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The Confused Morality of WikiLeaks The latest WikiLeaks trove raises once more the following two issues — the circumstances of the release of classified documents and their contents. We won’t know the full extent of the diplomatic archives for days, but so far the particulars seem as embarrassing as they are underwhelming. We are told that the Obama administration by hook or crook wanted to close Guantanamo, that occasionally U.S. diplomats spy, that Pakistan is unstable, that Saudi Arabia is duplicitous in wanting America to bell the Iranian nuclear cat while their elites subsidize al-Qaeda, that we are planning for the eventuality of North Korea’s fall, that China conspires against Google, that Libya’s Gaddafi had a hot blonde “nurse” with him, that the U.S. military was critical of the Brits, that the Royal Family is sometimes naughty, and all number of other things we would expect diplomatic missions to hear, gossip, editorialize, and intrigue about — and which usually find their way into the mainstream press sooner or later. The danger of releasing these confidential diplomatic cables, then, is probably not their content per se but the destruction of the trust and reputations of many American diplomats who on future occasions, in far more critical contexts, will lament the loss of their access, friendships and credibility. Second, the how, why, and when of the leak of over 250,000 diplomatic communications raises fundamental, worrisome, and even ironic issues. For instance, how in the world does one Pfc. Bradley Manning, the alleged twentysomething Army leaker, become an “intelligence analyst”...
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ... |
