Today is the day the world is witnessing the most significant military leak in the history of mankind, so I have a feeling that today ‘s gonna be a good day.
To all the people at Wikileaks, and to all whistle blowers in past, present and future: you are heroes. You guy’s ideas will be with us for centuries ahead of us. You’ll be remembered in history books. Let’s make sure you guys will.
And a good day it is, indeed: http://www.tcij.org/whistleblower-guidelines
I’m glad that this material has been published, but I don’t think it’s more significant than the Pentagon Papers leak from the Vietnam War era. Those of us in the US who are anti-war already knew almost everything that’s been reported so far about the leaks; the most significant news is probably that the Taliban has surface-to-air missiles, but pretty much everything else has been widely reported.
However, like the Pentagon Papers, it could still have a strong political effect. Already, a majority of the American public thinks Afghanistan is a lost cause; it could destroy Obama the way Vietnam destroyed LBJ. If this creates a push to get America and the rest of NATO out of Afghanistan it’s good news.
Wikileaks is only a channel; this kind of information gets out because people on the inside who have consciences choose to reveal it.
Immense in scale, sure — but observers disagree about it being significant (at least based on what has so far been published), because it does little more than accord with what’s already publicly known and understood:
http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/07/26/lots_of_leaks_but_where_are_the_bombshells
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markmardell/2010/07/wikileaks_reveals_awkward_trut.html
I should note that the first is a Republican-leaning foreign policy wonk and the latter is a moderately disinterested BBC reporter — hard to think of how their starting points and biases could be much different, yet they both say the documents “confirm a truth that has been long suspected” and that “there does not appear to be any bombshell revelation here”.
Because of the sheer volume of the material, it may be a few days more before researchers manage to go through it all and see if there are any surprises.
Pretty much agreeing with others here. Other than that some Taliban have been better armed than we thought, is there much to this? Then again, the papers may not have had long enough to analyze such a large data set.
While I won’t go so far as to say that the release of these documents is an absolute good (enough lives are at stake that any information dump will have its downsides), I am cautiously optimistic that this will improve policy. But then, I’m cautiously optimistic about almost everything in life – it’s just my temperament.
I agree with Joe, time will tell. Besides, they have delayed the release of some 15,000 reports from total archive, so we have access to the vast majority, but not to the whole lot as yet.
Oh, and since yesterday WikiLeaks servers were hammered they adviced to use the link posted above. Today the situation seems to be back to normal, so, although anyone can retrieve it from the Web, I thought it fair to include the correct link here: http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/
I’m already (a day after) seeing news articles pop up like mushrooms all over the place, containing stories that (should have been but) have never been told.
For example about the involvement of the Pakistani secret service, and just a few minutes ago about Iran’s involvement (on a ring-wing nut newssite). This, I guess, illustrates the swamp that any war soon becomes; the damage that starting one does to peace in an immensely large region of the planet. The U.S.’s government always tried to portray all of its nonsense wars as if they’re all very isolated and small: nonsense. These leaks illustrate that the U.S. simply can’t control what they start militarily; the U.S. _is_ militarily incompetent at this.
I’m 100% sure that we’ll start seeing statistics about the war that will be unprecedentedly detailed. All available in public. All over the place. For years to come.
Just the publication of these statistics will likely change warfare itself. Let’s hope for the better for mankind.
Still some people claim that this leak isn’t significant. I’m sorry but, the facts _are_ in fact crystal clear. The leak is already unprecedentedly significant. And it has only just started.
Even the idea that governments can’t hide everything from the public anymore, now that there is technology like the Internet, is by itself significant. That the information becomes available to all while it’s still very relevant, is significant.
And that isn’t even attached to the contents of the leak (which are also significant). Wikileaks will be copied, the technology improved. The people involved in whistle blowing will (and already have) become increasingly competent. More competent (if not already) than the people employed at secret services (already because else Wikileaks couldn’t have pulled this off, several times now). It’s unstoppable. This (idea) itself is significant, and is for a large part improved by Wikileaks. And will be, by others, in future.
I’m also sure that this isn’t the only leak that we’ll see about the Afghanistan war. We’ll probably see leaks about the Iraq war pretty soon too. Wikileaks probably already has more, and will probably start receiving more.
Information wants to be free. And will be.
I’m guessing that most of this information is written by people using a channel that they expect will remain secret, allowing them to be completely frank.
So in your perfect world, the platoon leader sitting down to write his report will now need to be sure to qualify everything he says so that it can’t be taken out of context, and also be sure to leave anything out that could in any way be incriminating?
If there is some investigation of wrong doing, then sure, the investigation needs to have access to such documents, otherwise, the documents should remain private.
I would equate this with the criminal climategate email thefts, but then, in that case, you are talking about researchers worrying that their private emails will become public and being more careful about their wording of sensor data from coastal station 34, not the possible affiliations of a tribal leader.
> If there is some investigation of wrong doing, then sure, the
> investigation needs to have access to such documents, otherwise,
> the documents should remain private.
What if the government is blocking such investigations from taking place? There are massive amounts of warcrimes happening continuously (read the leaked documents). But we rarely see the U.S. government prosecute its own soldiers and generals.
We have seen them torture a lot of innocent people, though.
Instead, they outsource killing of people to Blackwater (privatisation of war, what a novel idea). And after Blackwater’s employees kill a group of innocent people, the judge in the U.S. simply sets them free.
No accountability.
SO I say that exposing the wrongdoers is what we need to do. No more keeping any documents private. Let’s leak everything.