I upvoted you because I agree all the way to your last sentence, and your reply works with or without it.

Here's an interesting thought experiment. What if Assange were releasing secrets about how the agriculture department did experiments in the 50s that ended up killing farmers? Hell, everybody would be hailing him as a hero. How about if he were releasing docs about how people were killed because they threatened to release secrets about something back in the 80s? Same deal.

You can keep playing this game, with various subject matter. But at the end of the day you get (I think) to two points.

1) Assange is a political figure, making political statements by what he chooses to release or not (no matter all the hoopla over theory, the underlying point is very political as you can easily see by the comments in this thread), and

2) Assange is using leaks to take on a current issue that involves the difficult decision to go kill a bunch of people (mass slaughter as you call it, but whether good or evil, it's a damn serious thing)

That makes him more than a newspaper. He's more like his own nation-state. As such, and since he is interjecting himself into the middle of a war, I would be curious as to what kind of Navy and Army he has -- or where his UN representation is. Nation-states get to play with the big boys because they can take the punches. I don't think he can.

Assuming the Afghan war is "mass slaughter" and that some terrible evil is being confronted, this system of governmental control does not work. It's not a matter of how bad the U.S. is, or how bad the war is, or how bad anything is. You can't fix it by playing the Wikileaks game.

That means that the argument is over. Assange loses. For those wanting change, he ain't it. For those wanting truth, he ain't it -- you're only going to get what fits his model of truth. For those wanting change , he ain't it. The remedy is worse than the disease.

That's why I engaged on this thread. This _is_ a systems issue. We could turn the tables 180 degrees on the Afghan war -- I could oppose and you support -- and my comments would still hold. It's not a matter of how bad the war is or how governments use information to control public opinion. Great topics, sure, but this is about that. Getting folks thinking about the particulars of the information distracts them from the larger picture by making them emotionally, well, irrational.

And I hate to say this, because I know it will just heat things up, but I'm done here, and it relates to your comment about war and propaganda, so one final thought: I think you have to decide whether or not you are at war with the status quo. Not just angry about stuff, but at war with it -- willing to have people killed to support your position. If you are, then you support the leaks, wave your hands around and stamp your feet and talk about civilians killed and how it justifies Assange. This -- the idea that informants and such killed is unprovable and/or irrelevant, is war talk. If you are not at war, then you can still support ending the war -- just on different terms than using Wikileaks.

I will protest with you, I will write editorials, I will call for constitutional change. I'll go and march. But I am not at war with this country. I do not support risking lives of informants and operatives simply because I might be morally outraged at the war. I am morally outraged with many parts of what my country does, and I feel in many ways it is hurting its own citizens in awful ways in a misguided effort to create the perfect society. I am a staunch libertarian. But I will not support the deaths of others to advance my personal views -- the only place for that sort of support for violence is the polls.

I apologize for my hyperbole in the choice of words "mass slaughter" to describe the war. The intent was to describe the war only in terms of its casualties rather than in terms of its stated or unstated political goals (since this is the nerve that Wikileaks touches).

I don't disagree with your points, and I think you articulate some aspects quite well. True Assange is a political figure. He is also the founder of an institution. To date we have not seen the rise of a virtual institution with this sort of political significance, nor have we seen one that exists independently of a state or party.

We seem to disagree on the issue of supporting Wikileaks as an act of civil disobedience. In my opinion, we are not morally obligated to obey unjust laws. Of course, we may be made to suffer the consequences of disobedience, but I do not (as you seem to) imbue the law with any special moral significance just because it's the law.

Let me remind you that it is illegal for the US to propagandize Americans. I'd argue that some of the information that is being declared "secret" is simply information that the government wants withheld for propaganda purposes.

So without Wikileaks, what check or balance exists to prevent this misuse of secrecy for propaganda? I'm curious if you think this is a reasonable question to ask and what you think the answer is.

To address your broader critique of Wikileaks, I'd argue that Assange is building a very ambitious institution, and it's currently imperfect. Some of your critiques apply only to the young incarnation of Wikileaks and (I'd expect) will go away once/if the institution manages to gain additional credibility, experience, and stability.

One quote of yours really intrigues me: Getting folks thinking about the particulars of the information distracts them from the larger picture by making them emotionally, well, irrational. This suggests that you think that a member of the public judging the appropriateness/worth of the war would be more rational if he/she ignored all the messy noise offered by the leaks and focused only on the government's official story of how/why the war should continue. If not, then I'm curious how you'd advise the rational citizen to assess the status/progress/worth of a war effort such as the current US involvement in Afghanistan.

