This week, when whistleblower website Wikileaks released over 90,000 classified documents portraying a dismal war in Afghanistan, the White House called editor Julian Assange and his organization a threat to national security. But it is this White House that is a threat to national security. Wikileaks simply helped prove it.
The war in Afghanistan is a disaster, something President Obama refuses to acknowledge and insists on continuing for no discernible reason. Afghanistan’s top commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal voiced his frustration with the mindlessness of our mission and lost his post. His replacement, Gen. David Petraeus isn’t any clearer about our prospects than his predecessor or the president. Who truly puts the nation’s security more at risk? A government that continues to put soldiers in harm’s way with no clear mission or strategy, as the bodies, dollars and questions continue to pile up, or a website that insists the general public should know what their government is up to?
What was it specifically that the Obama administration found among some 90,000 documents that compelled the White House to declare Wikileaks a security risk, mere hours after their release? Did Obama hire an army of speed readers? Or how about the most significant stories to come out of the Wiki-leak: That we pay Pakistan $1 billion a year to help the Taliban; that drone attacks are far less effective than portrayed; that significant civilian deaths are being covered up. Which of these is truly a massive security risk, domestically or abroad? Or do these stories simply “risk” damaging this president’s reputation, or perhaps simply the administration’s preferred war narrative?
Truth be told, the real “risk” is that Wikileaks dared to report the actual news, or what the New York Times calls, “an unvarnished, ground-level picture of the war in Afghanistan that is in many respects more grim than the official portrayal.” Ironically, the pro-war, any war hawks in both parties who still refuse to believe that Islamic terrorists target the United States not for our “freedom,” but for what we do in their homelands, are now warning of potential blowback over what Wikileaks has done. You see, dropping bombs and occupying countries for years could never incite hatred—but actually reporting the truth about the war could spark a jihadist revolution, as if jihadists don’t already know what’s going on in their own backyard, something an organization like Wikileaks simply believes everyone else should know about too.
