I get it. I really do. People value honesty. People value trust and want to feel like they aren't being lied to or manipulated. No one wants to believe that what they've held to be true isn't - so to that extent, I get the whole Wikileaks thing. The internet is ablaze with supporters of Wikileaks (here after referred to as WL) most recent threat. After all, if someone knows the truth, isn't it their job to make it known?

No.

And here's why. Because its NOT the whole truth. Oh, in the coming months we might be overwhelmed with information that we can hardly believe, and most of it will probably be true. I'm sure we'll hear about our allies plotting against us. We'll be told about terrorist attacks that we never were told about before. If WL releases its info we'll probably hear about botched interrogations, black ops gone bad, operations in country's we were never supposed to be in, strained relationships with other countries, and countless of backroom deals.  And yes, most of it will probably be true, but that doesn't mean its the whole truth.

Now, its hard to justify alot of this situations. You can't exactly explain away unethical backroom deals. But just because we know about the acts, doesn't mean we know the justifications behind the acts, and THAT is where WL is on thin ice. I would be shocked to find out that my country, who supposedly never negotiates with terrorists, actually paid terrorists off for someone's safe return. I would assume that I had been lied to, and that it was a clear cut case of black and white misinformation. But without all the surrounding facts, which are undoubtedly not in the released documents, I wouldn't know the extreme situation that our country might have been in that forced our hand into making a decision we had previous declared impossible.

For an extreme example: I would be shocked to find out that JFK wasn't murdered by a communist-crazed American dissident, but rather a Russian assassin. However, the controvery, and retaliation that might be brought on by information like this can no doubt be too much information for some normal Americans to bear. Upon news that "middle eastern terrorists" had attacked the World Trade Center, countless mosques, convenience stores and homes owned by middle eastern families were vandalised or destroyed by Americans who took the news very personally. Can you imagine the impact that facts even bigger than those would have on people, esepcially people with less than stable minds? 

I don't want to be in the dark about things, but I will voluntarily stay in the dark if it means that people's lives are saved. Who's to say that information that might be released (or already has) will not endanger lives here and abroad? Can the release of information justify even one death in retaliation? WL isn't just releasing information on America, they're threatening release of info on countless other countries too - what might be the global impact of retaliation when some of this info is put into the wild? Civil Wars might be started. Governments might be overthrown. People might be assissinated. All because of information. It's already been proven that information released by WL previously contained the names of civilians in Afghanistan who have helped NATO forces with information. Don't think for a second that those people aren't already on a Taliban hit list. I'm not even saying that all the reprocussions of this release would be bad - people may retaliate against evil or injustice, but the scale on which these things might happen are so great, that the danger of a massive information dump is just too great of a risk.

Assange (cheif editor of WL) obviously views himself as a celebrity. He wants attention and popularity. But who is he to determine what information is dangerous and what isn't? He's playing God in a game of bribary and blackmail. Similar to a Hollywood celeb who speaks out on issues they have no idea about, Assange goes around making threats without having any kind of qualification that he's capable of handling this information. The man isn't a hero. He's not icon for free-thinkers to support - he's a dangerous threat to international security and he needs to be stopped. WL has done some good in the past - shedding light on abuses, murders and frauds, but this time its gone WAY too far.

No, I haven't drunk the Kool-aid. I have always been against big government and preached personal freedom. I know our government does things behind closed doors that would appaul us, but I simply refuse to believe that by dumping potentially dangerous information into the hands of billions of people worldwide that you're going to achieve accountability. You're going to achieve chaos, without the slightest idea of what that will look like.

Wikileaks can't be stopped. It's servers have been mirrored thousands of times and even if its servers are shut down, it will never die. It might even be too late to stop an information dump, but this fool, Assange, needs to be dealt with. And not by any single government. A coalition of countries needs to handle it. It won't control the initial damage, but it will cause people who think they can blackmail world governments to think twice before they handle information they aren't capable of handling.