Monday 26 July 2010

quagmire

To confound any legal attempts to block publication, Wikileaks triangulated its trove of a press-release with Der Spiegel and the New York Times, which has framed the break in the dyke quite nicely.   Some criticize the media for trumping up the nature of the documents, saying that there are no real surprises, no shock-and-awe, which I think is a strange critique, coming from the venerable third estate: it is journalism's job to limn a situation, an environment and interpret and reveal through its objective lens.  Comparison to the Pentagon Papers are apt, but these are unprocessed bits of evidence, and it is the newspapers which tie together a proper daisy-chain accounting.  Nonetheless, if there had been a transparent horde of documentation from the beginning, the US and NATO would not have engaged in the war in the manner in which it did.  It is disheartening to have confirmation on the cheapness of Afghan lives, duplicity of the US Pakistani partners and the general glossing-over of way the war is being prosecuted.  Rather than playing the enemy of mine enemies against one another, like the Americans did to the Soviets in the region, it seems the coalition forces are enacting their own counter-finance.  Perhaps the biggest outrage and surprise ought to be the US focus on plugging the leak and visiting vengence on the free press, rather than addressing the problems exposed.