military.

The military is an unfortunate but necessary evil that involves bloodshed for as long as people stay people.

I disagree. Rather, I would suggest that the burden of proof should rest on those who claim the right to kill others, rather than those who wish to deny others that right. Which is to say, unless you can prove that the military is necessary and its non-existence would result in more deaths than its existence, it should not exist.

Your rationality rationalizes 100% war 100% of the time. I cannot prove that any person in some location is not planning on attacking, therefore, by your logic, all people are better off dead - for my safety.

Clearly that rationality is illogical.

Specific to the point you were attempting to make previously, however: you cannot prove that the possible identification of hundreds of people is equal to the known death of tens of thousands of people, though you claim they are equal. In fact, a sane analysis of the two points shows that they are not equivalent.

Some examples of this would be great.

So say I'm a dirt poor farmer in Afghanistan. I spent most of my time being terrorized by the Taliban (say for example, they burned my sister alive after they found out I taught her how to read). Now the NATO forces arrive, kick those assholes out, along the way they shell my barn and accidentally kill my brother.

I'm pissed off, but on the balance, I know the NATO forces feel bad about my brother and they at least tried to get him some medical care (which is pretty different from the Taliban's response to my sister's last gurgling breath which was to drag her behind a truck and hang her burnt body in the middle of the village as a warning to everybody).

So when SGT Smith asks me, "do you know where any Taliban are around here?" I tell him. Because someday NATO will be gone and I can finally get around to growing something in the piss poor soil of my farm and get on with my life. While the Taliban hunted us ragged when they were in charge.

Now I find out that my name and coordinates to my village were released into the wild and the local Taliban commander found out about it. I and my family are running for our lives and all some thoughtless jerk on a message board can say about it is that it serves me right.

Most Taliban commanders and fighters are part and parcel of the population, as is typical in any foreign invaders vs home grown guerrillas war - As an Afghan village elder said in Kandahar - "the people you call Taliban are my sister's son and his friends, they are our people" - and the Taliban have informants in the Afghan National Army and other departments of Karzai's government, and one of the main difficulties the American forces have is to identify the Taliban leadership.

If Assange were to get a list of Taliban commanders and informants and were to publish them and / or send them to the US army so the Special forces "death squads" could eliminate them/ drag them off to Guantanamo/rendition them to "friendly" nations to be tortured, he would be a hero to all the people decrying them here.

So the leaks are bad only if they target one side in a war? This assumes one side is "good" and the other "evil".

Patriotism is well and good but it shouldn't interfere with clear thinking.

Why exactly should Assange take sides in this war or try to avoid setbacks to the US effort?

As to the fictional "dirt poor farmer in Afghanistan" scenario. Here is an alternate scenario.

I am a dirt poor farmer in Afghanistan. My father fought in the Jihad against the evil Godless Russians and lost a leg and now I have to support him from my meagre poppy farm - the product of which is bought for hard cash by the Taliban btw. When the Russians left (Glory be to Allah) instead of establishing a government as sanctioned in the Holy Koran (remember I am illiterate and never read the Holy Book All I know is what the village mullah tells me) warlords fought over my village, abducted and raped girls and young boys, taxed us mercilessly and made our lives hell. Then the Taliban came and enforced Islamic Rule and we had relative peace and justice. (The shadow courts of the Taliban still provide us Islamic justice based on the Holy Quran and thh HAdith as opposed to the corrupt Karzai government's "courts", whose judges hide behind American guns and where you can buy judgments in your favour if you are rich, and whose writ doesn't run beyond Kabul anyway).

My son now fights for the Taliban against the evil American invaders (whose drones blew up my cousin's wedding party and killed dozens of my relatives btw) just as my father fought against the evil Russian invaders. The Taliban are Afghani (and Islamic) patriots.

The Americans are invaders who have no business here. (Osama? Who Osama? oh you mean the great Islamic hero who struck a blow - I am fuzzy on the details, no cable TV in my village- against the infidel West)

Of course I support the Taliban. You want me to be a traitor to my own people? Of course such people exist but they are all traitors and Allah's judgement will be on them soon enough.

More practically, the Americans will go back home in a year or two, just like the Russians did. The Taliban will still be here.Karzai's writ (as long as the Taliban doesn't hang him from a lamp post like they did Najibullah)won't run beyond Kabul. And as long as the Pakistanis support the Taliban (with American money they say) the Taliban can never be defeated.

So when Habibullah, The shadow Taliban governor of my province asks me , "What did the Americans say and do in your village?" I tell him. Because someday NATO will be gone and the Taliban will rule and I can finally get around to growing something in the piss poor soil of my farm and get on with my life. At least they won't blow up any wedding parties looking for imaginary "terrorists" "

So much for trying to explain the motives of people who live a world away and whom you've never met ;-). They are easy to make for each side of a conflict, depending on what your intended rhetorical effect is.

I could use your justification to defend the Russian invasion. If the welfare of Afghans (vs winning the cold war) was an American priority they should have just left Afghanistan alone. The Taliban were nurtured in Pakistani madrassas, armed by Americans and brainwashed by the Saudis. And now Pakistan is using them for its own ends and playing a double game with the Americans? That was unexpected! ;-)

[1] I personally would rather the Americans win than the Taliban. But then I am not an Afghan so I don't need to have any conflicts of loyalty.

In this non Afghan's opinion, a successful American occupation is probably the better alternative in the long run for Afghanistan, as would probably have been the case if the Russians had ruled without being interfered with for a decade or two. But then I am a certified "Islamophobe" who'd rather see all religions wither and die, particularly Islam. An (inevitable imo) Taliban victory would just empower the Islamic radicals and we in India would have another round of terrorist bombings and shootings as a result. But that can't be helped at this stage.

I (like much of the world) think the American effort is doomed to fail and President Obama (rightly imo) is just trying to redefine "success" and get out asap with some kind of face saving device - ideally the capture of Bin laden and/or Mullah Omar - which is probably where the focus should have been all along vs trying to rebuild Afghanistan as some kind of Jeffersonian democracy.

