On Christmas night 1776, George Washington and his troops silently embarked east from Pennsylvania and crossed the Delaware River into New Jersey. They then pounced on snoring Hessian mercenaries at their barracks in Trenton. Washington’s surprise attack vanquished the pro-British unit. This unexpected victory rejuvenated the American Revolution just when the cause looked lost.
Had they been alive back then, Army Pfc. Bradley Manning (alleged purveyor of some 250,000 secret diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks) might have forwarded Washington’s covert plans to Julian Assange, WikiLeaks’s founder. Assange would have galloped on horseback through Trenton’s snow-clogged streets yelling, “The Yankees are coming! The Yankees are coming!” — all in order to “inform the public.”
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Roused from their sleep, the Hessians might have crushed Washington and his men and, thus, the Revolution. If so, we now would drink warm beer at cricket matches.
WikiLeakers and their increasingly vocal apologists are stunningly oblivious to military and diplomatic secrecy’s role in preserving freedom and national security. Informing the American people is a noble objective. Unfortunately, our enemies listen in.
Germany was unaware that Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt read Adolf Hitler’s military commands, thanks to captured Nazi Enigma coding machines. England kept this secret until 1974 — 29 years after Hitler put a gun to his temple in the Führerbunker.
WikiLeaks about Jimmy Doolittle’s post‒Pearl Harbor raid on Tokyo would have knocked American airplanes from Japanese skies. Likewise, promoting “the public’s right to know” about D-Day would have told the Nazis that Eisenhower was en route and turned the Normandy landing into an American Waterloo.
WikiLeaks’s operators and supporters either recklessly disregard the implications of their revelations or actively subvert U.S. interests while risking mayhem against Americans and our allies.
• WikiLeaks disclosed that a major Mediterranean city has become an al-Qaeda hotbed. (To limit further damage, I have excluded its name.) Consequently, American diplomats there have redoubled their counterterror efforts. WikiLeaks exposed this to America’s biggest enemy, placing a giant bull’s-eye on the relevant U.S. outpost and jeopardizing the country that hosts it.
• WikiLeaks posted diplomatic cables detailing critical infrastructure overseas, such as pipelines and vaccine factories. What a perfect target list for those who want “infidels” sick or dead.
• WikiLeaks blabbed that China seems sanguine about Seoul controlling the entire Korean peninsula. Next time Washington asks China to babysit Kim Jong Il, it will not help that leaked U.S. cables outed Beijing as less than thrilled with Pyongyang. This raises, rather than lowers, the odds that Kim will lob more explosives (conventional or atomic) at South Korea, possibly hitting American GIs, perhaps killing civilians, and even dragging America into another Korean War.
Since it is painfully clear that America cannot keep secrets (an old problem that WikiLeaks has updated), foreign intelligence sources will tend to clam up. Why whisper to American officials when the result is like shouting into a bullhorn?
Nonetheless, a group called “WikiLeaks Is Democracy” argues that “WikiLeaks performs an invaluable service to the broad U.S. and global public with a commitment to the protection of human rights and the rule of law.” Academy Award–winning filmmaker Michael Moore offered $20,000 toward Assange’s bail. “He should be thanked and honored, not abused and jailed,” Moore declared Tuesday.
Incredible.
WikiLeaks will snuff out innocent lives, if it has not done so already.
The U.S. remains at war with Muslim fanatics who plot mass murder against Americans and our friends overseas. From Mogadishu to Tehran to Pyongyang, bad men wish America the worst. That’s why WikiLeaks is neither funny, nor cute, nor just a “newsy” offshoot of the logorrhea that fuels breathless “tweets” about Kardashian leg-waxings and such.
Underscoring this point also serves justice. WikiLeaks’s alleged chief source, Pfc. Bradley Manning, should be court-martialed for espionage and treason. If convicted, he should be placed against a wall and executed by firing squad. (If extradited here, Assange deserves the same sendoff.) Maybe that will persuade Americans to stop flapping their gums about things that will get us killed.
— New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a nationally syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
Terrorist explicitly count as a foreign power, and the Taliban are actively going through the dump of military stuff to identify informants and "punish" them. Manning and Assange better pray that the Taliban fail.
America needs tougher espionage laws, then. Granted, other countries are even softer-hearted. The only reason to keep so many convicted spies alive is if they cut deals to turn over useful information to the US or their remaining alive has some other value to US policy. I had never looked into US espionage law, so until the previous comment I had assumed that was why Pollard, Walker, Ames and ever so many others had not been sent to death row as they deserved to be.
I suppose one might suggest that Manning, or any of those others, also meet the Constitutional definition of treason, inasmuch as their actions have given aid and comfort to enemies of the United States. I can only assume that one can still be executed for treason in the US.
