Last night’s broadcast of the PBS NewsHour (11/29/10) offered a discussion of the WikiLeaks documents. Who were the guests? As Judy Woodruff announced: “We turn to two former national security advisers with extensive experience in making and carrying out U.S. foreign policy. “ That would be Carter’s Zbigniew Brzezinski and George W. Bush’s Stephen Hadley. The discussion was about as illuminating as one might expect.
Hours later on the Charlie Rose show, guest host Jon Meacham featured a typical Charlie Rose discussion: two reporters from the New York Times and former Clinton State Department aide Jamie Rubin. The Times reporters more or less retold stories they are reporting in the paper, so it was left to Rubin to hurl accusations against WikiLeaks:
I think the widespread dissemination of pretty much everything that the U.S. State Department does is an attack on the U.S. ability to operate in the world. It’s not on one policy, like I’m against Iraq War or I’m against the Afghan War. It’s an attack against the American government’s ability to conduct its foreign policy, meaning America’s being attacked in a cyber attack by a particular group of individuals who are trying to harm American foreign policy and therefore America, and therefore, in my opinion, harm the interests of the West.
Rubin went on to add:
And ironically, the State Department are the people who are trying to do the job that the WikiLeaks founder says he’s trying to do, which is world peace. It’s not going to happen if the State Department can’t make secret agreements sometimes with foreign leaders.
I wasn’t aware that the State Department’s job is to create world peace. But Jamie Rubin worked there, so he’d know better.
What Rubin is saying is that it’s impossible for the State Department to promote peace if they can’t persuade other countries to lie about our secret wars.
And “other” in “other countries” has to qualified, since independence is dependence.
“…In the media’s coverage of the WikiLeaks, its massive exposure of classified material is almost invariably described as â┚¬Ã…“unprecedented.â┚¬Ã‚ In reality, there is one historical precedent. It accompanied the conquest of state power by the Russian working class in October 1917.”
“One of the first acts of the new workers’ government was to publish the secret treaties and diplomatic documents that had fallen into its hands. These treaties laid bare the predatory war aims of Britain, France and Tsarist Russia in World War I, which included the redrawing of national boundaries and re-division of the colonial world. In exposing them, Russia’s new revolutionary workers’ government sought to advance its program of an immediate armistice to end the slaughter.”
“Leon Trotsky, then People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, explained the principles underlying the exposure of these state secrets. â┚¬Ã…“Secret diplomacy,â┚¬Ã‚ he wrote, â┚¬Ã…“is a necessary tool for a propertied minority, which is compelled to deceive the majority in order to subject it to its interests. Imperialism, with its dark plans of conquest and its robber alliances and deals, developed the system of secret diplomacy to the highest level. The struggle against imperialism, which is exhausting and destroying the peoples of Europe, is at the same time a struggle against capitalist diplomacy, which has cause enough to fear the light of day.â┚¬Ã‚–ICFI
http://wsws.org/articles/2010/nov2010/pers-n30.shtml
Funny how Socialists always try to claim legitimacy in the Soviet Union’s actions, even after it’s gone.
Still, they probably inspired the precedent that I see, which is the Boston Police Strike. It was an embarrassment to the elites and the press called it a threat to civilization. Eventually the unions called it off. Here, there are no unions, just lots of internet.
Italy compared it to 9/11.
AS I stated…has Mr Assange looked into the damage that could be caused by the release of these documents?Has he tracked the damage already caused?Does he care?
mitchell reiss, a former head of policy planning at the state department, “It’s obviously an embarrassment” for the united states, but one that is “unlikely to do long-term damage.” not only was there “little news” in the cables, he said, but reporters are exaggerating their importance to u.s. policymakers — “nobody has time to read that stuff” anyway.