The idea that the American invasion is somehow for the benefit of the Afghans is hilarious and the apparent concern for Afghan informants by people of a country that let its leadership declare two foolish wars is somewhat surreal. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people died due to American actions. Where was the outrage then?

And now Assange is the bad guy? Riiiight!

Realistically, the Taliban is only a threat to you and me if the US state apparatus allows it to be (for strategic reasons, such as justifying the invasion of a country like Iraq, or economic reasons, such as feeding the hungry mouths of defense contractors).

Even the most recent bombing attempt seems to have been conducted with the approval of the state apparatus (Wikipedia: "State Department had wanted to revoke Abdulmutallab's visa, but U.S. intelligence officials requested that his visa not be revoked": http://bit.ly/amFHQn).

So wait, let me get this correct. Your world-view is that a decade of NATO actions in Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban, capture/kill Al-Qaeda and emplace a system of stable national governance, improved civilian security and improved economic conditions (regardless of how bungled or successful that process has been) is not the process of Western state apparatuses attempting to take groups like the Taliban off the threat list through proactive policies?

You have just gone on my list of people who suffer from an insatiable thirst for Hollywood conspiracy theories. Enjoy the time-cube. http://www.timecube.com/ You'll feel right at home.

My guess is if the US didn't want the Taliban to exist they wouldn't have trained them and sold them arms (http://nyti.ms/ddOTcu) in the first place. Zbigniew Brzezinski puts it fairly bluntly: "The secret operation was an excellent idea... What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?" (http://bit.ly/tPpQJ).

>You have just gone on my list of people who suffer from an insatiable thirst for Hollywood conspiracy theories. Enjoy the time-cube. http://www.timecube.com/ You'll feel right at home.

The belief that an empires acts for the benefit of civilians is about as believable as the idea that oil companies act for the benefit of those who buy petrol. Grown-ups have beliefs founded in history, not fantasies promoted by vested interests.

Firstly, the Taliban must be very busy if all they do is go around burning little children who learn how to read. Also, this breadwinner must be quite relieved that his son was killed in a nicer way.

Seeing as the Taliban took the trouble to burn his daughter just for reading, I suppose they would consider the father to be their friend, because, well they only burned his daughter. Of course in no way would they think that he hates them to the gut and would happily go along to the guys who kill people in a nice way.

I am sorry, there is a serious point there, but do try and make it.

Now, burning someone as some sort of revenge or punishment for perhaps being and informer might make sense.

Maybe not. But they hang 7 year olds to send a message to his family.

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Afghanistan/bloody-taliban-revenge-...

That America is fighting a foolish and unwinnable war and instigating a witch hunt for Assange doesn't mean the Taliban aren't sadistic psychopaths.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2007238,00.htm...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/abuse-of-afghan...

http://www.dhushara.com/book/sakina/stoningetc/immol.htm

I did say that there is a serious point there, and suggested that you make it. Coming up with such things as they killed him in a nicer way, the Taliban would consider him to be his friend after burning his daughter, rather than probably thinks he really hates them and will inform on them on any chance he has, so really I doubt he is the kind of person the taliban would hardly suspect that he would inform on them, and taking the extreme action of burning a person for reading really are not serious points.

How about not including names? They obviously knew it was an issue because they attempted to contact the government to have some of the names removed. Instead of doing the right thing and removing all names, they released them all with this "any deaths are worth the information" attitude.

Some crypto-anarchists and agorists would like to have a few words with you.

Is there an example -- in the entire history of the planet -- of a government which had no need for secrecy? Sounds cool if it would work.

Secrecy? Those anarchists care about secrecy so they can stop the government from finding about their economic activities.

They don't care about if government have secrets or not, just that the government can't spy on their black market activities.(Which could be anything from selling pets to lawn mowing, and drugs)

If you want technologies, a lot of techno-libertarians are into http://bitcoin.org cryto-currency. For credit and reputation management, some have looked into complementary systems like Ripple.

As far as social system? I prefer free markets and voluntary systems due to my libertarian leaning. However, I don't know if they're effective or have flaws.

All I do know is flaws that exists in the government, especially the democratic system of government, in addition to my ethical dislike about the nature of governments.

Really, in my original reply, I am just pointing out how anarchy hate secrecy is laughable.

I think it's important to what kind of information governments need to keep secret and what kind they keep secret. Judging by Wikileaks content this seems to be information about (a) wars of aggression (defensive wars apparently need less secrets) (b) providing unfair advantages to private companies (I think ACTA counts here) (c) things they shouldn't allow (such as misbehaving personnel) (d) censorship.

So, we need to ask: does our perfect, imaginary, peaceful state need to keep anything secret from its own citizens? I think no.

With the introduction of a tax and Christianity, it has apparently lead to a captive market. This captive market unraveled the icelandic system since there is less accountability and inability to switch.

Kowloon Walled City was essentially lawless, not set up as an anarchy, but becoming one by chance. Controlled anarchy seems like a strange idea, but maybe that's what we need. Personally, I'm a fan of zenarchy, the belief that perfect anarchy follows general enlightenment. It's both joke and serious theory.

So as you can see, anarchists are not advocates of no laws simply because there are almost nobody advocate chaos.

2) That's a good point. Wikileaks has the potential to leak material which is more damaging than it is beneficial. The question is if you think that risk is worthwhile. I do.

3) Anarchy encompasses a wide variety of political thought. You are being reductive. Besides, there is nothing to suggest Wikileaks is an anarchist organisation. Also you are incorrect when you suggest that they are opposed to all secrets. Assange himself has repeatedly said that there is often a legitimate need for secrecy.

It's not a question of the need for secrecy, it's a question of it's abuse.

4) This makes little sense to me; information doesn't need to be on a computer for it to be leaked. All it takes is one person with access and motivation.

"As much as I want the maximum amount of liberty, freedom, and openness, this isn't the way to make it happen."

What is the alternative then? As it stands, governments have little motivation to become more transparent; the opposite is true in my opinion.

