Where did all of our info go?

Although Julian Assange’s unprofessional behavior regarding government secrets has degraded his reputation, the government activities Wikileaks exposed should be public knowledge. We live in an age of paranoia and deceit, where it is hard to trust information coming from the national security world.

For example, ever since the war with Iraq was declared, U.S. top officials deployed numerous amounts of disinformation and deceit to convince the public that Saddam Hussein was a threat to national security (this information supposedly coming from a “reliable” top-secret source). Unfortunately, these are not the first leaders to present lies to the citizens of America. The lies continued throughout the war, as former Washington Post Baghdad bureau Chief Ellen Knickmayer explains in her report.

On the other hand, it isn’t an exciting feeling to see individuals inside the national security bureaucracy ignore the classification policy and decide to leak large quantities of information to people without any clearances. Although the courage of whistle-blowers, like Daniel Ellsberg and Stanely McChrystal, deserve much praise, our government agencies can’t operate without a certain degree of discipline and the threat of leaked materials causing a great risk to the public is always possible. Even if Wikileaks hasn’t released any sensitive information about sources aiding us in the war with Iraq and Afghanistan, it may still occur.

With these reasons, people may think that leaking classified information is a crime, but it still happens in our everyday life. Top officials leak classified information whenever it suits their political purposes. If former Afghan commander Stanley McChrystal can successfully tie a president’s hand by leaking a confidential report to call more troops, then what is wrong with Wikileaks to share information that they believe the public should know about.

The reason people have as to why Assange’s website is getting attacked for publishing its articles is unconstitutional. Wikileaks is still an online media site and should still be entitled to the same protections as mainstream media when it releases information, as Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas states in his argument in favor of Wikileaks.

The Founding Fathers built this great nation in hopes of creating a free society. I say that if we are truly a “free society”, then do we not have the right to know the truth? The current government act of charging whistle-blowers and truth-seekers for treason is ridiculous. These good Samaritans who try to reveal the truth to the public are currently getting prosecuted for attempting to give the citizens of this country information that they should already rightfully possess.

The mentality that the public is shocked because someone actually received classified information and revealed it to the public is a common one. In my opinion, the reason this leak has brought such a big shock to citizens is because it shows that there are many hidden activities that are not being shared with the public.

Careerists in America’s intelligence agencies, military, and consular offices largely operate behind a veil of secrecy. The U.S. taxpayer is funding a vast amount of secret activities that they are only dimly aware of. They are ignorantly paying for these operations, whose value they have been asked to take almost entirely on faith. If some of these decisions are misguided, then we are not only stuck with the bill, but we are paying for activities that may threaten our security.

The public is a blind man who is led by the guide dog of the government. We can only trust our guide dog because other governments may lie and deceive us with their propaganda.

Moreover, if we don’t have any idea what our government/private contractors are really up to, then Americans won’t understand why other countries have so many strong feelings against the United States. If we remain ignorant with all of these “bad stuff” and operations our government does in these foreign countries, then we will think that they hate us for “what we are” and “what we believe in” rather that “what we do.”

A perfect example is the conflict in the Middle East. Arab and Muslim hostility to the United States really shouldn’t be a mystery. Given the policies that the United States has affirmed toward many of these religious societies over the past few decades, do you really expect Iraqis to be grateful that the United States invaded their country and set off a civil war that caused thousands of people to die, and millions more to become refugees?

A complaint about the security Julian Assange has developed from the checks and balance system the government developed may give people the wrong imprecision. These protections are to prevent a branch of the government from forbidding him from posting information that we as citizens must badly know about. The government is just trying to cover their reputation as the “good guys.” If the true information gets out to the public, then their view of the government may change drastically. We need to know the truth without this fake curtain covering our eyes.

Some people may say that the government is keeping us ignorant for our safety, but this only proves that what they are doing over-seas involve violence and may cause foreign retaliation. This does not sound like our government is keeping our safety their number one priority. As Eric Alterman has documented, historical records prove that governments lie for a variety of reasons. If you are willing to stay ignorant and believe that the person in charge is always right then please continue to sit on your couch and agree with all of these angry politicians complaining about the flow of security leaks caused by Julian Assange.

In my opinion, people shouldn’t be negative and not supportive to any organization that tries to bring more facts to light. Having more information at our disposal can only benefit us. There is nothing wrong with having too much information to make a decision.

If people begin to say that there is just some terrible violence in the world we shouldn’t know about, how do we know that our government isn’t the cause of a majority of the violence in the world? Our government could have attacked a facility or assassinated a political figure in a foreign country for all we know. If these types of operations have occurred in other nations, then we deserve their hate and attacks on our soil. All of these possibilities could have been avoided if we had access to the necessary intelligence that was responsible for our government’s previous actions. Instead, we casually live our daily lives with ignorance, thinking that everything is fine, and are surprised when a terrorist bombs a bus, or an armed foreign militia angrily attacking somewhere in the United States.

For those of you who believe that my point is completely wrong because the only people who could possibly be running our government are fair, intelligent people, then you need to wake up and smell the huge flowers around you. Let’s be realistic, our government is not a shinning knight in armor protecting us from the evil dragon. We are all capable of making our own decisions and opinions without anyone trying to put words in our mouths.

To be frank, human beings are more likely to misbehave if they think they can shield what they are doing from the public view. This is true about everyone, including the people we’ve elected in our governmental positions. For this reason, I believe that if we are truly a democratic society, then we need to have plentiful information to decide or adopt better policies in the future. The goal is to get to the point where the government can’t determine which facts are available to the public and which are classified. Since a democratic society should be free and have enormous information accessible by the public, Wikilieaks is going with the ideals of our Founding Fathers as I mentioned earlier and giving back to the public what should already be ours.

Given the great power the United States possesses, the people who run foreign and defense policies may become drunk with power. They need to know that what they are doing might be exposed to the public, so they can think twice about whether the policies they are supporting or pursuing are correct in the moral and practical grounds. Having access to more important information could have avoided a lot of conflict and violence in the past.

If the information was accessible, then we could have avoided the war with North Korea in 1964 from the Gulf of Tonkin incident or we could of known the truth about Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction program before we invaded Iraq. With these many examples and information we are currently learning from the war with Iraq, this knowledge can help us avoid similar conflicts that may devour the lives of many Americans.

If our government, elected officials, representatives, or politicized media won’t tell us about what we already have the right to know, then we need more sources such as Wikileaks to gather and share the information that will prevent us from being ignorant and help us make a better decision in the future. I am personally glad that Wikileaks has the courage to lead this revolutionary revision of how much information the public should know about.