December 10th / 12th
"Assange in Trouble for Taking a Leak"
Back in May, Hamid Karzai was invited to the White House where President
Obama praised and feted the Afghan leader as a trusted ally. Republicans and
Democrats alike told us that the Karzai government was a solid partner in
the war on terror and would have our back in a fight. Well, one good build
up deserves another, so Obama committed 100,000 troops to Afghanistan where
they will remain until 2014. The problem is that the American public was
duped, and deliberately so.
Obama and his diplomats knew long before May that Karzai's regime was
corrupt, was fueled by a systematic narcotics industry, and regularly skimmed
money from American development projects. State department representatives
in Afghanistan had also cabled the President, telling him that Karzai was
a paranoid wreck, and "an extremely weak man who did not listen to facts".
Yet Mr. Obama, like his gung ho predecessor, decided to cover up vital
information so that American taxpayers would support an unjust, unwinnable war,
while our troops would be put in harm's way under false pretenses with no
support from their host nation. So much for the new era of transparency.
All of these shocking revelations came to light earlier this month when
Julian Assange dumped some 250,000 government documents onto his Wikileaks
website. The emails, cables, memos, and reports were leaked to Assange by an
Army PFC, and now everyone from Eric Holder to Sarah Palin is out for
blood, saying the Wiki founder is guilty of espionage. Not surprisingly, the
Obama administration is embarrassed and angry over the massive leak, which
also includes juicy tidbits about world leaders. Frankly I don't much care
that French president Nicolas Sarkozy is "an emperor with no clothes", or that
Italian prime minister Silvio Berluscomi is "feckless and ineffective",
but I do care that our President deliberately misled us so that we would
support his decision to go to war.
Former US diplomat Peter Galbraith told CNN, "we have 100,000 troops
committed to a strategy that won't work, and that is a waste of resources - 120
billion dollars, and the lives that are lost. And frankly, it is wrong and
immoral to send people to a mission that you don't believe can be
accomplished...without an Afghan partner, we cannot succeed".
And yet, despite Obama's shameless deceptions and the botched strategies
they produced, most Americans see Assange as the bad guy. But how can a
whistle blower be the bad guy? After all, our government regularly rewards
people who come forward with the truth about public and private sector
misdeeds. Last summer, for example, Hedy Cirrincione was awarded $10 million
dollars by the Feds for uncovering widespread Medicaid fraud. And we owe a debt
of gratitude to countless other legendary whistle blowers, such as Jeffrey
Wigand, Karen Silkwood, Mark ("Deep Throat") Felt, and Daniel Ellsberg
whose leaked Pentagon papers eventually helped to end the Vietnam war, thus
preventing thousands more casualties. For his part, Julian Assange is telling
us that we can't trust either the Afghan government or our own, and that if
we don't change course, more of our sons and daughters will die for
nothing.
America needs whistle blowers. Unfortunately, we seldom embrace them while
they are in the process of blowing that whistle. It usually takes many
years and the perspective of history before we fully appreciate the
contribution made by those who have the courage to speak out about or release
controversial information. That's probably how it will be with Julian Assange.
Regardless, he has done America a great service by publishing information
about Afghanistan which, if acted upon, could save lives, not cost them.
Meanwhile, our President shouldn't be trying to kill the messenger. Instead he
should learn from the message.
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