Shooting the messenger

The debate in the Czech Republic over the war in Afghanistan is likely to intensify now that the opposition Social Democrats (ČSSD) have won control of the country's Senate enabling them to impede a government plan to boost by 200 the more than 500 Czech troops already serving in Afghanistan. This debate on the wisdom of sending more troops should be informed by all available sources of information, including the war documents that have been posted by the controversial website Wikileaks.

On Oct. 22, Wikileaks released a trove of 391,832 Iraq war documents, the largest leak of classified documents in American history, painting a grim picture of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. The next day, Wikileaks announced plans to post additional secret documents on the Afghan war, after it already released 92,000 secret documents on that war July 25. Each of these releases was met with a predictable response from the generals and politicians leading these wars - harsh condemnation of irresponsible conduct that puts the lives of the troops at risk.

Following the July posting of the Afghan war documents, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said of Wikileaks at a press conference, "They might already have blood on their hands, the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family."

A steady stream of such comments was made by officials and amplified by the mainstream press in the ensuing weeks.

Much less attention was paid Oct. 17, when CNN and the Associated Press reported that a letter from Defense Secretary Robert Gates to Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin said that, following a thorough Pentagon review of the documents posted, the Pentagon concluded that, "Wikileaks did not disclose any sensitive information sources or methods" and that a senior NATO official in Kabul said, "There has not been a single case of Afghans needing protection or to be moved because of the leak." Coming months later, the corrections were noticed by few, while the attacks were headline news shaping public perceptions.

In short, the harsh condemnation of Wikileaks following its Afghan war postings was unwarranted. Now, we are seeing the same attacks following Wikileaks' postings of the Iraq war documents. Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said, "We deplore Wikileaks...By disclosing such secret information, Wikileaks continues to put at risk the lives of our troops, their coalition partners, and those Iraqis and Afghans working with us. The only responsible course of action for Wikileaks at this point is to return the stolen material and expunge it from their websites as soon as possible."

Demonizing the messenger is a common diversionary strategy that neither addresses the substance of the information at issue (in this case, that the loss of life of innocent Afghans and Iraqis in the wars far exceeds official estimates, that the United States and NATO turn a blind eye to the brutal and lawless conduct of Afghan and Iraqi forces, and that lawless, reckless undisciplined private mercenaries are increasingly fighting these wars) nor the merits of the argument that the information supports (that staying the course in these wars is foolhardy because the wars are senseless, as they engender extreme brutality and loss of innocent life toward no viable aim). Wikileaks has been threatened with prosecution and put on an official U.S. watch list. Meanwhile, the two longest wars in American history continue.

Whistleblowers serve an important societal role: They alert to hidden harmful practices. Daniel Ellsberg's leak of "the Pentagon Papers" helped the public learn the true history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, Jeffrey Wigand exposed the deceitful practices of the tobacco industry, and Mary McCarthy alerted the public to the existence of C.I.A.-run secret prisons in Europe where alleged terrorists were held incommunicado and tortured. The attack on Wikileaks is designed to confuse the public and intimidate potential future leakers. Ellsberg defended Wikileaks Oct. 23 while speaking out against the Obama administration's aggressive crackdown on whistleblowers.

Wikileaks is not beyond reproach and does indeed raise a dilemma inherent in balancing society's interest in both affording public access to information and demanding accountability of those who provide that information. People should stand by their speech, but there are circumstances where anonymity is necessary to protect whistleblowers from retaliation. Web technologies, Wikileaks' and P2P information systems enable both access and anonymity but raise concerns of a lack of accountability fostering irresponsible speech that degrades the quality of speech. New media gatekeepers must act with integrity, and redacting the names of those who may be victimized by disclosures - like the ones made by Wikileaks - is often necessary. Wikileaks has taken some such steps but can do better. They have done far more good than harm.

The story here is not Julian Assange, the eccentric figurehead of Wikileaks, but rather the systemic use of torture and brutality against Iraqis and Afghans by those said to be bringing freedom and democracy to these countries. The leaks tell nothing that was not already known but rather add weight to the evidence of failed missions in these places.

Attacking the messenger is a ruse of those who prefer that we not hear the message. The tactic calls to mind the Bush administration's dirty and unlawful steps taken to impugn the integrity of Joe Wilson when he questioned official claims of Iraq having obtained uranium from Niger for its supposed weapons of mass destruction program in the lead-up to the Iraq war.

Officials exert great influence over the flow of information and know that a lie told often enough becomes the truth (see, e.g. David Barstow's Pulitzer Prize-winning report "Message Machine: Behind Military Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Hand").

History shows that, all too often, officials falsely claim that disclosing confidential information threatens national security. For example, when the documents at issue in U.S. v. Reynolds, the landmark 1953 Supreme Court case that established the state secrets defense, were declassified 40 years later, it was revealed that officials had misrepresented their contents in order to conceal embarrassing information.

Offering firsthand accounts of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Wikileaks documents inject a dose of reality, countering the sanitized narrative used by officials and re-parroted by the media. It cuts through euphemisms like "collateral damage," revealing the real carnage of these wars. The Oct. 24 editorial in the United Kingdom's Sunday Observer ("A moral catastrophe: The final reasons for going to war are being swept away") says the Wikileaks files "reveal how allied forces turned a blind eye to torture and murder of prisoners held by the Iraqi Army. Reports of appalling treatment of detainees were verified by the U.S. Army and deemed unworthy of further investigation ... build[ing] a portrait of a military occupation deeply implicated in practices that were illegal under international law and unconscionable in the eyes of any reasonable observer."

Truth is often the first casualty of war. Recall Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaeda. We must be skeptical of official attacks on whistleblowers, especially in matters of war. There is no more fateful act than the decision to wage war, and the history of war is largely one of lies and corpses. As the Pentagon Papers taught us about the Vietnam War, and the Downing Street memo teaches us about the Iraq war, the information provided by Wikileaks helps to inform us about the true nature of the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Czechs would be wise to consider this as they deliberate on whether to send more of their kin to wage war in Afghanistan.

- The author is a constitutional law scholar and member of the California Bar. He writes on law and policy and lectures on law, ethics and critical thinking at the University of New York in Prague.

Bill Cohn can be reached at
features@praguepost.com