So you subscribe to the "no snitching" philosophy? That's a gross perversion of "those who live in glass houses..." That's one root reason America is in such a mess--and is dragging the rest of the world with it. We're stirring up more trouble in the Middle East, while pretending that we are making peace. That's fundamentally not okay.
No, I don't subscribe to the "no snitching" philosophy. I subscribe to the philosophy that if you're entrusted with access to routine classified information, it's not okay to put 250,000 documents (the vast majority of whom you haven't even read) on a disc and give it to someone who intends to publish them. If you do that, you are not in the business of snitching, you are in the business of creating pandemonium for no good or legitimate reason.
"Snitching"? Why do people have this idea that the Wikileaks publishing is all about uncovering hidden crimes? They are publishing 250,000 foreign service cables, 99.999% of whom have nothing to do with any such thing. What they do is lay bare the inner workings of the US foreigbn policy system and its evaluations. It's the international politics equivalent of someone publishing your f***ing diary in the local paper. Again - there is nothing remotely wrong with keeping this information secret - on the contrary, it's a basic precondition for any such system to function, and there is no diplomatic system in the world who functions otherwise.
Not to labor the point, but it seems it can't be taken for granted. You have a State Department, and you have a three digit number of diplomatic stations around the world. The task of these stations is not just to promote american interests, but also to facilitate communication between the authorities and above all, to independently analyse anything of interest. Thousands of well-qualified people around the globe are daily occupied with talking to key people (who tell them things they would never tell a journalist) and of producing analysis and assessments of political developments, thinking and positions on various international issues and so on. On this basis they produce analysis, which they send home. In the other direction go instructions, clarification of own positions and so on. Thus turn the wheels that, hopefully, result in the people entrusted with US foreign relations understanding what goes on in the world and why - and in other countries understanding what the Us want or think. These are the basic cogs of the wheels of diplomacy. Exactly the same description could be given of any other country.
Where laws are broken and serious excesses committed, there is always a legitimate case for whistleblowing. And if Wikileaks (and Manning) had stuck to cases like that, it would have been a different issue. But they aren't.
Generally the documents Wikileaks will publish won't include any wrongdoing. But they will cause damage. For instance, they published a document that included an evaluation saying (EU negotiation head) Hermann van Rompuy pretty much despaired of the Cancun summit achieving anything already a year in advance. How do you think that affected the EUs negotiating position in Cancun? Do you think it made it easier for van Rompuy to persuade sceptics that we really need a good climate agreement right now?
Oh, and I can't wait for juicy cables from one of the big banks, because what we
really need right now is another huge bank going bust, or requiring a billion dollar bailout. that'd be constructive.
These people think that if they just expose everything to daylight evil will burst like trollls, and everything will be better. They don't have a clue what they're doing. At least I hope not, because if they do they are worse than I think.
We're scared to learn of what's been done in our names (not just us Americans, you're all in on it, too) and of what the effects will be. Kass is afraid for the tiny, local middlemen who will be blamed, but doesn't acknowledge that the information Assange has made available steps higher up the ladder of blame. Those hapless citizens are in danger--we are all in danger--not because of the revelations, but because of the substance of them.
The substance has for the most part been entirely unsurprising. Apart from a handful of scandals, I would if anything say that the substance that has emerged shows that the State Departement is capable of good and realistic analysis.
Speaking generally to your point, what the negative reaction to Assange and the WikiLeaks affair shows about many people, across all spectrums of society, is not just that people hate snitches, but that people are supportive and in many cases enthusiastic about the state's right to exert unlimited power outside the jurisdiction of the law, in secret and without answering to any authority outside itself.
Sorry my friend, but on this one you're simply totally letting your imagination run off with you. It really is very simple. Getting this kind of documents compromised on this scale is a huge blow to any foreign policy apparatus. It does harm everywhere. It does to your foreign policy what compulsively speaking everything that goes through your head does to your social life. The problem with these leaks is not that they uncover scandals, but that they uncover the workings of what is a perfectly legitimate foreign policy apparatus which perfectly legitimately depends on confidentiality as a self-evident precondition for access to the sort of information you need in order to make good analysis. Hermann van Rompuy isn't going to give you his blunt and honest assessment of how he thinks Cancun will turn out if he has to count on reading it in the newspapers the next day.
To argue this is not remotely to be "enthusiastic about the state's right to exert unlimited power outside the jurisdiction of the law, in secret and without answering to any authority outside itself." - that is to put the whole issue on an absurd footing.
