A Huffington Post column by Johann Hari summarizes certain revelations stemming from the leaked USG diplomatic cables by Wikileaks. The piece posits that Julian Assange's efforts have made the world safer and are a boon to US National Security, that a better educated public with proof of government wrongdoings can better bring its government to account.
Hari's column touches on a cable which proves the US Armed Forces were operating in Yemen while denying it publicly, and references an article which discusses 'Reaper' or 'Predator' drone attacks in Pakistan. Drone attacks there are a very messy situation; Pakistani officials publicly deny their tacit approval of US drone attacks within their territory, rejecting them as a violation of their sovereignty and of dubious value and causing massive civilian casualties. According to Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit, drone attacks "are having long-term negative consequences.” Indeed, the Pakistani and American governments likely will suffer "long-term negative consequences" from the resulting radicalization of Muslims when they employ drone tactics such as attacking a funeral procession; waiting for a time until villagers come out from cover after the attack in search for survivors and to pray for the newly slain; then attacking again. Certainly they make bitter enemies of the villagers who lose their homes and family members in such wanton displays of imperial might; people who may have nothing left to do to support themselves except to take up arms, if it does not generally galvanize the entire population against them, to whom the notion that US forces are in the region to restore security and human rights must seem something of a Hitlerian joke.
The article also highlights pressure the US Government exerted on Germany to quash an investigation into the rendition of an innocent man, Khaled El-Masri, who was mistaken for an insurgent with a similar name. El-Masri was kidnapped from Europe and brought to the CIA's infamous 'Salt Pit', a secret interrogation facility in Afghanistan. A Harper's Magazine article, The El-Masri Cable, describes the treatment he received: "Despite El-Masri’s protests that he was not al-Masri, he was beaten, stripped naked, shot full of drugs, given an enema and a diaper, and flown first to Baghdad and then to the notorious “salt pit,” the CIA’s secret interrogation facility in Afghanistan. At the salt pit, he was repeatedly beaten, drugged, and subjected to a strange food regime that he supposed was part of an experiment that his captors were performing on him. Throughout this time, El-Masri insisted that he had been falsely imprisoned, and the CIA slowly established that he was who he claimed to be. Over many further weeks of bickering over what to do, a number of CIA figures apparently argued that, though innocent, the best course was to continue to hold him incommunicado because he 'knew too much.'" While this kidnapping, torture, sexual violation and starvation of an innocent man had already been revealed, the leaked cables show the US Government's expectation of impunity for its agents who execute these illegal actions in sovereign foreign nations; in this case, Germany's unwillingness to cooperate by dropping charges in the matter against 13 USG agents is met with threats from US diplomats.
Hari's article points to other abuses by Western governments and the lies they tell their people to cover it up. He expresses outrage in the poignant observation that "There is a squalid little irony when you see people who are literally bombing innocent civilians every day feverishly accuse a man (Julian Assange) who has never touched a weapon in his life of being 'covered in blood.'" He names Western governments as the prime threats to their own population's security, and suggests that the unmasking of this hypocrisy must lead to positive change, stability and security. What will the view of the Muslim and 3rd world be, if Western 'democracies' fail to address the abuse of power by their governments? Al Qaeda already names Western voters as sponsors of the military occupation of Palestine and the general misery of the third world, offering that ignorance is not an excuse for imperialism. Many amongst the populations of the world's Muslim nations already view Westerners, especially Americans, as ignorant, militarist and corrupt materialists. Now that Western tax-payers and voters cannot hide behind the veil of ignorance, how will the world view of Western 'democracies' change, should they fail to expel the ruling classes who have sown war, death, torture and poverty in their people's name? What is the risk that Westerners come to be seen as knowingly complicit in the heinous crimes of their governments by their 'democratically' expressed unwillingness to stop these crimes, let alone rectify and bring their authors to justice? Whatever blood Julian Assange and the American government have on them, it is more and more smeared onto each of us, here in Canada, in the US and in Europe.
Read the Johann Hari- Huffington Post article here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/julian-assange-has-made-u_b_793504.html
More on Drones by Johann Hari and others:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann--hari-obamas-robot-wars-endanger-us-all-2106931.html
http://news.antiwar.com/2009/06/23/at-least-65-killed-as-us-drones-attack-south-waziristan-funeral-procession/
http://www.qatar-tribune.com/data/20101202/content.asp?section=pakistan1_3
http://geo.tv/6-24-2009/44711.htm
Harper's Magazine on El-Masri Rendition:
http://harpers.org/archive/2010/11/hbc-90007831
BBC on American intervention in Yemen:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11918037
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