The most galling aspect of the on-going contretemps over the Wikileaks document dump is revealed, clearly enough, in a tweet from Glenn Greenwald during his exchange with Michael Cohen the other day. Cohen had pointed out, as have many others including yours truly, that making these documents public had the potential to put the lives of Americans and their allies, including Iraqi allies, in danger. Greenwald retorted that potential danger is apparently outweighed by the reality of tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths.
This isn't moral calculus. It's grandstanding. It's disgusting.
In his several posts on the Wikileaks documents and subsequent New York Times pieces on them, as well as John Burns' profile of Julian Assange, there is not a single word to the effect that the release of nearly 400,000 classified documents is not only a crime, but a serious potential hazard for US troops still in harms way. More eager to point out the alleged complicity of the Times in covering up alleged war crimes, Greenwald insists that the documents reveal actual crimes, including by the United States Military as part of official policy, rather than consider the situation as a bit more complex than that. Standing as judge and jury over the actions of US military personnel, he insists that it was official policy for the American military to act in concert with the Iraqi military in interrogation procedures that certainly sound like torture. As an attorney (not a journalist), I find it surprising that Greenwald hasn't asked that most basic question of all - was US policy in this regard dictated by legal restrictions (i.e., did the US military have to turn over any prisoners requested by the Iraqi military, regardless of US knowledge, or even assumption, that they would subject to treatment up to and including torture) that limited the actions military personnel could take?
The overall effect of the way this entire sorry episode has started to play out does not do our service personnel any good. Whether one opposes the war or supports it, there are still 50,000 service personnel in that country, engaged either in training or direct participation with Iraq armed forces against various insurgent groups. Just publishing the information in those classified documents makes an already difficult situation that much more difficult. The American military is not a creator of policy, but an instrument. Its actions are dictated and limited by the rules and laws and regulations set down by the civilian commanders in the Pentagon. Whether it is a limitation on the number of forces deployed to a potential or actual combat zone, or the various minutiae of Administrative functions as an occupying force, they are creatures of bureaucratic decision-making, most often done at far remove from actual conditions and contexts. Whether or not the US Military is complicit in any criminal activity is entirely dependent upon the legal circumstances involved. Declaring it is systematic US policy, including military policy, for US service personnel to participate in war crimes without regard to any actual examination of many surrounding factors is not simply simple-minded; it ignores that most basic legal assumption - innocence until guilt is proved. Greenwald states categorically that such is, in fact, the case.
By doing so, he makes US military targets of even more rage. Now, the occupiers are not just occupiers, but criminally liable occupiers, complicit in the torture and murder of Iraqi citizens. Iraqi civilian and military personnel cooperating with the Americans are now revealed as complicit in these same crimes. Greenwald makes these blanket statements of guilt without even considering the possibility that so doing will make an already inflamed situation far worse. He makes these statements without regard to extant questions regarding context. He declares as guilty, without even an investigation, not just those civilians who set the policies the military has to follow, but the military personnel who carried out these policies, as required by law.
With this blanket condemnation, absent any evidence whatsoever but a bunch of papers read outside any legal or other context, Greenwald goes on to dismiss the potential hazard this blatant disregard for the law - these papers were classified for more reasons than just hiding potential embarrassment - by insisting that the deaths of Iraqis in the initial invasion and subsequent occupation far outweigh the potential hazards to American military personnel still on the ground.
It is one thing to oppose the war. It is one thing to be clear that American military personnel are guilty of various crimes, including those most public at Abu Ghraib and the Haditha murders. It is quite another to claim, absent a serious investigation (let alone a full accounting of the documentation at hand) that the Wikileaks documents clearly indicate systematic criminal activity on the part of the military as a matter of policy. This blanket claim is not just injudicious based on the paltry evidence at hand. Rooted in a moral stance that seems to hold the lives of American military personnel of less value than others, it also makes clear that these men and women, doing an almost impossible task on a shoestring budget and hamstrung by the labyrinthine politics of American-Iraqi relations, are collectively guilty of horrible crimes.
We all make fun of Tom Clancy for pretending to an understanding of all sorts of issues he most definitely does not possess. Yet when a principled critic takes it upon himself to pronounce judgment upon all sorts of actions without any familiarity with the legal and administrative context in which these actions have taken place, he is considered a brave hero.
Except by me.
Virtual Tin Cup
