After WikiLeaks: 'Civilized' War Criminals Await the Passage of
Time
"Confronted
with evidence of their crimes, the leaders of civilization dodge the issue and
rely on the passage of time to erase memories of the carnage for which they are
accountable. One recalls that during the Vietnam War, after an especially horrific
episode in the history of humanity, a single junior American officer was convicted
for a single massacre: My-Lai."
Founder, spokesperson and editor in chief of WikiLeaks Julian Assange: Now one of the most ubiquitous faces in modern media, his group's release of 90,000 classified documents pertaining to Afghanistan has turned the media world and world at large upside down.
It's a truism: information is
an essential element of war - when it's not, by itself, the very essence of
it. The evidence of this, as the teachings of ancient Chinese strategist Sun
Tzu tell us, has been demonstrated every day since modern warfare and the spread of
mass media.
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
In this world, that so caters
to minority interests, where disinformation competes with manipulation, the
"news" is rarely innocent: it is primarily intended to condition the
public mind and prepare it for decisions made by civil or military leaders.
The WikiLeaks site, whose
mission is the anonymous publication of confidential documents, in
collaboration with newspapers The Guardian, The New York Times and Der
Spiegel, published Sunday evening 90,000 reports of allied forces in
Afghanistan. For those who follow the daily horrors and suffering of the Afghans
and the adventures of the armies of NATO in this country so cursed by
history, there is no scoop here - no revelation. The war against al-Qaeda and
the Taliban quickly turned into a colonialist war. And in our latitudes, everyone
knows that this is such a war. The documents "leaked" by WikiLeaks
teach us nothing that those following this war didn't already know. Western
troops engaged in killings and "mistakes" such as
"collateral" damage are part of the daily fare of the war in the
Afghan mountains. This is nothing new under the murderous sun of asymmetrical
conflict. Lacking an enemy as well-equipped as themselves, civilized armies are
killing poor people.
Confronted with evidence of their
crimes, the leaders of civilization dodge the issue and rely on the passage of
time to erase memories of the carnage for which they are accountable. One recalls
that during the Vietnam War,
after an especially horrific episode in the history of humanity, a single
junior American officer was convicted for a single massacre: My-Lai. Crimes
committed in Fallujah by the "elite" Marine Corps continue to go
unpunished, even while the world knows the extent of the horror in Iraq.
What then is the significance
of the leak of thousands of secret documents about the conduct of the war in
Afghanistan? The "otherness" of children, women and elderly Afghans is
such, that it's difficult, is it not, to feel the least compassion for their
plight? Any traffic accident in the developed world arouses more emotion. By
this measure, the Afghan dead are only statistics.
But far more than the deaths
of thousands of anonymous people with no real human value, civilization’s eminently
respectable media teach us that above all, the "secret" documents
served up to public opinion reveal the involvement of Pakistan and Iran in the
Afghan conflict, and bring to light the collusion of these countries with
anti-Western subversion. It is probably at this level that the publication of
these "documents," which cover the period between 2004 and 2009, likely
derives any operational meaning.
In effect, media handling of
the war is centered around two points: the "endangerment" of Western forces,
and the role of Afghanistan's two neighbors. This is a flimsy approach to the
matter, and the coarseness of the process demonstrates perfectly the contempt with
which public opinion is held.