Inevitably, though, some court would strike down the proceedings by quibbling over whether or not one can have an enemy in the absence of a formal declaration of war. Personally, I think you can. Enemies don't become so out of the blue when a resolution passes. But then I'm not a lawyer.
National security, including secrecy, are critically important. Manning, who allegedly stole the cables, is incarcerated and has been charged in connection with the theft. He may well receive the fate the author wishes upon him.
Like it or not, unless we ignore certain facts, Wikileaks poses profound First Amendment issues. Manning allegedly transmitted the cables to Wikileaks. Wikileaks then transmitted the cables to Le Monde, El Pais, Der Spiegel, and The Guardian. The Guardian then transmitted the cables to the NY Times. These five papers - all of which routinely encourage sources to disclose classified material - then published the cables for anyone with a web browser to see. Only after this did Wikileaks publish the cables. Based on the facts we know and can reasonably infer, how is Assange or Wikileaks more culpable than the editors and reporters who disseminated the cables across the globe?
Those behind the foreign policy abuses that WikiLeaks continues to expose "will snuff out innocent lives"; that they already *have* done so is not in question, while the same cannot be said of WikiLeaks.
Instead, we are run through some idiot fantasies of make-believe peril, never slowing down to wonder if it even makes any sense (you've got to love how WikiLeaks imperils Doolittle's bombing run, but not the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor..), because there is no argument being presented. Just the same boring appeal to authority, sprinkled with some Two Minutes Hate against the enemy du jour.
Though it's always funny to watch the breathless exhortations over the completely hypothetical dangers of whistleblowing as opposed to the real abuses perpetuated over years in our name, all protected under a veil of secrecy. So there's that.
Secret government is by definition non-consensual.
However a wikileaks about the concentration camps saves how many?
A leak about russian plans to move nukes to cuba?
Chinese plans to counterattack forces in Northern Korea?
How about one that shows what the A bomb can do? Maybe we dont need to actually drop one.
Bradley Manning is the vile traitor. His Entire Chain of Command should all be brought up on Extreme Deriliction and contributing charges.
Julian Assange never swore to look out for US Interests. His publishing of them is definately damaging but not treasonous. Our government should never be doing anything that it isnt willing to have brought to light. The disclosures are more like showing the D-Day plans a year or more after it happened.
Bostonaod...
Don't just spout nonsense like an idiot.
Please give me evidence of Julian Assange going deep cover in Yemen and coming back to the West with "leaks" that have prevented terrorist attacks on innocent civilians?
Very strange article! This article is a betrayal of conservative principles. Implicit in this article is an argument for bigger government. I'm sorry, but I don't want BIG BROTHER.
Love, love LOVE this article. Finally, some common sense talked about this Wikileaks fiasco.
Also, I notice that the people so vigorously defending ASSange seem to hate the evil capitalist pig nation... no surprise there. No voices raised so loudly in the defense of freedom as those voices which, in the same breath, denounce the country in which humankind is most free.
Oh please! This is sheer subjective thinking. If WikiLeaks would have released secret documents detailing the ambitions of Iran or China, you (the author of this tirade) would be calling WikiLeaks and Assange patriotic heroes. Please don't try to shy away from that fact.
This fallacious idea that this leaked information puts anyone in danger is part of the problem. You cannot stand behind the occupation of Iraq under false pretenses resulting in over 120,000 recorded deaths. You can thank the Iraq War Logs leaked by WikiLeak to put an actual number on those killed due to the U.S. invasion and occupation.
The people have a right to know where their tax money is going. I thought that was the very stance of the Conservative base. With this vilification of WikiLeaks by the Right, I don't quite understand what you want anymore.
You want government transparency? Here you go. I'm sorry, but this picking and choosing does not fit the bill. Either you man up and take it all, or cover your ears and scream as loud as you can.
I have heard that the list of charges against Private Manning does not include the charge of "treason". Instead, he is charged with something like "mishandling government documents". Can this be true? Is it possible that our masters can have such a warped sense of justice in this case?
Don't put a diamond in a paper bag, then wonder why it was stolen. Whoever set up a system when the word of one individual is between us and disaster is a fool and probably doesn't deserve a bullet.
Let's face it. The information that was leaked should never have been available to infiltrate. I agree that our reputation has been marred by the incident and our foreign informants will not want to divuldge information that will be displayed publicly. AND WHOSE FAULT IS THAT. As Mark Goldstein mentions above you don't keep diamonds in a paper bag. Our government is negligent, and I have heard nothing to indicate the issue has been resolved. Rather than insisting on some moral superiority in media, that simply does not exist, I recommend the author start seriously examining the responsibility of the state department and other agencies that have lead to this embarrassment.
