Tuesday, December 7, 2010

The Ongoing Wikileaks Saga

As everyone probably knows by now, Julian Assange turned himself in to British authorities as a result of his European arrest warrant and will face sex charges filed in Sweden. This could be either a good or bad development. It's possible the charges will stick, he'll be convicted, thrown in jail and essentially discredited as a sex criminal. On the other hand, there is probably a decent chance that there won't be enough evidence for a conviction, he'll walk free, and use the incident to portray himself as a martyr.

Despite the situation with Assange, Wikileaks says it will continue releasing stolen U.S. diplomatic cables. Assange alone is not the problem, and regardless of what happens to him personally, Wikileaks remains a hostile non-state organization engaged in a direct attack on the United States. Along with the Assange situation, there have been some other positive developments. Visa and Paypal have both suspended business arrangements with Wikileaks, and the Swiss closed Assange's bank account. Those are helpful measures, but they don't go nearly far enough.

As I've argued before, Wikileaks has already inflicted significant damage on the U.S. Instead of waiting around for the next attack, the U.S. should take both overt and covert action to destroy this organization. Attacking its finances is well and good, but the U.S. should directly target the key individuals running Wikileaks. It's past time for some of them to start dying or disappearing. Unfortunately it is unlikely that our current president will act beyond the usual strongly-worded statements, and tentative legal tactics. We can wage an extensive assassination campaign in Afghanistan/Pakistan, but we apparently can't act to destroy an enemy that has carried out a successful assault, and caused far more damage than most of the people we are killing.

3 comments:

  1. "It's past time for some of them to start dying or disappearing"

    You sound like you'd be more at home in China. Perhaps you should move there, or somewhere else where pesky concepts like liberties and the rule-of=law don't exist.

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  2. "You sound like you'd be more at home in China."

    No, I like it here.

    "Perhaps you should move there, or somewhere else where pesky concepts like liberties and the rule-of=law don't exist. "

    I also like the liberties we have in America, which is why I support taking action against enemies who threaten the U.S. I find that to be a more effective method of defending our liberties than bleating about the "rule of law" in defense of our enemies.

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  3. Heh - you can't have it both ways. You can't have the rule of law and then just ignore it when you prosecute your enemies. You either have it for everyone or no one (well, perhaps except the elite).

    The liberties you have in the US are a historical aberration. You're going to lose them eventually unless you can instill them into other nations as well. You seem to think you can go on living in a bubble -- you're wrong.

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