Thursday, July 29, 2010

Transparently On the Other Side

WikiLeaks is effectively a combatant on the other side in the war on terror. I noted that WikiLeaks is waging war on America by undermining our war effort in Afghanistan. It is also part of a trend that could undermine the ability and willingness of our military to fight for us.

In regard to WikiLeaks waging war on us, if you doubt me, read this. Assange and his crowd deserve our contempt and not our admiration for purportedly standing up for transparency.

Also, I was not quite accurate when I described WikiLeaks as not shooting at us in their war. Sure, it is still technically true, but people will die as a direct result of the WikiLeaks data dump:

Hundreds of Afghan lives have been put at risk by the leaking of 90,000 intelligence documents to WikiLeaks because the files identify informants working with NATO forces.

In just two hours of searching the WikiLeaks archive, The Times of London found the names of dozens of Afghans credited with providing detailed intelligence to U.S. forces. Their villages are given for identification and also, in many cases, their fathers' names.

The WikiLeaks people won't be pulling the trigger, so it is better to think of WikiLeaks as a targeting drone that pinpointed the targets for others to kill. Perhaps that disgusting worm Assange can explain to these Afghan women why they are acceptable losses in his war on America.

I'll ask again, how do we wage war on a non-state actor waging war on America this way? Because have no doubt, we have to wage war on them. The only question is how.

UPDATE: The Taliban are examining their intelligence agency's data to look for targets.

If Assange was directly working for the Taliban, we'd Predator his ass. But because he puts out information on Afghan people who work with us that anyone might use, he's apparently not considered a combatant.

But that is a ridiculous conclusion. When non-state actors come off the porch to run with the big dogs, they should expect to get bitten. I'm not saying that we should kill Assange. Assange is in a gray area but I'm not prepared to say we should enter that gray area and treat him as an enemy combatant. It would be wrong, I think. And counter-productive in bad publicity. I'm not terribly sure that the French don't regret attacking Greenpeace way back when. Was France justified? Probably. Was that violent response wise? Definitely not.

But we have to figure out how to combat and stop Assange and people like him when they are effectively waging war on us and getting people killed.