Posts Tagged ‘Assange’
Real Outrage
Friday, July 30th, 2010
The response from the White House to the release of documents by the independent site WikiLeaks has been yawningly predictable. Following a pattern set by the previous administration, the White House, the Pentagon, the Afghan government and the Pakistan government have all roundly denounced WikiLeaks as an irresponsible, rogue organization with no respect for the United States security or the safety of our soldiers serving overseas.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the leak was “potentially severe and dangerous.” Admiral Mike Mullen said he was “appalled… and frankly, outraged that anyone in their right mind would think it valuable to make public even one sensitive report, let alone tens of thousands of them…”
One can’t help but notice the similarities to Claude Rains protests in “Casablanca.” “I’m shocked, shocked that anyone would want to make public the news that there is killing going on in Afghanistan.”
The White House added its two bits as well: “The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security.”
In a somewhat bizarre twist, President Obama tried simultaneously to deny the documents contained any new information, while at the same time using the release of the documents to garner support for his supplemental spending bill.
“We failed for seven years to implement a strategy adequate to the challenge,” Obama said today, of the period starting with the 9/11 attacks. That is why we have increased our commitment there and developed a new strategy, Insisting that the strategy “can work”, he ended with a plea to the House of Representatives to join the Senate in passing a bill to provide funds for the Afghan war as a matter of urgency.
But with all the criticism of WikiLeaks, all the opprobrium heaped upon WikiLeaks director Julian Assange, even with all the slings and arrows Obama has leveled at his predecessor’s failures in Afghanistan, there is one thing conspicuously absent from the administration’s comments.
Nowhere in any of the statements coming out of the White House is there any re-evaluation of our policy towards Afghanistan. There is plenty of soul searching about the strategy employed, but no where is there any admission on the part of the administration that America’s initial policy toward Afghanistan could be – in a word – wrong.
Perhaps the clearest expression of what I’m talking about is found in Professor Marjorie Cohn’s piece, published after Obama had accepted the Nobel Peace prize.
The UN Charter provides that all member states must settle their international disputes by peaceful means, and no nation can use military force except in self-defense or when authorized by the Security Council. After the 9/11 attacks, the council passed two resolutions, neither of which authorized the use of military force in Afghanistan.
“Operation Enduring Freedom” was not legitimate self-defense under the charter because the 9/11 attacks were crimes against humanity, not “armed attacks” by another country. Afghanistan did not attack the United States. In fact, 15 of the 19 hijackers hailed from Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, there was not an imminent threat of an armed attack on the United States after 9/11, or President Bush would not have waited three weeks before initiating his October 2001 bombing campaign. The necessity for self-defense must be “instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.” This classic principle of self-defense in international law has been affirmed by the Nuremberg Tribunal and the UN General Assembly.
All the outrage from the White House over the WikiLeaks documents and the potential harm they could do to our “war effort” in Afghanistan and not one peep about the possibility that maybe our war effort might just be a tad illegal, immoral, unjust, and unnecessary? Like his predecessor, President Obama decrees that fighting a war in Afghanistan is vital to America’s security, and like loyal vassals, the congress and the media all line up and say yes sir.
The current round of attacks on WikiLeaks seem to focus on how they will have “blood on their hands” if anyone dies because of the revelations. As if the United States hands are clean over the secretive special forces assassination squad that has resulted in the deaths of untold numbers of innocent civilians. Senators like Lindsay Graham can stand up and call for prosecution for WikiLeaks
,Secretary of Defense Gates can make veiled threats of “targeting” Julian Assange (perhaps not so veiled considering the tactics employed by the Pentagon to date in its prosecution of the “War on Terror,”) but where is the outrage over the hundreds of deaths caused by Nato forces?
The recent missile attack that killed at least 45 civilians including women and children is but the latest example. The administration can castigate WikiLeaks all it likes but it doesn’t alter the fact that it is the administration’s own illegal actions that are leading to many of the deaths in Afghanistan. If anyone has blood on there hands it is those who okayed the invasion and subsequent occupation of that already war torn land.
The main point that is being missed in all the administration outrage is not that the Wikileaks exposes flaws in the US strategy in Afghanistan. If anything the real outrage over the revelations in the WikiLeaks documents should be that they reaffirm the essential legal, moral, and ethical flaw in US imperialist Policy towards the Middle East. The question is not whether the WikiLeaks documents harm the US war effort or not. The question is whether the US has a right to engage in a War effort at all.
