Monday, November 29, 2010

More on Wikileaks

Read a lot of point of views today on how one should interpret the WL dump. Richard Haas at the CFR suggests the dump "confirms more than it informs." While I haven't gone through the documents in any great depth, the cable regarding Egyptian President Mubarak's pointed comments on Iran made for an interesting read, and as one article I saw earlier in the morning pointed out, he can't be too happy about seeing his words all over the internet given his concern for retaliation. The Saudi's concern over Pakistan's leadership and it's efforts to close off terrorism ("when the head is rotten, it affects the whole body") only shines more light on the difficulties the U.S. is facing re: AfPak, and Israel's take on Iran, while not new, is an intriguing read, especially to those of us who support Israel.

Posted early this evening is an article at Slate.com calling for Secretary Clinton to quit given her role in directing the diplomats spying on diplomats finding. Another article there suggests that the leak will damage transparency going forward. A similar take on government transparency and the fall-out from the leaks was also discussed at HuffPost. The author makes a great point (paraphrasing): whistle-blowing is all about spreading the truth, not to simply hear the sound. In saying this, he argues that WL, in this case, is not engaging in truth-telling the way it did with the last dump re: the two wars, but rather compromising the trust and confidence required between nations to carry out the business of international relations. A pros/cons take can also be found on HuffPost, where the author comments on how well diplomats write, their intelligence, and their humor. But he also stresses the downsides, which are similar to the earlier posts here. And finally, a strong article from foreignpolicy.com argues that Assange is simply anti-american and wants to destroy U.S. foreign policy. But more powerfully, he argues that the dump has not shown the U.S. to be a belligerent party in total as Assange continuously lets on and seemingly wants to expose, but rather places diplomats, friends, and partners in precarious positions and will result in the erosion of the quality of diplomatic reporting and discussion.

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