I figured you were using "mass slaughter" as a way to describe the general situation in a war in terms that resonate. We are on the same page.

We have not seen the rise of the institution like this, and I predict that the nation-states will go to war with these institutions, and quickly. Not sure if it will be a shooting war -- but these things usually turn out that way.

Are we morally obligated to obey unjust laws? Woof. That's a can of worms. If I had to cook up an answer, I'd start with "Declaration of Independence" and throw in a little "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" to the mix.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_In...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_from_Birmingham_Jail

Jefferson makes the case that we owe the state our obedience as long as the state keeps its end of the bargain. I think it's reasonable to say two things here. 1) Jefferson's time was simpler, with tremendously fewer laws, and 2) disobedience that may involve the death of someone is of a different nature than that which may not. (see earlier comment)

MLK begins with this more complex world and addresses your question -- unjust laws. Key quote here: One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty.

Both are great examples of great men thinking through difficult problems. I side with Jefferson a bit more than MLK, simply because I think you can moralize yourself into a snit over just about anything. But MLK is saying that even if you're right, there's no free pass: you still owe the larger society something.

As to your final point, I should have been clearer. I have no problem at all with war in all its messiness being displayed all over the place. This is the way it should be. What I object to is the selective use of images -- coffins coming off planes, no information for months and then a dump of collateral damage videos -- any one of a dozen "dirty tricks" that involve manipulating the viewer.

During the American Civil War, we had photography for the first time. There were some god-awful battlefield images shown to the public. But oddly enough, nothing much happened. People are very capable of understanding the brutality of war. I don't think it's much of a secret.

I'm very conflicted on Afghanistan. From the half-dozen COIN books I've read, we're going to have to make peace with the Taliban. But Karzai is something of a cross between a rabid badger and a skunk -- he's selling us out as we speak.

I don't have an opinion right now, frankly. I supported Iraq and Afghanistan because I honestly felt that in the 10-20 year time period, less lives would be lost by taking action. I also felt from a personal perspective that it was better to give nation-building a shot rather than carpet-bombing from afar. I still feel that was a good call.

But I feel that strategically, in Afghanistan at least, the scales are tipping. The military we have -- few boots with lots of cool high tech and a tendency towards kinetic fighting -- simply doesn't match the terrain or battle in Afghanistan, no matter how hard we try to patch it up.

I think the average citizen, especially when it comes to fighting, should read. A lot. I understand what Karzai is doing and why. I understand what we're doing. I understand why civilians get killed. Wikileaks is just data. Data presented for the shock of impact. Understanding always beats data.

Interesting thoughts. I have a few thoughts in reply. Ill try to be careful not to expand the scope of our discussion too broadly.

I'm inclined to disagree that Americans are aware of the awfulness of war. War is imagined as safe and hygienic, fought with GPS smart bombs and laser guided munitions. I think that going into Afghanistan/Iraq post-911, most Americans anticipated fewer than 500 American casualties. Gulf War I had about 35 US casualties, as I recall.

We are now in a war that has created thousands of US military casualties and many more limbs lost. Soldiers on the ground deal with hidden IEDs that may send shrapnel through the side of their humvee and kill/maim in very small doses, but the suffering grows little by little as the timeframe increases.

(Here I'll be very careful to avoid expanding the scope):

Winning a war is (by definition) breaking the will of the enemy. The distaste of the US populace for the horrors of war necessitated the narrative of smart bombs and technologically-driven victory. The reality of nation building is far less glamorous, and the stress of war often brings out an ugly side of human nature.

Suppose the American public sees American soldiers laying waste to journalists, striking deals with the ISI, renditioning captives to Syria, conducting political assassinations, and generally undertaking all of the ugly tradeoffs of a protracted nation building exercise... this isn't exactly the stuff of Top Gun. A few close up shots of blown off limbs, stories about cruelty, and lack of measurable success may turn the tide of support for the war, thus breaking our will to keep fighting and leading to defeat.

All this assumes that the stated goals of the conflict (defeating the Taliban and ushering in an era of tolerance and women's rights in Afghanistan) match the actual goals.

What are the actual goals? The geopolitics of the conflict are ancient, and George Friedman has written about them extensively, and I'm sympathetic to his explanation.

Rather than (in the newspeak of our conflict) "stabilizing" Afganistan and Iraq, it is the US goal to destabilize them (by preventing the natural accretion of a major local power).

So how do you get a populace of comfortable Americans to support a protracted nation building exercise intended to destabilize an entire region? Simple: Come up with a good story. This is, I think, why Wikileaks poses such a threat (and why I think it's so important). There has been a decades long effort to build the propaganda story behind these wars, and they are necessary for the US's continued domination.

