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Human Rights Groups Join Criticism of WikiLeaks
e065c8515d206cb0e190 writes "Several human rights organizations contacted WikiLeaks and pressed them to do a better job at hiding information that endangers civilians within their leaked documents. From the article: 'The letter from five human-rights groups sparked a tense exchange in which WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange issued a tart challenge for the organizations to help with the massive task of removing names from thousands of documents, according to several of the organizations that signed the letter. The exchange shows how WikiLeaks and Mr. Assange risk being isolated from some of their most natural allies in the wake of the documents' publication. ... An [Amnesty International] official replied to say that while the group has limited resources, it wouldn't rule out the idea of helping, according to people familiar with the reply. The official suggested that Mr. Assange and the human-rights groups hold a conference call to discuss the matter.'"
As a USMC Iraq combat vet, who has for the past few months been studying the Afghan situation extensively, I can say that this is a good thing. Anybody who is actually involved knows that the Paki, and more specifically ISI, have been a problem for us since the early 80's, and not much has changed. The Paki's have and will continue to say "What? Not us!" but they are full of shit. The fact that the politicians are relatively good at hiding this fact undermines the general public's knowledge about the situation, and therefore it is a major part of controlling public opinion about our war. The facts are that we send money to ISI (often bypassing paki authorities completely) who then have (sometimes rogue) officers directly funding everything from afghan warlords, to Al Queda, to Paki Talibs, and on down the line. The fact of the matter is that Pakistan has absolutely no interest in really getting rid of their extremists, on either border, because Islamabad has so much fear of India, the militants are a tool they plan to use if needed. They will only do enough to keep our money flowing to them, but not enough to truly alienate the extremists. Its enormously complicated, with factors such as Iran and Russia playing into the equation. Regardless, I just hope that Assange did a good enough job purging of intel that could jeopardize people, but when so much is being hid, this kind of knowledge should be made public, albeit perhaps a bit with a bit more ambiguous information. But the real interest here is that that at the moment, as do many of the officers and enlisted I have talked to who are active in "Ganny" agree that we should not be there. First, not only does history show us that attempted conquer after attempted conquer, (including Russia, the British, and Rome as the most cited examples) Afghanistan is not a place that has ever been receptive to foreign rule. Second, our objectives are far too abstract. I often hear conflicting statements from politicians, some say we are there to prevent a safe haven for terrorists, but if that is the case, there are more AQ in places like Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, UAE, and especially Pakistan than there are in Afghanistan. Not to mention the amount of funding flowing from third parties with interest in AQ and AQ like organizations that we do little about. We even fund the militant talibs with protection money for convoys! Others say we are there to help prevent Pakistan being overrun with terrorists (who we are afraid will attempt to take control of Paki's nukes), but if that is the case, why are we not forcing ISI and Paki to help destroy these enemies? It is because, as I said before, they don't want to! Others say we are there to help restore the people of Afghanistan to a "Representative Government" but I have multiple problems with this. One, the culture is not conductive to such things, there is far too much fighting between Uzbeks, Tajiks, Hazaras, Pashtuns, Foreign Arabs, et al. If they don't even claim to be Afghan, but rather claim their ethnicity, how can they unite to rule themselves? Sure we could do it for them, but we would be there for another 150+ years. Not something I think we are willing to do. The other question this brings up, is, "Where do you stop in your effort to "liberate" peoples from oppression?" I have been places I might consider worse than Iraq or Afghanistan (usually in Africa). So should we be "liberating" the people of Darfur(in Sudan), Somalia (I thought we learned our lesson there, apparently not with recent events) etc? I have said it before, and I will say it again, tactically, our military is pretty much capable of anything you throw at them. It is strategically that we have failed, and I blame this on a handful of issues. A few of these being, a blatant disrespect for learning histories lessons, the infiltration of the military system with political "control/influence", and the lack of ranks above 0-6 not having the balls to tell truth to power, because once you get stars on, your are no longer military, you are a politician (With a few exc
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
Not really. Wikileaks may be a much more life-and-death situation than writing OSS code, but the notion of "You want to help? Then help!" is pretty apt..
