Reply #16: Some would.

[Igel]

Different "somes" for each scenario.

No Assange? Well, he's fairly arrogant and self-centered. He wants truth and common sense to prevail, but defines them as what he wants with little more principle beyond what a spoiled toddler can adduce. There is no cause and effect. There is only the One True Morality, defined as His.

Then again, he's an Aussie ex-pat who explicitly wants to influence American politics by producing a lot of media attention in a highly cynical and self-serving way. You don't like the possibility of foreigners influencing US politics by contributing the the Chamber of Commerce and do like Assange? Here you have it on steroids. Enjoy. But then what you really are saying is that you only want foreign interferencewhen it helps you. There's no principle beyond "I really should be in charge, but I allow my self-appointed surrogates to do my bidding." See para. starting "No Assange?"

There's the usual claim that prior leaks didn't directly harm anybody; these are less likely to directly and immediately cause deaths. Of course, proving that the leaks were the direct and sole cause of some injury to an Afghan informant is rather a tough row to hoe, nearly anything requiring 100% probability of direct causality while having most of the information veiled is a losing proposition. Yet that's the standard. It's the same kind of thinking that says you can only count full-time, permanent previously unplanned jobs directly created ex nihilo by the 2009 stimulus--none of this modelling "it's better than it would have been" nonsense. Same with these leaks: They won't harm anybody. On the other hand, if it means that we can't "read" China's take on North Korea, or Russia's attitude towards Iran, it makes it harder to negotiate and judge responses. In other words, their attitudes become more opaque to decision makers, and the result isn't transparency where it's needed (unless what's needed is primarily what we want--see para. starting "No Assange?").

Then there's the narrow "if it hurts Obama, it hurts the world" kind of argument (at least it's not the "if it hurts the US it helps the world" argument). What's important isn't reduced information to the US government, but reduced information specifically to Obama. This is every bit as bad as Assange's attitude, just displaced: The One True Morality is Obama's, with Assange and other such leakers being either acolyte or nemesis, depending on whether what he does helps or hinders Obama. Some view this as patriotism, but it's an odd sort of patriotism because it's minus the patria and just includes the pater.

Notice that if you remove Assange personally all you do is, paradoxically, remove my third paragraph, the foreign influence on US politics and foreign policy because then you're substituting Manning's morality and making him a self-appointed dictator of enforcing that morality (if he actually produced the leaks, as seems likely; if not, some other individual's morality is at issue). We love individual Crusaders when they crusade for what we like, esp. if they're sufficiently iconoclastic and hurt the right people (we leave aside if they hurt the wrong people, because we really don't oppose human sacrifice when we think it's either a good thing or at least the price for others to pay).

It's about power, pure and simple. Some mask it in the guise of morality, but they are like penitents engaging in the flagellation of another's back while asking for forgiveness for sins that they, personally, haven't committed but personally have rooted out and condemned as wrong in the name of tolerance and benevolence. In this, they're all Jerry Falwells at his nastiest on a particularly nasty day.

I actually find it fairly amusing. Then again, I'm most definitely not Queen Victoria.