"Leaking is inherently an anti-authoritarian act. It's inherently an anarchist act." - Julian Assange

- http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/06/22/2933892.htm

(note, I don't think this is a bad thing)

I don't think they'd ever admit to being one, there's too much stigma in the 'a word'.

2)I believe the question you are asking me is "Do you think that some random schmuck on the internet should have the power to decide what remains secret and what doesn't?" For which I have to say no. As much as I love movies with the underdog and the little guy beating the giant opponent, as much as I love movies where somebody fights the system and wins, I can't support these decisions being made by some guy I never met. To think otherwise seems insane to me -- as I understand it the basic argument would be that things are so bad now that any type of release of docs is good. I'm not ready to go that far. Yet.

3) See above

Abuse as viewed by whom? Assange? The average 15-year-old internet reader? Oliver Stone? Call me an idiot, but wouldn't you want some kind of orderly process for releasing docs, even if you were for releasing all of them? What kind of half-assed system is this?

4) Sure it makes sense. All you have to do is start delegating and telling folks to keep no written records. Presto-chango, your "secrets" disappear. No docs, nothing to leak.

I think there are a lot of options -- a constitutional amendment comes to mind first. Make it a crime to keep any secrets longer than a certain period of time. All sorts of options there.

I feel uncomfortable because the arguers seem to want to push towards either supporting all sorts of crazy secrecy or supporting some system whereby random people email secret information to some asshole overseas who posts it on his website. Surely there has to be some middle ground here. I'd like to get rid of 99.9% of the currently classified documents. I'd like to streamline the intelligence agencies and programs. I'd like to impose criminal penalties on intelligence agencies which abuse their trust by over-classifying information.

But fuck-all if I want Assange playing peek-a-boo with national security items -- even if it's .1% of the total. It's wrong on so many levels that it'd take another post to list them all. I am perfectly capable of realizing how bad the problem is without having to cling to Assange as some kind of life-preserver -- the only way to safety. That's not happening.

The who?

On my list of prioritized concerns, Wikileaks falls well below unchecked military. But since you're adamantly opposed to this ...

Surely there is a middle ground, but the status quo was (is) heading in the direction of more secrecy. Sometimes, as now, it takes a shakeup. The very actions you prefer (eliminating classification for 99.9% of documents, streamlined intelligence agencies, criminal penalties) are so far in opposition to the past 10 years that they're literally pipe dreams. If your solution is to hold your breath until your pipe dreams come true, well, that's no solution at all. Meanwhile, the unchecked military rampantly wages war, killing thousands.

If Wikileaks helps the public take even a small step in opposition to these wars by virtue of shining a light on the depth of Govt lies, it will have done a far greater service than those who not only attack it, but essentially sit quietly waiting for impossible things to suddenly happen out of thin air.

How can a constitutional amendment help, unless it's backed by a threat? The powerful have repeatedly shown that they don't respect the rule of law. It's a pleasant fiction. It's just not the way the world works.

You can't realistically expect those in power to modify their behaviour to your liking unless you somehow have power over them.

You can't realistically take on an establishment (if that's your thing) by playing by their rules. There has to be an element of threat, which will appear reckless.

Proffering a system where it's perfectly ok for one random dude in Australia, who is beholden to no one, to make choices about the distribution of information directly impacting the lives scores of millions of people as some sort of acceptable alternative to fixing the structural defects of the current system is INSANE.

It's a false dichotomy between leaving the current system untouched and disowning the need for a system at all. It's like choosing between optimizing the world financial system and returning to an agrarian barter economy.

Who exactly are you talking about? The Taliban or the current Afghan government? Neither have intelligence services capable of doing this. The idea is ludicrous.

2) "Do you think that some random schmuck on the internet should have the power to decide what remains secret and what doesn't?"

This is a poor way to phrase the question, since we are talking about a group of people engaged in releasing _specific_ information. They hardly have the ability to decide what is secret and what is not. They only get to choose to leak what they have on hand.

"as I understand it the basic argument would be that things are so bad now that any type of release of docs is good."

Well I believe that is a misapprehension on your part. I'm certainly not arguing for the release of any and everything.

3) Obviously abuse is subjective, but the only other alternative is to appeal to some authority to help us decide what is important. That's not working very well is it? In my opinion the military has at best skirted the truth and at worst lied about actions involving civilians. That seems like abuse to me and it seems lots of other people agree.

"Call me an idiot, but wouldn't you want some kind of orderly process for releasing docs, even if you were for releasing all of them? What kind of half-assed system is this?"

Well in my opinion wikileaks seems to be orderly; for one they take the time to vet material and engage in harm-minimisation -- if we take them on their work anyhow. Again, what is the alternative? The government? Some committee that the government will cooperate out of the goodness of their hearts? They have no inclination to be transparent, so the only alternative is to force them to be so by leaking.

That's uncomfortable and risky, but a hell of a lot better than letting the bastards hide those awful truths.

4) Completely unworkable for obvious reasons. For one thing, secrets are only useful if they can be recalled accurately. People aren't going to remember them flawlessly. But even is this scenario were workable, it's the same situation. Anyone that knows the secret is capable of leaking it. Granted verifying it is harder without documentation, but nothing happens in a vacuum; a leak would be enough to get people probing for the truth and evidence to back it up.

I understand the basic gist of what you are saying and I agree. It would be better if the current system could be improved, if abuses could be curtailed and there was more transparency. That is much better than having material leaked, absolutely.

But it's not going to happen by itself. There is a complete lack of political will to change things. Like most important issues, a government's hand has to be forced; that's why leaks are necessary.

Could you stop calling him an asshole? He does indeed have an ass and a hole and we know that just finely. We don't need degrading of people, only of ideas.

As for the quote, it is not a random person. The person who leaked the first video is in jail! That is an extremely high price to pay.

As for Julian, yes you have indeed not met him, nor have you met Obama, or the many people in congress who decide many things about you, or the guys at the fed, intelligence...

