[jawn]

Who is really culpable for the release of these names?

Here's an excerpt from an interview with Assange...

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2010/s2968342.htm

TONY JONES: Well, not according to the Pentagon. They're accusing you of revealing the identities of Afghan informants and putting their lives at risk. Afghan's president, Karzai, agrees with that he says 'the breach is extremely irresponsible and shocking.' Your response to those comments.

JULIAN ASSANGE: Well we have yet to see clear evidence of that. I mean the London Times is also making this allegation today and in a quite disingenuous way, for example they mention some informers' names they say they had found and with a headline Afghan informer already dead, but when you actually read the story what you see is in fact that individual that they're mentioning died two years ago.

So there's a little bit of media manipulation occurring here. In terms of the Afghan government, it's in their interests to sort of play up the irresponsible, irresponsibility of the United States that they say has been involved in sort of collecting and permitting this data to release, be released.

Now we contacted the White House as a group before we released this material and asked them to help assist in going through it to make sure that no innocent names came out, and the White House did not accept that request.

TONY JONES: So you're saying that you offered the White House a chance to go through the documents, or officials from the White House a chance to go through the documents and single out names of people at risk. Is that correct?

JULIAN ASSANGE: Yeah that's right. Now, of course we did not offer them a chance to veto any material, but rather we told them that we were going through a harm minimisation process and offered them the chance to point out names of informers or other innocents who might be harmed and they did not respond to that request which was mediated through the New York Times who was our, acting as the contact for the four media groups involved in this.

[elblanco]

"Who is really culpable for the release of these names?"

The person who released the information.

[jawn]

It's not that cut and dry though, the white house had an opportunity to minimize the damage and did nothing about it.

[rbanffy]

Even if they didn't want to cooperate with Wikileaks by singling out names (that would give WL the extra bit of info on the importance of each name), they knew for sure who should be removed from the field. If their handlers did nothing to protect their field agents, it's not completely WL's fault they get killed.

[DanielBMarkham]

elbanco I have no idea why, when I read your comment, you're at -2.

I don't read a lot of HN lately, but this is the most irrational thread I have seen on HN for a long, long time. Quite frankly it makes me sad.

I'm not going to wave my hands around and say we're turning into reddit.

I don't see the need.

[elblanco]

I think what I'm most troubled by is two things,

1) The level of false amnesia regarding all things Taliban, Afghanistan and Al Qaeda. There are some very not nice people there that would kill rape and murder every single person on the planet until they could convert the survivors to their particular brand of Islam. This is not a fantasy, this is their stated intent and has been demonstrated throughout the world for at least the last 10 years through a policy of terror attacks against soft targets from subways to nightclubs that have killed thousands of civilians. Anybody who pretends otherwise is a moron. I'm sorry to go to name calling, but I simply cannot have a productive debate with anybody too stupid to understand this.

2) The same idiots who think that our collective response should be...? What exactly? Whatever it is it certainly shouldn't be a military response followed by nation building.

The number of people here, right here, on Hacker News of all places, who obviously have commanded military and intelligence operations against non-uniformed combatants blended in to the local populace (and by the comments we have quite a few 3 and 4 star super generals with decades of counter insurgent operations experience), who know exactly the capabilities and limitations of not only the modern armed forces of industrialized nations, but all of the intelligence capabilities of the target countries. This is not a board about startups, the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies should come on here and discuss serious strategy, this place is a gold mine! Imagine, all these experts, on one board, and all they want to do is startup tech business and make iPhone apps! Amazing.

By the number of these self-same experts, my reading of their comments is that apparently the response to a global terror campaign is supposed to be a petition and letter campaign, sent to the Taliban HQ and 12345 Terror Lane, Springfield, Afghanistan, asking them to please kindly reconsider a policy of killing the infidel in foreign lands as part of a plan to establish a global Caliphate. Apparently this kind of thing is not only possible, but works! With the vast historic precedent put forth by all the experts here, it's amazing how misguided NATO is with their silly sniper teams and drones. Silly NATO!

Anybody who wants to talk about how Iraq was a stupid war and diverted resources from the real problems will find my agreement. Likewise if you want to talk about how the Afghan war was mismanaged, underfunded and stupidly run by incompetent bureaucrats for the better part of a decade.

But the response to the wikileaks leak should not be "OMG You mean when we conduct counter-terror operations with the combined might of NATO forces civilians might die! Holy crap, I didn't sign on for that! Let's pull the hell out and resume being terror targets because that was so much better!"

[jawn]

At what point do the unnecessary deaths caused by war outweigh the unnecessary deaths caused by terrorism?

[elblanco]

So your counter response is that we should all have just sat back and been killed like sheep to the slaughter? I mean that as a serious question, because there's lots of "let's pull out!" going on here but no alternative courses of action being put forth that don't involve me becoming a terror target.

[plinkplonk]

"but no alternative courses of action being put forth that don't involve me becoming a terror target."

The United States (along with other European countries including Russia and other non Islamic countries like India) is a terror target irrespective of what it does in Afghanistan. If you are an American, you are (in the abstract) a terror target already and have been for a long long time. The odds of you specifically dying in a terrorist attack are (and always were) very slim.

No amount of destruction in Afghanistan will change that. Americans will die in future terror attacks whether you pull out of Afghanistan or not.

And no you don't have to have a "solution" before you say "This is not working". By that logic civilians could never decide to end a war. That is hardly democracy. There was no "solution" to Vietnam when America quit. That happened because American civilians made a decision they didn't want to keep paying in blood and treasure to "win" a faraway quagmire of a war.

"Pull out" is just as valid a suggestion as "stay on". You'd still be fighting in Vietnam if "stay and fight till victory" were the only choice to end a foolish war. A suggestion has to be opposed with reason, not rhetoric like "But ... But .. that will make us terror targets" and "Our generals surely know what they are doing (if American history is any indication this is a very dubious claim)" or "You aren't a general How would you know?"

The 9/11 attackers were Saudi but you guys went to war with Iraq. The present day epicentre of Islamic terror is Pakistan/Saudi Arabia but you guys are fighting in Afghanistan, all the while funding the Pakistanis who fund the Taliban. Wtf? A war in which you fund the people trying to kill your soldiers, and your ally's intelligence services train and provide safe havens for your enemies is not winnable.

The next Islamic terrorist attack could come from Somalia or Yemen or the United Kingdom or the Balkans or Saudi Arabia, or Iran or Indonesia or Turkey or Egypt.

Are you going to war with all of them (and stay a few decades in every ungoverned badland on the planet)? If not why do you want to stay in Afghanistan? What is the plan for "victory"? And how is "victory" defined anyway?

I (personally) want America to win (I am in general very pro American and I take some flak for it locally) but "stay on till the Taliban is no threat" is an impossible goal for victory. You don't have enough money (trillions more), or the time it would take (many decades) or the fortitude to absorb the required casualties (tens ofthousands ), to have even a low chance of success.

[protomyth]

When making comments like this, I get the feeling you haven't studied what was happening around the world in the late 1920's and 30's. The USA's desire to isolate itself had consequences.