A good doctor seeks to determine and reduce or eliminate the cause, not just treat the symptoms.
Why is it that no on seems to consider the strategy that the US government should stop lying to its citizens and engaging in a policy that creates more terrorists and terrorism?
We are supposed to take as a "given" that the terrorist fear and hysteria is a "way of life." But it clearly has not always been so, even under the Reagan Administration, and he was the darling of the Right Wing. Bill Clinton warned of GWB's foreign policy ineptitude by saying that: "you cannot kill enemies as fast as you can make them, so it is better to try to make friends." Bush never listened and declared a "Crusade" against Islam and the Arab culture. To consolidate his domestic power, Bush sought the Patriot Act to take away civil liberties and create a climate of fear and hysteria. Obama has done little to change this climate, despite mild push back from the public in the form of objections to airport "security" measures.
I do not condone all that Wikileaks has done, but this is something [like the Pentagon Papers] that the government has brought upon itself. Everyone knows that diplomats make candid and derogatory comments about their counterparts. The list of critical sites could probably be developed by any college student with a computer and Google Earth, just like information about military installations of any country, so I think the reaction is deliberately overblown. For example, we know exactly where and at what pace North Korea and Iran are building facilities that may or may not contain work on nuclear projects. Is it reasonable to think that other countries do not know about US installations? seriously? But the volume of disclosure runs the risk of being indiscriminate and releasing a couple of things that could actually be damaging.
The government insists on a culture of deception and concealment of information the public has a legitimate interest in knowing. If national security were actually used as a claim or complaint when national security was really at issue, people would be more respectful of government claims. But knowing what books people check out at the local library is a long stretch from any legitimate claim of national security. So no one believes or respects the government complaints anymore. They have lied and cried wolf too many times in order to maintain a climate of fear about "terrorism." They can threaten to prosecute Wikileaks, but that will not alter the deep distrust that exists about government integrity and transparency. A wise man once said that trust cannot be obtained at the end of a barrel of a gun, it must be earned. Does the US government want to be just feared, or respected?
True journalism [whose duty is as a watchdog to keep the government honest] has died or been sold to corporate greed. The youth of today have abandoned "mainstream media" as a source of credible information. Sadly, no one respects the media [Fox, MSNBC, etc] as a source of credible information any longer. Weather reports, to the extent that one could ever rely on them, are about the only thing people take seriously at all anymore.
That opens the door to a form of citizen action or vigilante justice [depending upon your viewpoint] that is Wikileaks. Prosecuting Assange may give the appearance of control, from the storm trooper perspective, but it is just symptomatic treatment. It will only deepen the distrust and disrespect toward a government that lies to its people, and crushes anyone who threatens to expose the deceit.
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