So here's a quick rundown of what some smart people are saying about it...
David Samuels at the Atlantic condemns the "shameful attacks" on Julian Assange:
It is dispiriting and upsetting for anyone who cares about the American tradition of a free press to see Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton and Robert Gibbs turn into H.R. Haldeman, John Erlichman and John Dean. We can only pray that we won't soon be hit with secret White House tapes of Obama drinking scotch and slurring his words while calling Assange bad names.
Unwilling to let the Democrats adopt Nixon's anti-democratic, press-hating legacy as their own, Republican Congressman Peter King asserted that the publication of classified diplomatic cables is "worse even than a physical attack on Americans" and that Wikileaks should be officially designed as a terrorist organization. Mike Huckabee followed such blather to its logical conclusion by suggesting that Bradley Manning should be executed.
Over at the Daily Beast, Stephen Carter discusses the diplomatic fallout from the leaks as well as whether Wikileaks and Assange in particular, should be tried for espionage. He concludes 'no':
Yet that very reassurance points to the damage Assange has done: In an age when diplomacy is of enormous importance, other nations have now learned that confiding in American diplomats is risky. We cannot keep the world’s secrets. The Obama administration, then, would be poorly positioned indeed were it to insist, on the one hand, that quiet diplomacy is the way to resolve international crises, and, on the other, to stand aside, hands wringing, when the contents of those conversations become public.
Consequently, it is easy to see why leading administration figures, along with politicians and pundits from both sides of the aisle, are publicly musing about the possibility of prosecution. It is easy to share the frustration that makes our leaders want somehow to “get” Assange and WikiLeaks. And, contrary to much expert opinion, I think the United States has an excellent chance for a successful prosecution. But I also believe, strongly, that it would be a mistake to try. As much harm as a man like Assange might do, the damage to our values by trying to put him behind bars would be worse.
Let us concede that the various documents he has released have done a lot of damage. He cannot plausibly claim that his actions were necessary to expose some major government conspiracy or coverup; this is not the Pentagon Papers or Watergate. Assange is a maker of mischief and a seeker of publicity, exposing confidential material because he can. In this sense he is a nihilist, driven by no serious theory of governance or international relations, other than the creation of controversy. What Assange has done is little different from a person who illegally obtains the tax returns of leading journalists, and posts them online, showing how much money each earns, and from whom, and where each gives it away, all in order, he might say, to demonstrate their biases. Such an individual is worthy of condemnation, not celebration. But acting callously, or self-interestedly, or narcissistically, ought not to be criminal, particularly when what is involved is, undeniably, speech. We should be deeply troubled by the notion that our government might be devising schemes to prosecute people for what they have said or written.
Finally, Megan McArdle speaks to what I think may in fact be the greatest damage coming out of the dump:
It's also worth noting that the assumption that secretive organizations will necessarily be undermined by leaks is only even arguably true in a world where they can't expand their sphere of influence to control the propagation of those leaks. It will be clear to anyone who has ever visited China that we do not live in that universe. And of course, the US government has plenty of room to expand its power. And what truly worries me about Wikileaks is not the immediate damage that has been done by the release of this sort of information, but the fact that the latest drop has created an enormous, nearly unanimous backlash in the United States.
Most of the libertarians I know are ambivalent, for heaven's sake--if you can't get the libertarians united on actions that increase transparency, you've sure as hell lost the rest of the country. That's a ripe environment for new laws that reduce transparency. Maybe we'll be less effective--but we'll also be less free.
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