Website returns power to people
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Matt Manning
A new piece of summer reading has become smashingly popular throughout the past week. I’m not talking about a new Stephen King novel or the latest spy thriller from Tom Clancy, but rather the 91,000-page leak of classified military documents detailing nearly every military action in Afghanistan 2004-10.
Condemned by the U.S. intelligence community and military as both irresponsible and dangerous, the report covers everything from Coalition casualties to accidental atrocities. These documents, dubbed the “Afghan War Diary” or AWD, have caused quite a stir. Although critics say the report’s release is dangerous because it contains sensitive material, many others say this is the epitome of freedom of the press.
The leak of the AWD was made possible by a site called WikiLeaks. The website allows users to upload any document completely anonymously. Although the website has been around for more than four years, it started to gain notoriety after it leaked a video of a U.S. helicopter attack that killed two Reuters journalists in Baghdad in 2007. Reuters had unsuccessfully sought the release of the same video.
WikiLeaks provided an avenue for the video and the truth. Using websites such as WikiLeaks, the truth becomes impossible to hide. The site also has released numerous other damning documents from reports of corruption in Kenya and companies dumping toxic materials off the coast of Africa to the member rosters of the right-wing extremist British National Party. However, the complaints many have with the website are numerous.
Along with releasing dangerous classified documents, many have argued the website cannot be held accountable. The site allows any document to be uploaded with minimum screening. When something is published using a traditional avenue, certain rules apply to content. WikiLeaks doesn’t have to abide by those rules, which creates a bit of a quandary. In fact, the website might not have a hierarchy that can be held accountable or criticized.
Essentially, what WikiLeaks has accomplished — especially with the AWD — is to create a forum to bring the strong to their knees. The website has been in the U.S. government’s sights for a long time.
Interestingly enough, WikiLeaks even leaked a top secret government document that detailed the government’s plan to take down the website. But the leak of the AWD seems to be the last straw. Last week, the Pentagon said WikiLeaks might have blood on its hands due to the leak of these documents.
These strong words from the Pentagon would make one believe that documents must have great importance.
Although I can’t say that I’ve read anywhere near to the entirety of the reports, most of what is contained within them is extremely raw data, filled with jargon, personal accounts and unfiltered contentions. Nearly a week after the leak of the documents, analysts have found nothing of surprise in the documents. Due to the great gravity and size of the text, most has ended up being almost worthless. What has been “found” hardly has been surprising. Moreso, the information has confirmed some creeping suspicions, such as Pakistan’s intelligence service secretly aiding the Taliban in Afghanistan. The AWD is more of an embarrassment to the U.S. and Coalition forces than anything else.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates contends that WikiLeaks should be morally accountable, but after looking at the documents — few of which deserved the “classified” clearance given to them — it can be seen that the website might have crossed a line by publishing the AWD, but that the work it does leaves little to be morally outraged over.
WikiLeaks provides a place for all the dirty little secrets of the world to be exposed. This is the purest form of journalism — life without censorship. However, this realm isn’t without danger. If even one life is lost due to the release of these documents, then the leaking of these documents was not worth it. Information always comes with a price, but that price should never be paid in blood. Still, the website functions as the purest form of democracy by returning power to the people. Through this, the potential to rein in the powerful and hold even giants accountable becomes possible. That is a power that the people — from whom all authority is derived — should always have.
Matt Manning is a State News guest columnist. Reach him at mannin84@msu.edu.
Commentary
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Maria
(08/02/10 8:49pm)Report
The columnist states that the freedom of speech and freedom of the press should not be paid for in blood. I disagree. Many Americans have died for the freedom of speech and of the press. It started in 1776. Our soldiers are fighting for those freedoms to this day.
SIGP226
(08/03/10 8:49am)Report
The data and their effects have yet to be fully analyzed, but one thing is sure:
The turd that released them won’t see daylight anytime soon. We used to hang traitors, but I guess we’ve “evolved” beyond that.
Sparty
(08/03/10 9:06am)Report
What the author fails to understand is that some of these reports contained the names of Afghans who provided America with information on Taliban and AQ. They were not properly redacted.
If you think that the Taliban and AQ aren’t reading these you’re a moron.
Those poor souls are going to probably die, terribly. That is 100% the fault of wikileaks and serves no useful purpose other than for people like you, Matt, to simply gawk at classified information you have no need for, which provides no useful info to the US public.