I worry that the multi-million dollar "human rights" organizations sometimes get too cozy with the people who are in power. I'm not saying Amnesty International is necessarily guilty of this, but there were lots of "human rights organizations" running around Yugoslavia in the late 90s that were playing both sides of the fence, getting their mission mixed up with the very complex political situation and passing intelligence on to the people who deal in intelligence, sometimes at the cost of human lives. I saw this with my own all-American eyes, and it's one reason why some people in the Balkans came to resent some of the aid groups..
The US is also not above putting enormous pressure on the NGOs and human rights groups, demanding collusion for access. It can get very murky.
The "mission" in Afghanistan is such a cocked-up mess that there's nothing clear about any of it. You're not going to help a country by invading it, playing unprotected civilians against the enemy, while playing footsie with Pakistan, whose intelligence service is in league with the Taliban (after taking billions from the US in military aid). Remember, the Taliban are the guys we armed to the teeth a while back to fight the Russians, who are now our friends. And we originally went there to get rid of Al Qaeda, the enemy, who were funded by Saudi Arabia, our friends, who got rich because we just couldn't bring ourselves to try to get off oil back in the '80s.
It's all complicated shadows, and I don't see blaming Wikileaks for throwing a little light on the subject. This is what Jefferson was talking about when he said "avoid foreign entanglements".
You are welcome on my lawn.
Small correction: Wikileaks didn't steal the documents, someone else did then sent them a copy.
Second, they're since they're not american they have as much duty to help keep american top secret info secret as you have to protect chinas top secret tank plans if someone sent you a copy.
Publishing secret documents which show embarasing info is what any half decent news agency should endeavour to do.
Just because they've been labelled secret does not change that.
They new york times and the guardian were *also* handling those stolen documents yet I haven't heard anything about them being threatened to try to get them to delete all their copies of them.
indeed the guardian newspaper mirrored the documents on their own site, should the US go after them as well for helping publish US secrets?
It sounds like you think the US Army doesn't learn from its mistakes unless the mistakes are visibly published in the news? Trust me that the military punishes its own. If we were allowed to kill each other, i'm sure it would happen quite often.
I think outsiders looking in, is good. As long as they are only looking and not touching. It's the one reason why i detest ICRC.. though for personal reasons really. It was august in iraq and my squad was guarding a large detainee compound (did this job for 3 months, a nice break from fighting but very frustrating). ICRC was inspecting things, making sure the detainees were being treated properly. I caught two of the ICRC people passing our water supply through the fence. I asked them to stop and why they were doing this? They said the detainees were thirsty and needed water. I laughed and explained to the two that the detainees have plumbing and a clean water supply, they also received 16x 40lb bags of ice each morning that they put into provided water coolers. I had neither of those things, i had a palette of bottled water dropped off by a forklift each week that sat in the sun. So, i left the two ICRC people and continued my rounds. Came back maybe five minutes later and ALL of the water we had was GONE. Fucking ICRC literally gave away all my water.. i had almost nothing to drink for the rest of the day. I was angry, "WHY DID YOU GIVE AWAY MY WATER!" They were stupid with fear i think because they couldn't answer me. But they can go back to their airconditioned buildings and think they were saving the world. I went back to my tent with a plywood floor and cleaned my rifle so i could get through another day. I should point out that it was easily over 120F degrees. I was drinking 10x 1.5liter bottles of water during the 12hr work shifts.. and still peeing an odd orange-brown color.
I have more ICRC stories, if anyone is interested in hearing about people so blinded by the idea that the entire US Army was made up of those idiots in that Abu Ghraib travesty. I sometimes type these rants and always delete them.. but maybe someone will find this interesting.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman