The Proper Response to WikiLeaks By Karen Kwiatkowski
| December 1, 2010
President Obama is wrong, and Secretary Clinton is wrong.
Those remoras of state at CNN, FOXNews, ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR
and many Congressmen are all wet in their frantic response
to Cablegate, and Wikileaks in general.
I’ll admit the U.S. government should have been a
bit angry about the Wikileaks release over the summer of
the 2007 gunship video and narration of a bloody massacre
of unarmed Iraqis and reporters. There was nothing redeeming
there, no points of light or lessons to be learned. That
release fundamentally explained to Americans and others
who supported the Iraq invasion and occupation exactly what
democracy at the point of a gun looks like. Perhaps the
US government wasn’t as upset as it might have been
because no one affected by this crime was surprised. Similar
massacres, according to soldiers involved in Iraq, were
routine and conducted as ordered. The Iraqis, of course,
knew this from the beginning.
The Wikileaked Afghanistan reports didn’t indicate
much more than the antiwar and the pro-war crowds already
knew, and as a result, again, there were no changes in the
bleachers of American foreign policy. It’s likely
that the Rolling Stone interview with General McCrystal
around the same time was more embarrassing to Washington.
One wonders why McChrystal has not yet been declared a domestic
terrorist. He shared secrets and embarrassed the administration.
A case could be made that his pussyfooting around the Afghans
(a Special Forces nuance that our good Prussian Petraeus
was quick to eliminate) was intentionally designed to help
"lose the war" in Afghanistan. Well, give it time.
But Cablegate is different, and the reaction of the ruling
class so far ranges from simply demanding Assange’s
head on a platter to demanding the Internet be declared
a terrorist entity, and destroyed.
Government propagandists proclaim that people will die
from this latest release. Unless they mean die laughing,
this is quite an overstatement. Government goons, soldiers
and bureaucrats in foreign countries will not face a greater
threat to their lives, most especially from these cables.
What they will face is snickers, chuckles, and outright
laughter.
And truly, this is as it should be. When one declares that
his robes are the most beautiful, made of the finest silk,
so glorious that they compete with the sun – sometimes
a little blond-haired boy with a most serious look about
him declares that it seems to him that the Emperor has no
clothes! And we see, slowly at first, then an unstoppable
surge of laughter and finger-pointing by the common people
who, for all their ignorance and all their flaws, know enough
to put on clothes before going out in public.
The US government shrieks, tone-deaf, of global democracy
– but disparages the populist language of Italian
officials and declares the elected and popular prime minister
there to be unqualified. Yet, this same democracy-loving
government enjoys very much its dealings with the evilest
of dictators. This hypocrisy has long been a staple of both
libertarian and Marxist critiques of US foreign policy,
for well over a century. Now it’s out in the open
– and it’s kind of funny.
Hillary Clinton approves a State Department-wide command
to surreptitiously collect DNA and credit card numbers on
UN representatives and other diplomats. This particular
case is breathtakingly Nuremburgian. The order Hilary was
transmitting was already government policy – the great
Diplomat Herself was just following orders. And certainly,
any of us common folk who watch enough CSI to be dangerous
know that collection of DNA samples with chain of custody
procedures that will stand up in court is not something
we would automatically trust to a bunch of pinstripers at
State. Beyond that, the rest of us who watch COPS know that
taking people’s credit card numbers without their
knowledge and permission is a crime.
Now that we know what they are trying to do, the proper
reaction is to giggle and glance at each other while we
check our pockets, handbags, backpacks and satchels for
our wallets and watches whenever we find ourselves near
a government representative. Of course, air travelers in
this country have been doing just that for some time. But
the sweet lesson here is that a government goon is a government
goon, just following orders, no matter where they buy their
suits. Our ability to quickly recognize that government
goon is increasingly unifying average Americans, and strengthening
us. As our government goonar continues to develop, the game
becomes more fun, and funnier. Cablegate improves everyone’s
goonar!
There is talk that the data released this week actually
helps Israel’s case for a good old-fashioned pre-emptive
attack on Iran. Why? Because Saudi Arabia supports it! Well,
skyrocketing oil prices certainly would come in handy to
the still dollar dependent House of Saud about now, but
I digress. Now, if I were the little old US of A thinking
about starting one more war with a country I didn’t
like, especially given I was dead broke and already a military
laughingstock based on past and present performance in Iraq
and Afghanistan, listening to what the corrupt, US-dependent
ruling class of Saudi Arabia had to say about it would be
right up there on my go-to-war-decision-meter. Give the
obvious and otherworldly stupidity of our politicians, generals,
and diplomats, perhaps the Saudis do tell us what to do,
and maybe Wikileaks hearts neocons. A better sense of where
the US diplomatic head is at can be gained by reading reports
of meetings in Tel Aviv, where the great US stumbles over
itself to be inoffensive, seeking simultaneously to be both
submissive and warlike when speaking to Israelis. Pathetic
little weasels, the lot of them. But their pathetic weaselness
cannot be blamed on Julian Assange, no matter how many neocons
and other cons declare the problem to be facts in the open,
rather than simply the facts.
On a more serious note, beyond the debate on whether to
assassinate Assange, blow up the Internet, conduct an unwarranted
attack on an NPT signatory that is following the rules,
or to continue to ally ourselves with the crazies in Pakistan
and Israel, it is important to recognize that fascism of
one kind or another is currently embraced by a majority
in Congress, and by a large minority across the country.
An alert and informed citizenry, valued by presidents from
Washington to Eisenhower, is now deemed by D.C. to be a
nascent domestic terrorism threat. As the American wholesale
subsidy of banks, bullets and butter metastasizes, devouring
freedom and wrecking the system, the desperation of the
ruling class and those in its employ is palpable. Americans
ought to gratefully smile as we review these latest Wikileaks,
and we should savor the hilarity. Seeing our government
as theatrical stooge, as incompetent popinjay, as naked
and embarrassed Emperor, sets the stage well for what comes
next.
LRC columnist Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D. [send
her mail], a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, blogs
occasionally at Liberty and Power and The Beacon. To receive
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