AmericanAnDerTU

I read this and this on Esquire.com about a week ago and it got me really thinking: is all this hoopla about WikiLeaks really necessary? Has it even been earned? Assange said he would redefine the history of the world with his release of all these diplomatic cables - but he hasn’t really done that, has he? The cables are being released but what history has really been rewritten? Certainly the ever-changing future has been rewritten, but then that happens on its own. The past? Last I checked nothing new is there to be found.

One thing really needs to be said about me before I continue any further with this post, however: I have no love for the United States. In my opinion, the country as a whole is a rotten, poisoned mess and Obama (the guy I voted for, and yes, I did most definitely exercise my rights in 2008) hasn’t really done much for the country as a whole, especially in terms of foreign policy. I think Obama really has lots of great ideas for domestic America, but internationally he’s not too different from Bush. I suppose that’s the easy way out and I might take the same route. When you look at the state of the Union and then look at foreign policy, you can’t do everything at once. That’s just a stressful situation that no human being could handle. So in this respect, let’s cut Obama a bit of slack. Now let’s get back on topic.

OK, lots of companies seem to have taken a stand against WikiLeaks and many people think they’re all under pressure from the US government, but I think that’s taking things a bit far. I would say it’s actually only some of them.

• Amazon, I think, shouldn’t be given any blame. WikiLeaks was being attacked by anti-WikiLeaks hackers and seeing as how WikiLeaks was being hosted by Amazon, that puts Amazon’s entire network at risk. Makes sense to cut WikiLeaks loose so that way they can protect the rest of their customers from any kind of security breaches. After all, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, isn’t that right, Mr. Spock?
• The Swiss bank actually had sound legal reasons for closing the account. Assange had no proof of residence in Switzerland, so why give him an account when you need to prove that you live in Switzerland?
• Twitter opened up pretty cleanly about how their Trending Topics algorithm works, so there was no censorship here.
• As far as Apple removing the app, good on them. Some developer was charging people $1.99 to view free content that could have been viewed in any Twitter application or from the browser. Talk about a rip off. If anything, that’s Apple preventing buyer’s remorse.
• Regarding Visa, Mastercard, Paypal and Bank of America - all large American companies and any company can decide with whom they’d like to do business. These are really the only companies that you can say that really felt the heat from the American government, the others above all had their own reasons (seemingly). That’s no reason to take any of them down, though. It’s not like it’s personal. It’s just business. They’re in the business of making money, not changing the world.

But let’s look at the good and bad that WikiLeaks has done. In my opinion, the Afghanistan and Iraq leaks were amazing, absolutely amazing. They were also necessary. The US government and the military had been up until that point flat out lying to the American people about the situation there and making it seem like it’s going so fantastically. We can certainly thank Hillbilly George for this state of things, though, so perhaps given the absolute pile of crap that Obama inherited, we can forgive him for just continuing the pattern. Hell, I would even go so far as to say not even he had the big picture and knew everything. Remember what I said about taking the easy way out and preferring to focus on domestic issues (like healthcare)?

What have all these diplomatic cables done, though? As far as I can tell they’ve taken away any kind of diplomatic leverage that not only the US might have had in crucial negotiations, but also leverage that other countries might have had in their own negotiations. Certainly the United States does not need to take on everything and be the one that does everything in the world (another good article from Esquire that alludes to much the same), but remember this: If the US doesn’t do it, the world doesn’t follow. Environmental reform? If the US isn’t on board, the rest of the world pretty much just says fuck it and goes back to whatever their own domestic programs they were previously working on instead of continuing to work towards international solutions.

Have these leaks actually taught us anything new? If you read newspapers and watch the news regularly, likely not. If anything, they’ve simply confirmed what many of us already knew. Some of the cables released are even years old, so old as to not even be relevant anymore because the governments discussed within them have already changed at least once. I still have no idea why these leaked cables are a big deal for the US. It would be nice to see the US just give the world the middle finger for once and not use a military offensive while doing it. Every diplomat spies on every other diplomat and every country spies on every other country. It would be foolish not to do so. We live in a world where information has become more powerful than any modern weapon. Information is power and if a country wants to have power, they best know everything they possibly can before sitting down to talk with other countries, because at the end of the day, every country looks out for themselves and no other.

Perhaps that’s the real problem with the world. We don’t care enough about our fellow man, but you can look at your fellow humans on the streets and realize that.

This blog post isn’t quite as succinct and perfectly clear as I wanted it, but it’s getting late and I want to get this out into the ether now, because this will be my last chance to really write at length for a while. My last point is this: let’s ignore WikiLeaks until they actually bring something game-changing to the table. You know, something that really changes how we see the world or a particular aspect of it, because all of this excitement about what is essentially diplomatic gossip isn’t getting us anywhere.