Wikileaks Must Be Stopped

Firstly, the Taliban must be very busy if all they do is go around burning little children who learn how to read. Also, this breadwinner must be quite relieved that his son was killed in a nicer way.

Seeing as the Taliban took the trouble to burn his daughter just for reading, I suppose they would consider the father to be their friend, because, well they only burned his daughter. Of course in no way would they think that he hates them to the gut and would happily go along to the guys who kill people in a nice way.

I am sorry, there is a serious point there, but do try and make it.

Most Taliban commanders and fighters are part and parcel of the population, as is typical in any foreign invaders vs home grown guerrillas war - As an Afghan village elder said in Kandahar - "the people you call Taliban are my sister's son and his friends, they are our people" - and the Taliban have informants in the Afghan National Army and other departments of Karzai's government, and one of the main difficulties the American forces have is to identify the Taliban leadership.

If Assange were to get a list of Taliban commanders and informants and were to publish them and / or send them to the US army so the Special forces "death squads" could eliminate them/ drag them off to Guantanamo/rendition them to "friendly" nations to be tortured, he would be a hero to all the people decrying them here.

So the leaks are bad only if they target one side in a war? This assumes one side is "good" and the other "evil".

Patriotism is well and good but it shouldn't interfere with clear thinking.

Why exactly should Assange take sides in this war or try to avoid setbacks to the US effort?

As to the fictional "dirt poor farmer in Afghanistan" scenario. Here is an alternate scenario.

I am a dirt poor farmer in Afghanistan. My father fought in the Jihad against the evil Godless Russians and lost a leg and now I have to support him from my meagre poppy farm - the product of which is bought for hard cash by the Taliban btw. When the Russians left (Glory be to Allah) instead of establishing a government as sanctioned in the Holy Koran (remember I am illiterate and never read the Holy Book All I know is what the village mullah tells me) warlords fought over my village, abducted and raped girls and young boys, taxed us mercilessly and made our lives hell. Then the Taliban came and enforced Islamic Rule and we had relative peace and justice. (The shadow courts of the Taliban still provide us Islamic justice based on the Holy Quran and thh HAdith as opposed to the corrupt Karzai government's "courts", whose judges hide behind American guns and where you can buy judgments in your favour if you are rich, and whose writ doesn't run beyond Kabul anyway).

My son now fights for the Taliban against the evil American invaders (whose drones blew up my cousin's wedding party and killed dozens of my relatives btw) just as my father fought against the evil Russian invaders. The Taliban are Afghani (and Islamic) patriots.

The Americans are invaders who have no business here. (Osama? Who Osama? oh you mean the great Islamic hero who struck a blow - I am fuzzy on the details, no cable TV in my village- against the infidel West)

Of course I support the Taliban. You want me to be a traitor to my own people? Of course such people exist but they are all traitors and Allah's judgement will be on them soon enough.

More practically, the Americans will go back home in a year or two, just like the Russians did. The Taliban will still be here.Karzai's writ (as long as the Taliban doesn't hang him from a lamp post like they did Najibullah)won't run beyond Kabul. And as long as the Pakistanis support the Taliban (with American money they say) the Taliban can never be defeated.

So when Habibullah, The shadow Taliban governor of my province asks me , "What did the Americans say and do in your village?" I tell him. Because someday NATO will be gone and the Taliban will rule and I can finally get around to growing something in the piss poor soil of my farm and get on with my life. At least they won't blow up any wedding parties looking for imaginary "terrorists" "

So much for trying to explain the motives of people who live a world away and whom you've never met ;-). They are easy to make for each side of a conflict, depending on what your intended rhetorical effect is.

I could use your justification to defend the Russian invasion. If the welfare of Afghans (vs winning the cold war) was an American priority they should have just left Afghanistan alone. The Taliban were nurtured in Pakistani madrassas, armed by Americans and brainwashed by the Saudis. And now Pakistan is using them for its own ends and playing a double game with the Americans? That was unexpected! ;-)

[1] I personally would rather the Americans win than the Taliban. But then I am not an Afghan so I don't need to have any conflicts of loyalty.

In this non Afghan's opinion, a successful American occupation is probably the better alternative in the long run for Afghanistan, as would probably have been the case if the Russians had ruled without being interfered with for a decade or two. But then I am a certified "Islamophobe" who'd rather see all religions wither and die, particularly Islam. An (inevitable imo) Taliban victory would just empower the Islamic radicals and we in India would have another round of terrorist bombings and shootings as a result. But that can't be helped at this stage.

I (like much of the world) think the American effort is doomed to fail and President Obama (rightly imo) is just trying to redefine "success" and get out asap with some kind of face saving device - ideally the capture of Bin laden and/or Mullah Omar - which is probably where the focus should have been all along vs trying to rebuild Afghanistan as some kind of Jeffersonian democracy.

The idea that the American invasion is somehow for the benefit of the Afghans is hilarious and the apparent concern for Afghan informants by people of a country that let its leadership declare two foolish wars is somewhat surreal. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people died due to American actions. Where was the outrage then?

And now Assange is the bad guy? Riiiight!

I don't read a lot of HN lately, but this is the most irrational thread I have seen on HN for a long, long time. Quite frankly it makes me sad.

I'm not going to wave my hands around and say we're turning into reddit.

I don't see the need.

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.