In 1969, President Nixon expanded the Vietnam War by trying to bomb Cambodia in secret. When the New York Times revealed his secret bombing campaign a few months later, Nixon claimed national security was at stake.
Hardly. His “secret” bombing was no secret to Cambodia. It was only secret to Congress, which Nixon kept in the dark, and to the American public, which had just elected Nixon on a promise to end the war, not expand it. The Times’ revelation was deeply embarrassing to Nixon, but it didn’t endanger national security.
Today, President Obama isn’t going quite so far as to claim national security is at stake, but he did say that the publication Monday of unpublished memos could be harmful and hurt operations.
A reading of the memos doesn’t support that view. If the Taliban is being supported by the Pakistan security forces, that’s not news to the Taliban. It may be news to the American people, who are paying a billion dollars a year to Pakistan to keep its security service in line, and to Congress, which authorizes the bill. But it’s no secret.
The publication of the Wikileaks memos by the New York Times and a few other newspapers has spurred some members of Congress to suddenly ask hard questions about a war that is nine years old. Because the “secret” is out of the bag, a more robust discussion can be held about whether the United States is taming Afghanistan.
The Fourth Estate serves the American people, not the president. Disclosure of embarassing “secrets” may be bad for politicians, but it’s good for the citizens on whose behalf the government functions.
July 28, 2010 at 11:14 pm
Nice post, Norm. I agree completely. An informed public is very rarely a bad thing!
July 30, 2010 at 11:04 am
One concern I have heard, at least from the Pentagon, via NPR, is that the memos also reveal Afghan informants, who are likely now in danger from the Taliban of retaliation. There also seems to be some question as to how this security breach will play out in the international community and how it will affect the effectiveness of further intelligence gathering. My concern is that it just seems a bit reckless to dump 92,000 classified documents onto the Internet for a free-for-all, given that there would seem to be a lot of things to examine and think through before making the information public. To its credit,WikiLeaks did engage the expertise of professional news organizations to provide some context for the information, but that doesn’t change the fact that the entire mass of raw classified information is out there for anyone and everyone.
http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=128865935&m=128866031