People will die because of this. Corresponding with Freedom is Responsibility. We have an obligation to be responsible in how we use our freedoms. This is not responsible.
Sparty
(08/03/10 9:23am)Report
Before you all say im exaggerating.
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/uk/taliban hunt wikileaks outed afghan informers/3727667
“Exclusive: The Taliban has issued a chilling warning to Afghans, alleged in secret US military files leaked on the internet to have worked as informers for the Nato-led coalition, telling Channel 4 News “US spies” will be hunted down and punished.
Sparty
(08/03/10 9:29am)Report
Wikileaks: damage is done say human rights group
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/international_politics/wikileaks damage already done says human rights group/3727677
“Ahmad Nader Nadery, the Commissioner of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) told Channel 4 News the damage is already done, because thousands of Afghans have already downloaded the files.”
Stop oil wars
(08/03/10 5:17pm)Report
And thousands of civilians in Afghanistan have died since 2001, and thousands more have died indirectly as a result of the poverty, disease, famine, and misery that results with living in a perpetual war zone where the infrastructure is destroyed by constant bombing.
Whatever the official party line is about the war, or whatever can be gleaned from wikileaks about US atrocities in a sovereign nation, it’s clear that all parties place an abysmally low value on the life and health of the people of Afghanistan—be they enemy, civilian, covert ally, whatever.
People want to say something about the wars, say it. People want to find out more about the wars, research it. These are the crucial first steps to ending them.
I don’t agree with the notion that soldiers are now fighting for anything resembling freedom— American, Afghani Iraqi or any other freedom. There is an overwhelming body of evidence (including the wikileaks documents) suggesting these wars are not taking us in the direction of “more” freedom.
Afghani people are routinely tortured and brutalized, US wounded receive grossly inadquate care and in some cases deneid their right to medical care through misapplied “personality disorder” discharges, combat stress is through the roof. Dissidence to the war is met with prosecution without due process, as is the case with Assange and Pfc Manning, intimidation, dispossession, and so on.
Further, the primary interests served in invading defenseless countries are defense contractor conglomerates, investments firms, and oil companies, none of whom have any accountability to the public who is now deep in debt for funding these wars.
Jack Donaghy
(08/03/10 7:20pm)Report
I like the way the author presented the materials. It was a very well written piece.
Nice work Matt!
re "oil wars"
(08/04/10 8:58am)Report
uh… where exactly is there oil in afghanistan?
oh yeah…
Stop oil wars
(08/04/10 4:32pm)Report
Good point and good question, but it’s not just the source, but the logistics of distribution which motivates oil wars.
Afghanistan’s location in the Central Asian/Caucasus is strategically important for establishing oil pipeline routes and as a check on Russia’s geopolitical influence. These were motivations for US involvement in proxy warfare against Soviet influence in Afghanistan in decades prior, which severely damaged the nation’s economic security and infrastructure and paved the way for the fundamentalist Taliban regime, which the US-backed al-Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden, a CIA employee, helped install.
Thus, to associate this intervention with freedom makes a complete distortion of the US history in the region. 9/11 was a terrible atrocity which moved the U.S. internally toward non-freedom.
To call the war in Afghanistan an act of justice or even vengeance is still disingenuous when the global corporate profit motive in the region is so shamefully and nakedly obvious.
So what about disrupting the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which the United States had helped to earlier install?
I think Chomsky describes it most honestly—as a start toward reparations.
SIGP226
(08/04/10 4:39pm)Report
Al-Qaeda wasn’t even a loosely-formed group when the US (CIA) acted in Afghanistan.
Why do they keep repeating the lie that the US supported and nurtured this group? Not even close to being true, but propagandists sure have mastered the art of repetition.
As for bin Laden being a CIA “employee”? Well, there’s only so much bullshit that you can stomach in a single post.
Re: Sparty
(08/14/10 6:31am)Report
“People will die because of this (Wikileaks).”
No, Sparty. People will die because of the continued U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. Wikileaks is irrelevant. So long as the U.S. military is used as an occupying force in Afghanistan, people — both U.S. and Afghan — will continue to die. This has been the case since the invasion. It will continue to be the case until the U.S. removes its troops from Afghan soil. “Mission Accomplished,” as G.W. Bush said in 2003. So now it’s time for the troops to leave Afghanistan. Before more people die needlessly.
Good article, Matt.