You don't know if this guy is actually qualified to take such decisions as what is to be leaked and not. You don't know his motivations, you don't know his value system, you really don't know anything about him.

The only thing that it perhaps seems you do know is that you are having a little chat here thus maybe not really considering what you are typing in your comments. Yet if so I may respectfully remind you, we are talking about a very serious subject, on the comments of an article which calls for the arresting of an individual who is not a citizen of the United States, in the soil of a sovereign nation and potentially without the authority of such sovereign nation. An article which states that the US apparently has authority to arrest any individual whatever who breaks some law of the United States.

And this not just an individual he has the intelligence to build a great system which I am most certain would have been of immense use had it been around the drums of Iraq war as someone would have certainly leaked something decisively damaging and perhaps saved us an entire war.

And finally, if I may quote one of the great, enemies of the republic, within or foreign.

Journalists have a responsibility. If a couple of people have leaked information, the likelihood of anybody actually seeing the information is close to zero. Wikileaks has a huge audience that now includes most major media outlets in the US. This is the difference.

In the Internet age, I find the concept of that laughable. If you want to show something to a great number of people, just post it on a social news/bookmarking site. Sending your info to Wikileaks is a hundred times as responsible an act as just letting the information spread virally would be.

I'd respond with only two points:

First, if Assange makes it harder to keep things secret, then less will be kept secret. This will have good and bad consequences, but I think it's safe to say that strict control of information (secrecy + focused propaganda) is a tool that despots rely upon heavily. That open democracies rely upon it can be viewed (as you seem to view it) as a necessity, or (as I view it) as an excess.

Assange is risking his own skin by doing this. Surely one or more of the governments could/would arrange for his assassination. Which is why this essay puzzles me. This sort of right wing critique will fuel the fire that has helped Assange publicize his mission, and will have the effect of making wikileaks just go away much harder.

Keep in mind that so far the secrets being leaked are not particularly revealing in terms of their information content. The harsh words by government officials are because the leaked information might cause the public to question its propaganda message about the war.

What I have come to realize from all of this is just how tightly intertwined a war effort is with propaganda, and to a lesser extent secrecy. Assange just may put a huge hole in the ability of modern governments to do easily achieve the level of secrecy/propaganda necessary to get a comfortable, complacent yet principled people to approve of mass slaughter.

Here's an interesting thought experiment. What if Assange were releasing secrets about how the agriculture department did experiments in the 50s that ended up killing farmers? Hell, everybody would be hailing him as a hero. How about if he were releasing docs about how people were killed because they threatened to release secrets about something back in the 80s? Same deal.

You can keep playing this game, with various subject matter. But at the end of the day you get (I think) to two points.

1) Assange is a political figure, making political statements by what he chooses to release or not (no matter all the hoopla over theory, the underlying point is very political as you can easily see by the comments in this thread), and

2) Assange is using leaks to take on a current issue that involves the difficult decision to go kill a bunch of people (mass slaughter as you call it, but whether good or evil, it's a damn serious thing)

That makes him more than a newspaper. He's more like his own nation-state. As such, and since he is interjecting himself into the middle of a war, I would be curious as to what kind of Navy and Army he has -- or where his UN representation is. Nation-states get to play with the big boys because they can take the punches. I don't think he can.

Assuming the Afghan war is "mass slaughter" and that some terrible evil is being confronted, this system of governmental control does not work. It's not a matter of how bad the U.S. is, or how bad the war is, or how bad anything is. You can't fix it by playing the Wikileaks game.

That means that the argument is over. Assange loses. For those wanting change, he ain't it. For those wanting truth, he ain't it -- you're only going to get what fits his model of truth. For those wanting change , he ain't it. The remedy is worse than the disease.

That's why I engaged on this thread. This _is_ a systems issue. We could turn the tables 180 degrees on the Afghan war -- I could oppose and you support -- and my comments would still hold. It's not a matter of how bad the war is or how governments use information to control public opinion. Great topics, sure, but this is about that. Getting folks thinking about the particulars of the information distracts them from the larger picture by making them emotionally, well, irrational.

And I hate to say this, because I know it will just heat things up, but I'm done here, and it relates to your comment about war and propaganda, so one final thought: I think you have to decide whether or not you are at war with the status quo. Not just angry about stuff, but at war with it -- willing to have people killed to support your position. If you are, then you support the leaks, wave your hands around and stamp your feet and talk about civilians killed and how it justifies Assange. This -- the idea that informants and such killed is unprovable and/or irrelevant, is war talk. If you are not at war, then you can still support ending the war -- just on different terms than using Wikileaks.

I will protest with you, I will write editorials, I will call for constitutional change. I'll go and march. But I am not at war with this country. I do not support risking lives of informants and operatives simply because I might be morally outraged at the war. I am morally outraged with many parts of what my country does, and I feel in many ways it is hurting its own citizens in awful ways in a misguided effort to create the perfect society. I am a staunch libertarian. But I will not support the deaths of others to advance my personal views -- the only place for that sort of support for violence is the polls.

I don't disagree with your points, and I think you articulate some aspects quite well. True Assange is a political figure. He is also the founder of an institution. To date we have not seen the rise of a virtual institution with this sort of political significance, nor have we seen one that exists independently of a state or party.

We seem to disagree on the issue of supporting Wikileaks as an act of civil disobedience. In my opinion, we are not morally obligated to obey unjust laws. Of course, we may be made to suffer the consequences of disobedience, but I do not (as you seem to) imbue the law with any special moral significance just because it's the law.

Let me remind you that it is illegal for the US to propagandize Americans. I'd argue that some of the information that is being declared "secret" is simply information that the government wants withheld for propaganda purposes.

So without Wikileaks, what check or balance exists to prevent this misuse of secrecy for propaganda? I'm curious if you think this is a reasonable question to ask and what you think the answer is.

To address your broader critique of Wikileaks, I'd argue that Assange is building a very ambitious institution, and it's currently imperfect. Some of your critiques apply only to the young incarnation of Wikileaks and (I'd expect) will go away once/if the institution manages to gain additional credibility, experience, and stability.

