Monday, November 29, 2010

The WikiLeaks Backlash


After Julian Assange's WikiLeaks recent exposé of the inner workings of the United States State Department and hundreds of corresponding embassies, Hillary Clinton, the United States Secretary of State has to head off on a tour of many of the countries that were criticized in the leaked reports. As such, this leak certainly complicates diplomatic matters for the former First Lady. You can see her slamming of the recent leaks in the following video:


The nation's Attorney General, Eric Holder, expressed that action against Assange may be necessary. Do you feel that the WikiLeaks are a viable threat to our national interests and diplomatic relations? Should Assange be be punished for the criminal nature of his actions? Or should he be applauded for his audacity and commitment to revealing the truth?

On a related tangent, the WikiLeaks website was ironically hacked and taken down by an annoyed hacker who goes by the name of The Jester on Sunday evening. A hacker getting hacked, fancy that. More deatails regarding this unexpected occurrence can be found here.

2 comments:

Jeff Ware said...

While I don't think that Wikileaks is going to change the very nature of U.S. foreign relations, it is still rather pesky. The fact of the matter is that most countries that are not already annoyed at the U.S. are not going to change their opinion because of the info that was released. Assange definitely shouldn't be commended for his audacity so much as scolded for the issues that he causes, but it's also hard to pin him down as criminal...

Brendan O'Brien said...

You know, Amrit, between this and the Korean crisis the news is starting to read like news bulletins at an MUN conference. I mean really, doesn't this seem just like something some chairs would think up? I mean, it's random enough to catch people off guard, but at the same time, it's still technically probable.

Joking aside, other than the principle of US documents being leaked by an outside source, from what I read about the content of the releases (in the Chronicle), none of them seemed particularly inflamatory. I'd say that's a very good thing, especially considering the heightened tensions around the Korean crisis. The leaks pertaining to that amounted to Washington and Seoul discussing the prospect of satisfying China if a unified Korea came out of the collapse of North Korea between its economic woes and the change in leadership. There was also content to the effect that the "right business deals" could "salve" China if this occured. I don't think that will do any real damage. It will anger the North Koreans, but in all honesty they already hate us enough anyway. It shouldn't anger China to the point of starting something up, which bodes well in that respect.

What interested me more was that there were apparently messages from leaders in the Middle East encouraging the US to attack Iran, mostly because of its nuclear ambitions. That throws an interesting monkey wrench into that political situation. Iran will doubtlessly be outraged; what kind of action Tehran will take as a result is hard to say. I will say, however, that it will probably improve the US' image in the region as leaders may be pressured to back up what they said.

Ah well. Let's watch the drama unfold.