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.