EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is the unabridged version of this column that was published in the Aug. 27 issue of The Daily.
WikiLeaks, an organization dedicated to anonymously publishing classified documents, has recently come under fire for publishing more than 90,000 Afghanistan war logs — logs that meticulously chronicle a long, secretive history of brutality, deception and corruption at the behest of American intervention.
The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has since been routinely harassed with a variety of threats, among these a false rape allegation purportedly initiated by the Pentagon to root out Assange during a stay in Sweden.
Therein lies the question: if the folks at the Pentagon are so afraid of Assange and his tiny donation-funded organization that they would start a smear campaign of death threats and baseless accusations, just how much are they hiding?
And perhaps the more important question is how much are we entitled to know?
It’s my contention that information deserves transparency — that knowledge on how our tax money is spent and where our ostensibly accountable government is acting undoubtedly demands visibility. Without this transparency a democracy is impossible.
WikiLeaks plays a much-needed role in journalism — the entire foundation of which rests on the notion that the truth, no matter how messy, should be reported.
The fact that WikiLeaks has leaked more classified documents in the past two years than the rest of the world’s media combined isn’t a testament to WikiLeak’s journalistic superiority; it’s a disgracing reminder that 99.9 percent of the news we read or television we watch is trivial background noise — a broadcast of half-truths so delicately manufactured by those with vested interests as to become completely meaningless.
WikiLeaks fills the journalistic void that has long been vacated by corporate-sponsored news stations that have substituted information for histrionics and objectivity for political expediency.
It was recognized by the Founding Fathers that democracy rests upon the assumption that citizens are informed enough about the nature of public policy to make decisions about the future of governmental action.
Despite self-proclaimed declarations of honesty and sincerity by politicians, alongside assurances that “we’re winning the war,” WikiLeaks logs painted a completely different picture — a picture that showed that, no matter how much we deceived ourselves into thinking that we were informed, our attempts at scholarship were efforts in futility.
The revelations contained in the logs — revelations about the existence of a secret task force that routinely kills Afghani men, women and children; revelations that show our government regularly attributes deaths by friendly fire to enemy insurgencies; revelations that show the Taliban has massively escalated road-side bombing, killing far more civilians than ever reported in the last year; and revelations that show we are failing in every conceivable metric used to gauge the velocity of war — these revelations incontrovertibly demonstrate just how little we know about the wars we fund with every paycheck.
The Pentagon argues that the disclosure of classified documents is a threat to national security. But, what kind of nation do we live in when the truth poses a threat to our country?
We don’t need to worry about how the people in Baghdad or Kabul perceive us. They don’t need to watch the videos or read the confidential manuscripts, because they live it every day.
It is their children, their parents, and their loved ones that are erased by our regime of secrecy. You have to realize that behind every life silenced by the label of confidentiality is a real human with real loved ones that may never get the closure they need to move on.
Wikileaks can’t change its opinions because the opinions have been formed by firsthand experience.
There’s no amount of collateral damage, no amount of national insecurity, that these leaks may inadvertently cause that has not already been greatly outweighed by the years of private abuse, murder and deception secretly executed in the absence of public accountability.
Wikileaks exists because they know knowledge results in change. It exists because democracy cannot survive when the public is forced to make impoverished decisions based on overly politicized newscasts. It exists because people have a right to know exactly what they are funding and what they can do to stop it. It exists because nothing will ever change if there’s never any controversy.
Every leak is one step closer to an unabridged truth that can hopefully shake our woefully complicit public into action.
Then again, the Pentagon may have already won. After all, what good is transparent information if nobody reads?
— Evan DeFilippis, economics and political science junior
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ethios4 1 year, 9 months ago
It's more complicated than just that the Pentagon is cynically trying to suppress the truth. The identities of real people involved in the war were compromised, putting their lives in jeopardy, as well as jeopardizing what hard-won stability does exist. There are very real reasons for maintaining secrecy in regards to national security issues. It is truly unfortunate that our leaders have put us in the position of having to weigh the consequences of such leaks against the consequences of not knowing what they are doing.
Steven Zoeller 1 year, 9 months ago
Agreed. In the past, we had to wait years before learning about this kind of stuff. Sure, it's not nearly the scope of Vietnam documents, but that we're getting this all so quickly makes it very relevant. There might be benefits to keeping the truth repressed, but they aren't for the common people. WikiLeaks deserves to remain as a deterrent in case the government ever starts hiding bigger secrets from us.
williamcombs 1 year, 9 months ago
Wikileaks isn't journalism. It's treason for any American involved and an act of war by any non-American involved. We should treat it as such.
academon 1 year, 9 months ago
@Ethios-- in case you didn't know, WikiLeaks has a extensive protocol of what to do to ensure that no personally-identifiable information is released that could endanger the lives of soldiers abroad. Information released is carefully leaked so as to only reveal information concerning the actions that our government is perpetrating. I encourage you to show me a valid source that shows Americans' lives have been directly affected as a result of these leaks, and then to demonstrate how that potential threat is somehow more important than the thousands of lives that were eradicated as a result of secret, unaccountable conflict.
Regarding "hard-won stability"... have you looked at the documents? For starters, take a look at this-- the logs were aggregated, statistically analyzed, and put on a map: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/open-source-wikileaked-docs-illustrated-afghan-meltdown/
It shows the direct opposite of your claim.
@William Combs- treason? It's perfectly fine for the government to engage in clandenstine warfare, but the citizens responsible for paying for it aren't allowed to know or speak up about it?
blueinared 1 year, 9 months ago
@Williamcombs is a fool. An act of war? That's silly. The government hides behind terms like "national security" to do questionable things. We usually complain that the media shows garbage news, and then when something real is shown and it's a problem, it's called treason. The website hasn't caused real damage and doesn't give away operational information, so there's not really a problem.
scrtagnt25 1 year, 8 months ago
It's a damn war. People die. The Taliban's suicide and roadside bombs kill more innocents than NATO forces. People also forget the terrorism sowed in Afghanistan and that the Taliban harbored and failed to turn over Osama bin Laden after 9/11. That's why we're in Afghanistan today. Unfortunately the Iraq war deterred forces from the real fight for too long.
It's unfortunate we live in a world that believes they deserve every bit of information...There is a need to know and a want to know. You must balance the two. Unfortunately, WikiLeaks doesn't do that. They exist to divulge secrets that truly HARM those that our classification levels exist to protect.
@blueinared: yes they have divulged operational information. And yes they failed to redact the names and villages of hundreds of Afghan sources, putting them at risk. The Taliban released a statement saying essentially "We are searching the documents and know how to deal with traitors."
That, to me, is a problem.