I think it follows from this, incidentally, that terrorism (asymmetrical warfare with a focus on symbolic targets) will be an increasing reality for the US as it becomes increasingly impossible to engage in a traditional war with the US due to its power.

It's a much broader question whether the actions of the US in Afghanistan and Iraq will decrease terrorism (I think they are bound to increase it). I also think it's appropriate to question the policy of the US of being involved in the middle east whatsoever.

We (as US voters) are all responsible for the totalitarian regimes sponsored by the US and for the loss of life our destabilization effort has caused. Thus, I think Wikileaks provides a truly valuable resource as it helps weaken the extremely grand story we've been told for decades about US involvement in the middle east.

I view the US reliance upon secrecy and propaganda as a very substantial cog in the war machine, and I do not by default consider our middle east involvement remotely moral (thought admittedly I am not prepared to say I consider it all utterly immoral).

I realize I've brought in a few other concepts, and you may deem them insufficiently related to warrant reply, but I'd be curious about your thoughts nonetheless.

Yeah I really think you are conflating "leaking of information" with WikiLeaks, and I wouldn't go that far at all. Also we've drug all sorts of things in here. For instance, let's not go down the stability/terrorism/history of the mideast route. Love to do it, but another day.

Pentagon Papers -- not a major revelation but what could be considered an important leak. One could argue that over a million folks were killed as a result of the leak, but that would, alas, broaden the scope. Lets assume some leaks are warranted (a position I hold)

Does that mean any leaks are warranted? I hope we can both agree not.

I'm also concerned that we may be conflating the fact that something is bad with a justification for something else. Yes, the military-industrial complex is bad, the secrecy is bad, the 47-thousand intelligence programs are bad (in their complexity, loose missions, and overlap). But does that mean that any kind of secrecy is bad? Withholding a video of a helicopter crew killing people they shouldn't? Exposing which exactly how each Afghan leader is corrupt?

Information is power, and I would hope that -- for all the hundreds of billions we are spending -- we are managing a good chunk of valuable information that we're not giving out. I would hope this as a voter. Hell, we're paying an arm and a leg, we had better be knowing all sorts of interesting things we can use. So let's acknowledge that a key part of conducting a war is the gaining, withholding, and dissemination of information.

This means that war is a funny duck. If you keep from me the information on how much HUD is spending on junkets, that hurts a democracy. If you keep from me how General X is changing tactics to fight the Taliban, that's a necessary part of the social contract.

Hamilton and Madison understood this, and argued for a president with total dictatorial powers in times of crisis. There is a place for a "king" and a "Secret police" in the constitution. The office of the executive and the role of secrecy can't go away. Not that I can see.

What's happened, of course, is that we've gone from this war-is-exceptional mentality to one in which we're always in some kind of low-level "war" about something or another. Congress has given up its power to declare war, basically, because it was easier just not to make a political commitment about any particular conflict. Add to that the billions invested in a war machine with pretty much nothing to do, and you have a recipe for a situation where secrecy can be used not to fight a war, but to prevent citizens from adjusting policy.

Ugh.

I think we're on the same page so far.

I think what you point out so well is that, as we've redefined "war", we've redefined how we talk about it. One side wants pictures of entrails and tortured orphans while another would have us push buttons and pop out for scones. This is part of the larger trend of war becoming this low level political thing instead of this huge clash of cultures.

But -- and this is my key point -- that doesn't mean that our kids aren't suffering and dying overseas. And that means, for me, secrecy and staying the course. You don't send somebody to risk his life and die on the condition that he make it look good on TV. At least I don't.

So, to the larger question, how does one monitor the progress of a war? That's a helluva question, grandalf, especially these new kinds of wars. I think this pattern where we lie to ourselves, then have some magic revelation (like the Pentagon Papers) then pull out and cause more chaos and death? That's pretty dysfunctional. Could you have total openness? I can't see that either -- you simply can't conduct combat and COIN operations totally open. Geesh frack, a reporter in Afghanistan won't show the face of a tribal leader who's helping the Americans because they have compassion and common sense. And we would leak hundreds of names and cheer?

I think that the only place for the citizenry to go is to argue the general principles of the "conflict". Do we know COIN? Are we able to implement it? Could we use a proxy force? Is this a situation where failure to act could result in the deaths of tens or hundreds of thousands of citizens of that country (by our hand) at some later date?

