Controversial whistle-blowing website Wikileaks has yet again attracted the wrath of the international diplomatic community by, this time, releasing cables reporting what the personal views of officials.
This follows the equally contentious leaks of classified information about civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan and the video of a US helicopter killing reporters from Reuters.
Political leaders, and more than a few members of the general public, have condemned the website and its founder, Australian Julian Assange, for endangering servicemen across the world and have described its latest coup as an attack on the international community.
But how true is this and have the disclosures really put anybody at risk?
The whole point of journalism throughout history has been to uncover the truth and question what we are told by our leaders. Admittedly these documents have been discovered through and illegal breach of national security, but the public have a right to know what is going on in the world behind the closed doors of power.
The revelations about civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan can hardly be called surprising. It was assumed by pretty much everyone, especially after the atrocities at Abu Ghraib ahs been discovered, that this was going on and not being reported.
Cable Gate, as it is being called on the Wikileaks website, is more embarrassing than controversial and has revealed some very interesting information including the possibility of China abandoning international relations with North Korea.
Yes, the US State Department is not going to be happy about the world knowing it thinks French President Nicolas Sarkozy is said “thin-skinned and authoritarian” or about its attempts to spy on United Nation officials, but what are you doing putting these things down in writing anyway. Did the US Government learn nothing from Watergate?
Maybe it is naive of the public to assume high-level officials have personal views of each other. How many of us have poked fun at Sarkozy or Italian President Silvio Berlusconi?
One of the major leaks involves the prompting by governments in the Arab world calling for the US to attack Iran. This was a view put around quite a lot in the journalistic world after 2003 when many believed the invasion of Iraq was a pretext was an invasion of Iran.
Wikileaks first came to prominence earlier this year when they released a video of a US Army Apache helicopter engaging with suspected terrorists in New Baghdad, but instead ended up killing around 12 people, including two reporters form Reuters, and injuring two children.
What was most shocking about this was not so much what happened, although it was undoubtedly terrible, but the video game attitude adopted by the men inside the helicopter.
No matter how much respect you have for the armed services and the vital work they do, the western world is supposed to stand for freedom. It is certainly debatable how much we can stand for freedom when soldiers start shooting at civilians without any provocation.
It is surely flat-out hypocrisy for the US, and world leaders, to condemn the release of this material just because they do not like the content.
George Orwell wrote “political language is designed t make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidarity to pure wind.”
Maybe it is time for the ‘leaders of the free world’ to start acting like they live in a free world and accept these revelations are not revelations at all, but are part of what people hate about our governments.
The people have a right to know how their armed services are acting around the world, to not have their leaders hide behind diplomatic confidentiality when they are making sarcastic remarks about other leaders and to know the direction the world is heading in terms of diplomatic relations.
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