One quote of yours really intrigues me: Getting folks thinking about the particulars of the information distracts them from the larger picture by making them emotionally, well, irrational. This suggests that you think that a member of the public judging the appropriateness/worth of the war would be more rational if he/she ignored all the messy noise offered by the leaks and focused only on the government's official story of how/why the war should continue. If not, then I'm curious how you'd advise the rational citizen to assess the status/progress/worth of a war effort such as the current US involvement in Afghanistan.

We have not seen the rise of the institution like this, and I predict that the nation-states will go to war with these institutions, and quickly. Not sure if it will be a shooting war -- but these things usually turn out that way.

Are we morally obligated to obey unjust laws? Woof. That's a can of worms. If I had to cook up an answer, I'd start with "Declaration of Independence" and throw in a little "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" to the mix.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_In...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_from_Birmingham_Jail

Jefferson makes the case that we owe the state our obedience as long as the state keeps its end of the bargain. I think it's reasonable to say two things here. 1) Jefferson's time was simpler, with tremendously fewer laws, and 2) disobedience that may involve the death of someone is of a different nature than that which may not. (see earlier comment)

MLK begins with this more complex world and addresses your question -- unjust laws. Key quote here: One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty.

Both are great examples of great men thinking through difficult problems. I side with Jefferson a bit more than MLK, simply because I think you can moralize yourself into a snit over just about anything. But MLK is saying that even if you're right, there's no free pass: you still owe the larger society something.

As to your final point, I should have been clearer. I have no problem at all with war in all its messiness being displayed all over the place. This is the way it should be. What I object to is the selective use of images -- coffins coming off planes, no information for months and then a dump of collateral damage videos -- any one of a dozen "dirty tricks" that involve manipulating the viewer.

During the American Civil War, we had photography for the first time. There were some god-awful battlefield images shown to the public. But oddly enough, nothing much happened. People are very capable of understanding the brutality of war. I don't think it's much of a secret.

I'm very conflicted on Afghanistan. From the half-dozen COIN books I've read, we're going to have to make peace with the Taliban. But Karzai is something of a cross between a rabid badger and a skunk -- he's selling us out as we speak.

I don't have an opinion right now, frankly. I supported Iraq and Afghanistan because I honestly felt that in the 10-20 year time period, less lives would be lost by taking action. I also felt from a personal perspective that it was better to give nation-building a shot rather than carpet-bombing from afar. I still feel that was a good call.

But I feel that strategically, in Afghanistan at least, the scales are tipping. The military we have -- few boots with lots of cool high tech and a tendency towards kinetic fighting -- simply doesn't match the terrain or battle in Afghanistan, no matter how hard we try to patch it up.

I think the average citizen, especially when it comes to fighting, should read. A lot. I understand what Karzai is doing and why. I understand what we're doing. I understand why civilians get killed. Wikileaks is just data. Data presented for the shock of impact. Understanding always beats data.

I'm inclined to disagree that Americans are aware of the awfulness of war. War is imagined as safe and hygienic, fought with GPS smart bombs and laser guided munitions. I think that going into Afghanistan/Iraq post-911, most Americans anticipated fewer than 500 American casualties. Gulf War I had about 35 US casualties, as I recall.

We are now in a war that has created thousands of US military casualties and many more limbs lost. Soldiers on the ground deal with hidden IEDs that may send shrapnel through the side of their humvee and kill/maim in very small doses, but the suffering grows little by little as the timeframe increases.

(Here I'll be very careful to avoid expanding the scope):

Winning a war is (by definition) breaking the will of the enemy. The distaste of the US populace for the horrors of war necessitated the narrative of smart bombs and technologically-driven victory. The reality of nation building is far less glamorous, and the stress of war often brings out an ugly side of human nature.

Suppose the American public sees American soldiers laying waste to journalists, striking deals with the ISI, renditioning captives to Syria, conducting political assassinations, and generally undertaking all of the ugly tradeoffs of a protracted nation building exercise... this isn't exactly the stuff of Top Gun. A few close up shots of blown off limbs, stories about cruelty, and lack of measurable success may turn the tide of support for the war, thus breaking our will to keep fighting and leading to defeat.

All this assumes that the stated goals of the conflict (defeating the Taliban and ushering in an era of tolerance and women's rights in Afghanistan) match the actual goals.

What are the actual goals? The geopolitics of the conflict are ancient, and George Friedman has written about them extensively, and I'm sympathetic to his explanation.

Rather than (in the newspeak of our conflict) "stabilizing" Afganistan and Iraq, it is the US goal to destabilize them (by preventing the natural accretion of a major local power).

So how do you get a populace of comfortable Americans to support a protracted nation building exercise intended to destabilize an entire region? Simple: Come up with a good story. This is, I think, why Wikileaks poses such a threat (and why I think it's so important). There has been a decades long effort to build the propaganda story behind these wars, and they are necessary for the US's continued domination.

I think it follows from this, incidentally, that terrorism (asymmetrical warfare with a focus on symbolic targets) will be an increasing reality for the US as it becomes increasingly impossible to engage in a traditional war with the US due to its power.

It's a much broader question whether the actions of the US in Afghanistan and Iraq will decrease terrorism (I think they are bound to increase it). I also think it's appropriate to question the policy of the US of being involved in the middle east whatsoever.

We (as US voters) are all responsible for the totalitarian regimes sponsored by the US and for the loss of life our destabilization effort has caused. Thus, I think Wikileaks provides a truly valuable resource as it helps weaken the extremely grand story we've been told for decades about US involvement in the middle east.

I view the US reliance upon secrecy and propaganda as a very substantial cog in the war machine, and I do not by default consider our middle east involvement remotely moral (thought admittedly I am not prepared to say I consider it all utterly immoral).

I realize I've brought in a few other concepts, and you may deem them insufficiently related to warrant reply, but I'd be curious about your thoughts nonetheless.

