Wednesday, December 08, 2010

Wikileaks


And the leaking goes on:

...in an exclusive interview with ABC News' Jim Sciutto, Wikileaks' spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson insisted Assange's arrest won't alter the site's calculated release of thousands of secret government cables, which still continues according to plan. The site published a new slate of cables Wednesday.

"It is not derailing us in any way," said Hrafnsson, adding that a group of five to six people is running Wikileaks' operations in Assange's absence. "This is a turning tide and starting a trend that you can't really stop unless you want to shut down the Internet."

Wikileaks has to be the worst assault on diplomacy ever. I can't say I thought much of Obama's general theme that if we're nice to the world the world will be nice in return. I knew it was naive to think that talking to our enemies would solve all our problems. So OK, I think Obama has learned that too in the last two years.

But diplomacy is still the way we solve differences without resorting to war. Whether Obama is good at it, or bad at it, or naive, or shrewd, doesn't matter; diplomacy is still necessary to avoid destructive confrontations. Have the Assange groupies thought through the consequences of damaging the world's ability to communicate diplomatically? Do they want trade wars, more nuclear weapons, and armed conflicts? Is a nuclear Iran a good thing? Should the United States quit trying to broker peace in the Middle East and Korea?

Diplomacy is a good thing. And diplomacy is what Assange and friends have hurt. They're children playing with pipe bombs and their inability to think their actions through is a hazard to everyone. They have to be stopped, one way or another.

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