With this week’s much-anticipated WikiLeaks release, our administration finds itself in an all too familiar position — forced into damage control mode, this time to ease the fallout after thousands of classified State Department documents found their way onto the web. And this latest exposure is only the most recent debacle (see “Iraq War Diaries” or “waterboarding”) to leave our front office scrambling its PR force in hopes of cunningly blunting the criticism at home and abroad.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has called the release an attack on the United States and the international community at large, saying “it undermines our work in other countries.”
Clinton also expressed regret over any embarrassment the disclosure may have caused our allies. Attorney General Eric Holder affirmed that anyone found to have broken American law (presumably WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange) would be held responsible. Government agencies are moving quickly to revise security protocol and tighten network security. Big surprise.
If the truth constitutes an attack, as the administration is branding it, then we occupy a very precarious and dubious position in the world. The WikiLeaks files will only undermine our work in other countries to the extent that they expose the obvious weakness that our ‘diplomacy’ is often reduced to glorified bribery.
And if we’ve embarrassed you, certainly we’re sorry. Please don’t bring sanctions upon yourself by now refusing to cooperate with our intelligence endeavors. (While we’re apologizing, it would probably be more meritorious to acknowledge our political hypocrisy in Central Africa, our environmental pillaging of South America, the bureaucracy of the United Nations and the economic exploitation caused by our Cold-War-paranoia driven foreign policies.)
Do we really intend to prosecute Assange, who is not an American citizen, for publishing material that had been leaked anyway, from a server site outside of the U.S.? Under what law? And in what court?
The next thing we know, he’ll be the target of a CIA drone strike in Pakistan. We must be joking.
We’re standing on stage with our pants down. This is the same old hand-waving rhetoric, and I think it begs the question: Where is the tipping point?
After the healthcare debate, the barrage of moralistic political (or should I say a-political) platforms from the Tea Party, Sarah Palin’s latest book tour and the bickering that defined the recent midterm elections, at what point will Americans have had enough?
Day after day, Americans are fed the same mind-numbing rhetoric from on high, flowing through a media outlet near you. Democrats have forced legislation through without ever explaining the details. Republicans are gaining power without ever actually proposing to do anything with ideas of their own (except rail against the Democrats).
Tea Partiers would impose their morality on all of us — that is, only according to the Gospel of Rush. And halfway around the world, we bomb the hell out of a village in the name of “freedom” and “democratic values,” although Afghanistan seems more like an idea than a country.
Does anyone else ever stop to wonder how dumb they must think we are? I dare say there is not much creativity to be found in Washington. And what is left cannot stand against the hubris and special interests that influence individual members of our government.
Congressional leaders remain at an impasse, refusing to compromise on a single big-ticket issue, while the rest of us languish under the headlines and return to posting our resumes. The Obama campaign seems to have lost its brilliant savvy when it became the Obama administration. The people are different, while the same issues grind the gears of our government.
Let us hope the WikiLeaks calamity lends perspective to all those in Washington. The politicians will twist words, arrange state visits and deny what they can until things settle back into equilibrium. But the American citizens should not be treated as ignorant.
To Washington, politics and business as usual have not been good enough. We are not entitled. We are not above reproach.
But as our administration and lawmakers continue to act as such, it reflects upon American citizenship, even influences us to think in the same way. It is not sustainable, and the jig is up.
Rising generations are increasingly aware of the world around us. The resources we are spending on clandestine and misinformed policies would be better spent here. We take pride in our country, and that means we take ownership of our government. We demand accountability.
It is not acceptable for America to sit stagnant, in want of flexibility, responsibility and courage on Capitol Hill. The joke will not be on us. We have had enough of it.
Ryne Saxe is an alumnus currently working with Impact Alabama around campus.
