Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of our military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, made a tragic but almost certainly accurate observation about the release by “WikiLeaks” of secret U.S. documents.
The documents include the names of citizens of Afghanistan who have provided vital assistance to our military in its fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban, the cruel, radical Muslim regime that harbored 9/11 terrorist Osama bin Laden.
The Taliban are known for meting out savage punishments for even minor offenses. So it is reasonable to assume that once they know the identities of the men and women who have courageously helped our military, those Afghans’ lives will be in great peril.
Mullen condemned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
“Mr. Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing, but the truth is they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family,” Mullen said at a news conference.
But that is only the beginning of the tragedy. The release of the secret documents identifying those who helped the United States almost guarantees that our country will have difficulty in the future getting others in Afghanistan or any foreign nation to “tip us off” as to the whereabouts of our enemies or plans for attacks on the United States and U.S. interests. They simply will not dare provide that information for fear that their names, too, will be revealed and they and their families may be killed.
That lack of information, in turn, puts our soldiers at even greater risk than they already face in trouble spots around the world.
Assange flatters himself as a hero of open, transparent government. Some government transparency is valuable, but there are legitimate reasons why some things should be kept secret. Revealing that information and needlessly endangering lives is not heroism.