When America was new, George Washington declaimed against "entangling alliances," in large part because of their deleterious impact on democracy. Ferociously committed to that isolationist principle in the beginning, by slow degrees America abandoned it as she become a world power. By the end of World War II, America and the Soviet Union carved up the management of the world between them, each having more or less a free hand in their own sphere, and each
feeling their historical mission justified certain categories of duplicity, deception,
manipulation and murder. Like all crimes, crimes of state become easier and more addictive as they are repeated, and by the end of the Cold War America's foreign policy establishment had accumulated an impressive catalogue of sins and atrocities committed in our name, and the habit of lazy self-justification. Here comes Julian
Assange, and now the elites profess themselves shocked, shocked, at the content of the
Wikileaks memos and the alleged possible repercussions from their release. But even more than the contents of the leaked memos, the over-the-top reaction of the Washington power players to the leak reveals much that they would prefer remain hidden. Eric Holder threatens prosecution, Hillary Clinton huffs and puffs,
Barack Obama lets it be known that he is infuriated. and Republican members of Congress wonder why we can't prosecute
Wikileaks for treason, terrorism, or aiding and abetting the enemy. And in so doing, they underscore why secrecy is a dagger to the heart of democracy.
The leaks are in themselves, so far, not explosive enough to justify all the rhubarb. We are not talking about launch codes or satellite frequencies here. None of these revelations amount to more than petty court gossip or the sort of informed,
perfevered speculation that has been current on talk radio for years now. Among the "highlights" of the revelations:
---The Saudi King favors an attack on Iran's nuclear program;
---China has directed
cyberattacks on the United States;
---Russian President
Medvedev" plays Robin to Putin's Batman;"
---German Chancellor Angela
Merkel "avoids risk and is seldom creative;"
---Iran has bought sophisticated
missiles from North Korea -- missiles that can hit Europe;
---Chinese operatives have hacked into computers of governments worldwide, the Dali Lama, and major US Businesses;
---The US and South Korea have discussed contingencies to unify Korea should the state in the North implode, including concessions that may be
necessary to China to help them accept a pro-US government in the unified Korea;
---Donors in the Saudi Royal family keep S
unni militants groups, in particular Al
Qaeda, active and well-financed;
---The United States has made an effort to remove highly enriched uranium out of Pakistan to protect it from falling into the hands of militants in case of a Pakistani collapse;
--- US diplomats have been directed by superiors to spy on their counterparts and when possible to collect DNA samples.
Taken individually, it is hard to reconcile these out-of-context factoids with any sense of meltdown or even urgency. What is there to worry about?
Medvedev's hurt little feelings?
Merkel's vanity? Is China going to pout because the suspicion of their crimes has seen the light of day? So what if they do? Most preposterous of all is the matter of US Diplomats involved in professional surveillance of
their counterparts; does anyone imagine that the diplomatic world has ever been anything but a hive of the most vicious, assiduous, back-stabbing treachery?
If nation-states are going to let cotton candy like these representations
influence calculations of hard national interest, they are too irrational to influence anyway.
No informed citizen 50 miles outside of Washington would express too much surprise at any of this. In fact, not only does the content of this massive leak fall short of the dark suspicions that alienated Americans routinely harbor about their own government, but many ordinary Americans are so used to feeling utterly disconnected from and manipulated by their own government that, from spite, it is almost cheering to see the power structure this agitated and upset.
That level of unhappiness is mainstream, and if the government does not know it, it is because they do not want to know.
So why all the hollering? Who is kidding whom here? What is this Kabuki play intended to accomplish? Why does the orchestrated, theatrical, righteous indignation on the part of our leaders feel like some sort of baroque
psywar campaign against American voters?
Noam Chomsky has it right; this
sturm und drang of outrage against
Wikileaks is about transparency, accountability, and the rule of law in a democracy, and the right of the ruling class and their stooges to run roughshod over the world with impunity and complete
deniability, and to ignore the obligation to submit to the law and the supremacy of the people. We're beyond all this transparency stuff, the government is saying; what we do is too important. The roar of protest from Washington is the sound of the Bipartisan Beltway Bubble closing ranks and showing who is in charge. All this outrage is calculated to protect the ensconced sinecures and the well-feathered nests of the Foreign Policy Establishment and their clients from an empowered, enfranchised, informed and righteously angered population, the national interest be damned.
We are at a point where the people operating the government in our name have established a Constitution-free zone for themselves, and in all matters, they have their foreign and domestic agendas which overlap very little with those of the population. And they think that is how things ought to be.
When Richard Nixon learned of the Pentagon Paper's publication in The New York Times, his first reaction was partisan joy, because he know that most of their contents would reflect badly on Kennedy and Johnson. Under prodding from Henry Kissinger, he came to see them for what they were: a threat to the free hand of the secret government of the American Empire to do what it pleased, where it pleased, when it pleased, to whom it pleased. Once convinced of this point of view, witnesses attest, Nixon became a frothing, whirling dervish of rage and revenge, pacing the Oval Office double-time, purple faced and spitting venom, pounding his fist into his palm and muttering over and over: "We CANNOT have foreign policy made on the front page of the New York Times!!!" Among other things, Nixon realized that he could no longer be entirely certain even of the loyalty of the government
apparatus. This may well mark the inflection point of the Nixon presidency into paranoia, chaos, and crime.
Like Nixon, today's czars look upon the obligations of a free society as a poor second to the hard-headed imperatives of sophisticated, worldly statecraft. There is no place in this worldview for a public airing of the facts, no possibility of a challenge to authority, no checks and balances. Thus, the multi-trillion dollar, apocalyptic sinkholes of Afghanistan, Iraq, and if we are not careful, Iran.
The real crime that Hillary Clinton,
Barack Obama,
et al are concerned about is the crime of crashing the private party of those who have long since hijacked the American government for their own ends and who have implicated all of us in an escalating quagmire of death, poverty, chaos and suffering.
Long ago, the United States of America made a deal with the devil and chose empire. Now the empire strikes back, at us.