Pentagon Papers -- not a major revelation but what could be considered an important leak. One could argue that over a million folks were killed as a result of the leak, but that would, alas, broaden the scope. Lets assume some leaks are warranted (a position I hold)

Does that mean any leaks are warranted? I hope we can both agree not.

I'm also concerned that we may be conflating the fact that something is bad with a justification for something else. Yes, the military-industrial complex is bad, the secrecy is bad, the 47-thousand intelligence programs are bad (in their complexity, loose missions, and overlap). But does that mean that any kind of secrecy is bad? Withholding a video of a helicopter crew killing people they shouldn't? Exposing which exactly how each Afghan leader is corrupt?

Information is power, and I would hope that -- for all the hundreds of billions we are spending -- we are managing a good chunk of valuable information that we're not giving out. I would hope this as a voter. Hell, we're paying an arm and a leg, we had better be knowing all sorts of interesting things we can use. So let's acknowledge that a key part of conducting a war is the gaining, withholding, and dissemination of information.

This means that war is a funny duck. If you keep from me the information on how much HUD is spending on junkets, that hurts a democracy. If you keep from me how General X is changing tactics to fight the Taliban, that's a necessary part of the social contract.

Hamilton and Madison understood this, and argued for a president with total dictatorial powers in times of crisis. There is a place for a "king" and a "Secret police" in the constitution. The office of the executive and the role of secrecy can't go away. Not that I can see.

What's happened, of course, is that we've gone from this war-is-exceptional mentality to one in which we're always in some kind of low-level "war" about something or another. Congress has given up its power to declare war, basically, because it was easier just not to make a political commitment about any particular conflict. Add to that the billions invested in a war machine with pretty much nothing to do, and you have a recipe for a situation where secrecy can be used not to fight a war, but to prevent citizens from adjusting policy.

Ugh.

I think we're on the same page so far.

I think what you point out so well is that, as we've redefined "war", we've redefined how we talk about it. One side wants pictures of entrails and tortured orphans while another would have us push buttons and pop out for scones. This is part of the larger trend of war becoming this low level political thing instead of this huge clash of cultures.

But -- and this is my key point -- that doesn't mean that our kids aren't suffering and dying overseas. And that means, for me, secrecy and staying the course. You don't send somebody to risk his life and die on the condition that he make it look good on TV. At least I don't.

So, to the larger question, how does one monitor the progress of a war? That's a helluva question, grandalf, especially these new kinds of wars. I think this pattern where we lie to ourselves, then have some magic revelation (like the Pentagon Papers) then pull out and cause more chaos and death? That's pretty dysfunctional. Could you have total openness? I can't see that either -- you simply can't conduct combat and COIN operations totally open. Geesh frack, a reporter in Afghanistan won't show the face of a tribal leader who's helping the Americans because they have compassion and common sense. And we would leak hundreds of names and cheer?

I think that the only place for the citizenry to go is to argue the general principles of the "conflict". Do we know COIN? Are we able to implement it? Could we use a proxy force? Is this a situation where failure to act could result in the deaths of tens or hundreds of thousands of citizens of that country (by our hand) at some later date?

My solution is to take DoD back to it's old name: The War Department. Then form up a new agency or branch of service specifically for low-level, nation-building, COIN operations. Redefine war as a commitment that involves a national draft -- any other commitment is not a war. At that point, once we're clear on what things are and what they are supposed to do, we can talk about when to use them and why.

War is supposed to punch people in the gut. But that doesn't mean that anybody who hits them in the gut is doing the right thing. The system is totally out of control. But that doesn't mean that anybody who fights it is actually doing a good thing. I find that we agree on 90-99% of the problems. I just don't think any kind of action at all is going to work.

Hell, if I thought Wikileaks had a shot at doing the things I've outlined above, I'd be all over it. But all it's doing is playing the propaganda role for some enemy who is too pathetic to do their own propaganda. That's not fixing the system. Evening the balance? I don't know. I'm really not all that crazy about some random person on the net deciding to "even the balance" That's whacked.

You can't fix a structural problem with a system that you need by attacking the entire system. Because as bad as it might be, it probably does some good things, and it can always be worse. You have to fix the structural problem. And wikileaks isn't doing that. They're just out for themselves.

We are firefighters, at the fire station, and the firetruck is broken. Whenever anybody lights a match, it takes off and dumps millions of gallons of water on them. Maybe runs over a few people standing outside the building. We don't blow up the firetruck. Hell, we don't even talk about what it's doing right now. We fix it. We fix the structural and naming problems. Because simply because the firetruck is broken doesn't mean that there's never going to be a fire. And, unfortunately, we have an intelligent firetruck. If we try to attack it, it will adapt and overcome. And then we're in some long battle with firetrucks instead of doing our job.

(note to self. Do not attempt extended metaphor until first coffee is consumed)

Your focus on the leaks seems to be on the subset of leaked information that might actually put US troops/operations in danger. I think your argument is strong when applied to those leaks only.

However what about the leaks that are simply "bad news" about the war? My take is that a large chunk of the recent Wikileaks (as well as the apache helicopter video) fall into the category of bad news rather than qualify as useful intelligence for an adversary.

Perhaps our intuitions about Wikileaks diverge because of our different assessments of the character of the bulk of the leaked info.

I would argue that Wikileaks the institution could (and probably ought to) cleanse the leaked info of information that directly aids in the enemy's intelligence gathering effort. This may be part of an evolving Wikileaks institution, etc.

Bad news, however, is fair game, and the traditional media has tasked itself with a shockingly minimal range of things to consider bad news. To get a notion of the extent of war cheer-leading in the US media, watch the animated graphics that slide in when war topics are discussed (the Onion had a brilliant parody of this).

Also, the case could be made that the leaks make it harder for Obama to continue to wage war. Ultimately, pulling out the troops will save more lives and limbs than the leaks will endanger. I'm not arguing that Wikileaks is good b/c pulling out is good, only bringing this up because I think that if soldier lives are the barometer we use this argument ought to be considered.

I agree with you in theory that the US war machine should be restructured, but I consider that highly unlikely to happen via the democratic process, especially if there is such tight propaganda control over the information that gets out about how the war is being waged.

