Why Wikileaks is a threat to International Security and Julian Assange is a traitor, Part 3

By Zach Foster

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Now that it has been established that Assange is a traitor to his country and an aide to terrorists, it is only fair to credit the successes of Wikileaks which have benefited the world.  There are indeed a great many bad things that need to be exposed, whose exposition not only benefits the world but also tends to bring attention to laws instead of violating them.  Assange, through Wikileaks, exposed the numerous extrajudicial assassinations taking place in Kenya, saying "It is a reflection of the courage and strength of Kenyan civil society that this injustice was documented. Through the tremendous work of organisations such as the Oscar foundation, the KNHCR, Mars Group Kenya and others we had the primary support we needed to expose these murders to the world."  The exposition of the Kenyan murders shows how laws were being broken and human rights were being violated left and right.  This is completely unlike the situation in the Iraq and Afghanistan war zones, which are under martial law and whose governments are engaged in armed combat against terrorist organizations that make an official policy of brutal torture and mass executions.  Furthermore, despite the seeming unethicality nature of water boarding or using fire hoses on detainees during interrogation, these actions are being carried out against unlawful combatants who have no protection whatsoever by the Geneva Convention.  It is almost humorous to look back on the capture of terrorists running houses of torture, where innocent civilians (alleged prisoners of “holy war”) had their fingers cut off, jaws ripped off, and then were executed by decapitation on film, and these terrorists had the nerve to demand their rights according to the Geneva Convention!

Assange’s exposing of secret documents of the Church of Scientology that show the “church’s” habits of preying upon the finances of its members, requiring certain fees amounting to thousands of dollars as a prerequisite for advancement in the church.  That was something that potential church members (and even un-knowing current ones) need to be made aware of.  Often times, hypocrisy by governments and politicians has been exposed.  If a member of a government is passing anti-drug legislation, or other legislation that takes a key moral side, and then engaging in contrary behavior in private, then a situation has arisen in which it is only ethical to blow the whistle.  Murders, scams, and outright lying are things that people need to be made aware of.

However, Assange’s actions in regards to the leaking of classified military documents have crossed many lines, both legal and moral.  It is unethical for him to get actively involved in foreign affairs and then feel victimized by prosecution for crimes he committed abroad.  Furthermore, it is unethical for him to make decisions that highly affect the status of wars when he knows nothing about war, especially about American just wars (whether people agree with the Iraq War or not, the U.S. has an obligation to rebuild a country it broke).  Regardless of mistakes that countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Afghanistan, and Iraq have made, their current governments and militaries could never be anywhere near as bad as the people they are fighting today.

Julian Assange has done good work in the past that is a credit to journalism.  His recent work however—work which he and his supporters have vehemently defended—has caused incredible harm.  This shows the change in a man who started a once good organization, now taking himself too seriously as prolific journalist—too seriously as a hero—rather than a servant of the people.  The truth is that Assange, in his quest to be the first to get the big, juicy scoop, has unknowingly lost himself in his career and become a servant for terror.  Many of his supporters cry over and over again, “Don’t shoot the messenger!”  Their basis for the argument and their chosen figure of speech is faulty; it’s not right to shoot the messenger when all he is doing is delivering the message—his job.  However, when the messenger eavesdrops on a conversation he knows absolutely nothing about, on a topic he has absolutely no expertise in, and the messenger makes a situation incredibly worse, then he has done wrong and can’t realistically expect to be patted on the back.

Nonetheless, there still is hope for Assange.  He needs to acknowledge that he has done harm to the international community, to militaries engaged in wars whose end goals are for the greater good, and to fledgling democratic governments struggling to build their future.  He needs to acknowledge that he allowed his selfishness and motivation to be the leading journalist get in the way of his true objectives.  Lastly, he needs to promise that his journalistic abilities will from now on be put to helping people in need, as he has done in the past.

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