Jul 26, 2010

The First Casualty

We should  always applaud the men and women who make it harder for governments to lie through  their teeth,  but I find no sympathetic characters in the leak of classified documents on the Afghanistan cluster up.

Assange and his whistle blowers seem to belong to that  gentle school of tender souls who want us all to believe that casualties are an unnecessary result of war.

They would think it peachy keen if  each SOF squad included a lawyer, a sociologist, a cultural anthropologist, and an ethicist in general practice to determine if our riflemen have a moral justification for shooting back.  Plus, of course,  Geraldo Rivera with a camera crew to make sure everyone is an honest as he is about what really happened in the firefight.

On the other hand, why is it immoral or unpatriotic for Americans to learn that our presumptive  ally, Pakistan, and our putative enemy, the Taliban, seem to be spending a good deal of time conspiring against us? Or that the government we are propping up with young American lives is studded with moral cretinism?

Does the American Republic fall dead of shock to learn that  its high military command is occasionally guilty of asinine  decisions?  Is there any chance at all that if political administratons leveled with their people that fewer idiocies would be committed in the peoples' name?

Pistol to my head and ordered to cheer one side or another, I guess it would be: "Go Wikileak."

(But, Mr. Assange, hire a good retired Marine Corps gunny to vet your releases and keep yourself from sounding quite so Disneyesque.)

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