Fortunately, I think Americans get a bad taste in their mouths when watching the Apache helicopter video. Most will (rightly) not condemn the soldiers, but will instead have a realization about the ugliness of war... and most importantly the imprecision of war.

I'm not entirely a pacifist, but I generally believe that people prefer peace and trade and don't care much about the grand causes their leaders use to rally them to war.

The biggest realization for me has been just how critical propaganda is to waging war. Years and Billions had been spent villianizing Saddam Hussein, a former ally, and even today well meaning people all over the western world help with the next phase of war propaganda as they decry mistreatment of women in the Arab world. Sure it's bad, but who wouldn't want to invade and teach a lesson to the people who cut the nose off of the fine featured woman on the recent Time magazine cover.

Wars can only be waged by the US if several of the following conditions are met: a) The US has the moral high ground, b) we are saving someone, c) we are dropping bombs on people with a backward culture, d) the enemy leader is insane and potentially religiously fervent.

I think it's important to observe just how significant and deep the propaganda is about the middle east in the US, and how ripe Americans are to approve of more wars there.

It is here that I think our rationality is being challenged most aggressively.

Wikileaks succeeds if it casts doubt on the official story, the official numbers, the official assessments.

Perhaps domination/destabilization of the middle east is crucial for the continued success of the US empire, but I think it comes with a fairly high moral pricetag. To the extent that Wikileaks aids us in seeing through the propaganda and making an accurate moral judgment of the wars, it makes us a wiser, more humane people.

I don't think that's what would happen. Forcing people not to keep electronic records of secrets they wanted to maintain would make it a hell of a lot more work to make things secret. If millions of things are currently secret, and on computers, I think you would wind up with more like tens or at most hundreds of thousands of secrets if they had to be not kept on computers. That might be a good thing.

So you're OK with the status-quo? And what if it gets worse? Say, significantly worse. They're still the people you elected.

Without someone doing something like this, can you know what's really happening? I for one don't trust all the however-many-thousands/millions working for governments to behave responsibly, so there must be some kind of oversight. And without the oversight being managed by people outside such a chain (ie, the public), there's always the recursive "who's watching the watchmen" question.

At some point, the only people who can determine if their government is acting in their best interests are the people who the government is supposed to be working for. I'd rather have some way of knowing what they're up to than to "take their word for it". Their word has failed rather spectacularly many times.

Is a smooth-functioning, well-managed intelligence community in my interest?

If intelligence shape policy, then perhaps. Does it? Some argue it's the other way around: policy shapes intelligence, and you get the intelligence that policy dictates (cf. Iraq).

If that's the case, I could certainly do with a less efficient intelligence apparatus.

That's just proof that governments can't function without immediate secrets. Nothing needs to stay a secret after its immediate usefulness has expired. As soon as you've fired the personnel you were having issues with, publish the minutes of the meeting where it was decided.

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a030953states...

you have to understand, there's very little cause to leak classified documents. most people who have classified jobs would be retarded not to assume they could get caught. if they have some matireal which they object to, they weigh it against the possibility of manning's fate (which could be death, or just lots of torture). if it's worth the risk, they leak it.

this wild west of anarchy where every secret gets leaked will not exist. but important, controversial things (or whatever could sway the balance of power of any given government) that are worth the risk, will be leaked. for the first time in the history of the world the powerful are afraid of keeping secrets. and that's OK with me.

I am growing by the day to learn that the united state has become or maybe always was a Phireha (I can't quite find the spelling of the word). The opinion formers there are so poisonous and it seems quite effective. The atmosphere also is contaminating and very divisive. A "commentator" there has the freedom to say any lie whatever, even blatant lie. It is, or at least the impression, is awful.

Now to the business at hand. I suppose much of the above paragraph was aimed at your first point "the people". These are the same people who voted Bush back in 2005. Among them there is probably a good deal of people who want freaking Palin for president. Who probably have no idea whatever what is contained in those leaks, hardly have read them - has anyone? - and well the commentators are not called opinion formers for no reason, they have formed the opinions of these people.

How on earth can people who "are not normally angry with anybody" be so - not angry - no, no not cuddling angry - not angry in the - lets go and protest in the student union way - after which point I thought you were gone follow with but out on the street seeking for blood - but how on earth can these very nice people who are so unbothered about such things as going to an illegal war - that is Iraq - re-electing the person who took them to war - that is bush - put up with Mr Guitmo, be fine with the comments of Mr Thiesen that they can just override international law - but not fine at all with being told that their government has actually been lying a lot to them.

You see Pakistan apparently is our ally. That is what we are told, and nothing else, so I thought that Pakistan is a good guy, helping us you see, I did not know that they are engaged in some sort of double game, playing nicely with both sides.

Maybe the public shouldn't know that. Why bother them right? Its not like the "commentators" can make them think day is night.

But let us move on. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom said what was described in a newspaper that we all knew this - though I did not know - he said it in public, he said - Pakistan is playing nicely with the terrorists. Do you know what happened? Oo, people got angry, The Ministry of Truth, that is the Foreign Ministry, said you can not say things like that, you have to be diplomatic, that is, not say it in public, lest the little children are worried.

Its a joke! The whole response to the leak, which has been slowly building up, is a joke. But beyond this joke, something is actually happening. Although the White House might say there is nothing new here, and then go on to say, but hey man this not new thing is very damaging, a lot is new, and I think decisively new.

Besides all the sarcasm I used with the PM event, there is actually great power from words coming from his mouth. Now everyone knows what we supposedly all knew - yet I did not know and I am very certain the general public did not ether - that Pakistan is playing a double game.

Also, we get the president of Afghanistan saying it clear and bluntly - or was it perhaps some official from Pakistan "getting back" to the PM - that Afghanistan is a mess and the coalition forces are really just making a mess and nothing is getting anywhere and basically you guys are rubbish - that is the US, UK etc.

So, a new awareness is slowly but decisively shifting the opinion of "the people" against this war and just want us to get out.