My solution is to take DoD back to it's old name: The War Department. Then form up a new agency or branch of service specifically for low-level, nation-building, COIN operations. Redefine war as a commitment that involves a national draft -- any other commitment is not a war. At that point, once we're clear on what things are and what they are supposed to do, we can talk about when to use them and why.

War is supposed to punch people in the gut. But that doesn't mean that anybody who hits them in the gut is doing the right thing. The system is totally out of control. But that doesn't mean that anybody who fights it is actually doing a good thing. I find that we agree on 90-99% of the problems. I just don't think any kind of action at all is going to work.

Hell, if I thought Wikileaks had a shot at doing the things I've outlined above, I'd be all over it. But all it's doing is playing the propaganda role for some enemy who is too pathetic to do their own propaganda. That's not fixing the system. Evening the balance? I don't know. I'm really not all that crazy about some random person on the net deciding to "even the balance" That's whacked.

You can't fix a structural problem with a system that you need by attacking the entire system. Because as bad as it might be, it probably does some good things, and it can always be worse. You have to fix the structural problem. And wikileaks isn't doing that. They're just out for themselves.

We are firefighters, at the fire station, and the firetruck is broken. Whenever anybody lights a match, it takes off and dumps millions of gallons of water on them. Maybe runs over a few people standing outside the building. We don't blow up the firetruck. Hell, we don't even talk about what it's doing right now. We fix it. We fix the structural and naming problems. Because simply because the firetruck is broken doesn't mean that there's never going to be a fire. And, unfortunately, we have an intelligent firetruck. If we try to attack it, it will adapt and overcome. And then we're in some long battle with firetrucks instead of doing our job.

(note to self. Do not attempt extended metaphor until first coffee is consumed)

Interesting thoughts.

Your focus on the leaks seems to be on the subset of leaked information that might actually put US troops/operations in danger. I think your argument is strong when applied to those leaks only.

However what about the leaks that are simply "bad news" about the war? My take is that a large chunk of the recent Wikileaks (as well as the apache helicopter video) fall into the category of bad news rather than qualify as useful intelligence for an adversary.

Perhaps our intuitions about Wikileaks diverge because of our different assessments of the character of the bulk of the leaked info.

I would argue that Wikileaks the institution could (and probably ought to) cleanse the leaked info of information that directly aids in the enemy's intelligence gathering effort. This may be part of an evolving Wikileaks institution, etc.

Bad news, however, is fair game, and the traditional media has tasked itself with a shockingly minimal range of things to consider bad news. To get a notion of the extent of war cheer-leading in the US media, watch the animated graphics that slide in when war topics are discussed (the Onion had a brilliant parody of this).

Also, the case could be made that the leaks make it harder for Obama to continue to wage war. Ultimately, pulling out the troops will save more lives and limbs than the leaks will endanger. I'm not arguing that Wikileaks is good b/c pulling out is good, only bringing this up because I think that if soldier lives are the barometer we use this argument ought to be considered.

I agree with you in theory that the US war machine should be restructured, but I consider that highly unlikely to happen via the democratic process, especially if there is such tight propaganda control over the information that gets out about how the war is being waged.

Fortunately, I think Americans get a bad taste in their mouths when watching the Apache helicopter video. Most will (rightly) not condemn the soldiers, but will instead have a realization about the ugliness of war... and most importantly the imprecision of war.

I'm not entirely a pacifist, but I generally believe that people prefer peace and trade and don't care much about the grand causes their leaders use to rally them to war.

The biggest realization for me has been just how critical propaganda is to waging war. Years and Billions had been spent villianizing Saddam Hussein, a former ally, and even today well meaning people all over the western world help with the next phase of war propaganda as they decry mistreatment of women in the Arab world. Sure it's bad, but who wouldn't want to invade and teach a lesson to the people who cut the nose off of the fine featured woman on the recent Time magazine cover.

Wars can only be waged by the US if several of the following conditions are met: a) The US has the moral high ground, b) we are saving someone, c) we are dropping bombs on people with a backward culture, d) the enemy leader is insane and potentially religiously fervent.

I think it's important to observe just how significant and deep the propaganda is about the middle east in the US, and how ripe Americans are to approve of more wars there.

It is here that I think our rationality is being challenged most aggressively.

Wikileaks succeeds if it casts doubt on the official story, the official numbers, the official assessments.

Perhaps domination/destabilization of the middle east is crucial for the continued success of the US empire, but I think it comes with a fairly high moral pricetag. To the extent that Wikileaks aids us in seeing through the propaganda and making an accurate moral judgment of the wars, it makes us a wiser, more humane people.