Now in regards to secrecy. Without the names of the informers - which in defence to wikileaks how are they to know that they are informers - is there anything else that deserves the secrecy in those leaks? If not, then why were they kept secret in the first place? To save embarrassment perhaps - it was the previous guy who dun it not me - or just to keep the public misinformed or uninformed about things which the public is supposed to authorise through the general elections.

Sure you need some secrecy, wikileaks says that they did take much information out of the leaks which they considered worthy of being kept secret and had the knowledge to arrive at such consideration, but many things should not be kept secret, especially by the government.

Finally, why does the way Julian presents himself have anything to do with anything? Are you perhaps a bit jealous that the guy has managed to acquire so much power and is actually quite intelligent to have done so?

Also, why is it not the way to make it happen? I think to the contrary, when you get people really angry when you expose the truth then you know full well that it is exactly the way to make it happen.

Pakistan has been playing the double game all along. It's not new information.

But see, your entire discussion is about the political content of the leaks. My discussion is that the system is broken and lets go fix it. Your discussion is all about this particular thing that makes you so angry.

It's like Assange has managed to troll the world's media, interjecting a whole load of noise. Trolls are great because they drop content that is so emotionally laden to the room that the room is unable to process it. If Assange had leaked information just as important but not as emotionally-laden, say something about nuclear secrets or something, nobody would care. But now we have to go off on a multi-month conversation about the Afghan war, which is very important, no doubt, but has jack-shit to do with the process of having some website dump secret docs. You are all being terribly distracted here.

Let's say he manages to end the war without killing more people (about as likely as him becoming Santa Claus, but I know this is the feeling). Next year we have the same systemic problem of too many agencies. And we'll still have Assange.

Hell, it's almost like he's feeding off the problem, not solving it.

You have to ask yourself the serious question -- am I supporting Assange because I am angry at the intelligence agencies, secrets, and Afghan war? Or am I supporting him because of what he is doing, his business model? It's the guys who do things you'd like to do, with goals that you share, that you should be looking the most circumspectly at. Always suspect people and news reports that agree with your worldview.

"Always suspect people and news reports that agree with your worldview."

Yeh sure, but I am willing, unlike it seems you, to give him and this very new company the benefit of good will.

I have not seen the "collateral murder" video, so maybe I should not comment on that, but it strikes me as strange that people would focus on the tile and use that against the entire company, what it does, and all else, never mind that it was a revelation of some sort and I suspect that the media has a great role to play in such strange behaviour.

Again we see the same happening with the Afghan files. Could, possibly, it may be, arguably. On these very thin foundations an argument so powerful is made. No, it doesn't matter that the government was careless, no its him, him..

I think it is both. I am not in any way angry at the intelligence agencies, nor secrets, nor at the Afghan war. What I do dislike and would like is a world which is not guided by selfish interests, big corporations with too much power, big individuals with too much power, I suppose it very shorty can be summed up as things which are not right or just by the standard of the reasonable man.

For example, I would very much like the minutes of the meetings between Google and Verizon to be leaked in their entirety because they have no right to conduct a conversation of such grave importance in secret and the fact that they have chosen to do so makes me highly suspicious and makes me think that they are conspiring against the public to their own benefit.

A while back here in the UK there was a super injunction whereby no one could report about a specific statement in Parliament! Wkileaks leaked the statement. The injunction was lifted I would think despite the leak due to much pressure, but in another situations it might have not been lifted while it was right that it should be.

These are only examples which indicate quite well the combination between the two things you mentioned. I believe that the person who was able to build such a formidable machine is a reasonable man in the same way that I would consider myself a reasonable man. Thus I would not think - and the fact that he has not published some info in the Afghan files - that he would expose a secret that a reasonable man would think not right to expose.

Reasonable people can of course disagree. An example of anarchism might be the making public of Google's algorithm. Would a reasonable person think this to be desirable? Well Google thrives on secrecy. It is because of this secrecy that they have the liberty to state things like "oh we are impressed that our search results are not getting worse". It is because of this secrecy that innovation in the area of search is stifled. They had for example the decency to tell us only recently just how much it takes from the adverts places on our sites. Why should such a thing be secret? You might say well that's the free market, but is there really a choice here?

As for the algorithm, the argument often is that people would play the system, so lets just keep it as it is and fatten our pockets rather than try and make things better.

People are playing the system anyway. But that argument is like saying lets not tell people what the law is because they then would be able to subvert it. No one would suggest not telling people what the law is. That is a Kafkaesque world and the way google operates is very much Kafkesque.

So if people play the system, is google just going to sit back and relax and have a cup of tea, or is it actually going to fight back and keep order? Might it perhaps be that this secrecy suits them well, suits their pockets, and screws everyone else?

That is just an example. Perhaps of no relevance as I said he does not leak everything. He seems to be a reasonable man. Everything that has happened until now seems very reasonable to me. Yes perhaps he did made some mistakes, but these are 90,000 documents! and it is not all entirely his fault, a one man, as opposed to the entire machinery of state who has the decency to refuse considering whether the life of people might be put in danger.

I do not however blindly favour it. If so it happens that he does something which would be considered unreasonable, then there might be an argument, but he hasn't.

Now, what problem is he exactly feeding? The government is keeping secrets from us for the benefit of the politicians and the wealthy, the wealthy are keeping secrets from us and conspiring against the public to further increase their wealth. He is trying to expose things which have no reason to be secret. What problem is he exactly feeding? That perhaps there will be an arm's race, that we will see evolution in a fast motion in regards to keeping secrets? That's very good. The harder it is to keep secrets which need not be kept secret, the better for us all.

So, at the very least, give the man and the company the benefit of the doubt. He is not an idiot, I doubt he is evil, I doubt he is being an asshole. He is standing up to the wealthy and fighting for the general public not in some Hollywood film, but in our real life and he seems to be doing a good job.

So at the very least, support some neocon guy who favours torture and illegal wars and thinks he is above the law when wikileaks has actually done something which is deserving of being judged criminal.