Everyone has an opinion. And whether or not the opinion is true is not necessarily the most significant factor. The most important issue with an opinion is how well it can be disseminated into the general public. Moreover, another important aspect of an opinion is how well it can change the public’s mind. It can be especially damaging if it were to be false, persuading, and reach into the majority of the public. This is such the case, more so today than any other time in history. The world, brought so close through technology, has become an intimate place in which to live. Someone from the United States could very much get to know someone in Germany without moving away from their keyboard or cell phone. Like many of the advances within the world, not only can it be used for a positive impact on the general public, it can also be used for attack. At the stroke of the keyboard, sensitive information can be sent to a community of people within milliseconds. This is the method used by cellular and cyber-bullies as well as others who wish to do damage to larger entities like corporations and governments. After the actions of some dissenters of the United States government, it became blatantly clear that many of the citizens within the United States do not know what national security is exactly and the steps necessary to secure the future of the largest, most powerful country in the world. It seems that there is confusion with what information indicates foul play and should be publicized, and which information necessarily needs to be classified. Most importantly, this culture which calls for government transparency is manufacturing a false sense of justice for the curious by counterfeiting value in the publicizing of sensitive information.
A country’s goal in national security policy is the securitization of those assets, at home and abroad, which guarantee the country’s longevity and are essential for that nation to attain those goals set by its people. It is not necessarily an easy task securing resources vital to the operation of a country. And often there are disputes – sometimes violent – over who gets what. There are also agreements between two parties which lead a country to acquire resources non-violently. Obtaining resources both violently and non-violently is dependent upon information. The more informed the government is the better chance they have at controlling that resource. This information does not just appear out of nowhere, nor does it come served on a silver platter. It is provided by those people who lay their life on the line, to gather information in a foreign land that is, more often than not, unfamiliar to those working in it. Although dangerous, this is often the case. The informants pepper the urban landscape. Some are recruited in-country, some brought to the country, but all are spies. These people are often funded with money not traceable to one certain government, person, or company. But this is not unknown. As a matter of fact, this is something for which Japan is often noted. Their equivalent of information gathering agencies, like the CIA and NSA, are those businesses within their country. In addition to the U.S. government’s use of private businesses as informants, they also have governmental agencies in other countries. Recruiting of informants for the goings on within the country happens with both businesses and governmental agencies in the U.S. Although the government agencies are accounted for in the U.S. budget, the businesses which work with the agencies within each respectful country are not. This is an advantage for the U.S. because it can enter a country by funding an opposition under the radar. It is often done this way; it is not anything unavailable to the general public.
It should be obvious that the funneling of money to a coup that is set the overthrow or disrupt any foreign country is illegal, regardless if it is done through businesses or by any other means. It is this very scenario which is the foundation of the United States’ national security policy. Because of the means by which the government operates to implement and develop its national security policy, there are often many questions which arise concerning the morality of the U.S.’s operations. Much of the public curiosity originates from the knowing of operations the U.S. was associated with in the past. The causes for dissent lay in not knowing the correct context in which to view the operations. This goes for past and present operations. Dissenting without considering the context of the situation often leads to a mistaken view of the actual intent of the U.S. government’s actions. And although the context can vary from situation to situation, there are certain situations that necessarily call for the publication of governmental operations.
First and foremost, any actions which violate the constitutional rights of any U.S. citizen in a domestic or foreign land, regardless if it is something necessary to keep the masses safe, should be publicized. It is better to ask for forgiveness than for permission – especially when those you are protecting are unaware of the gravity of the situation. One of the most publicized programs of this sort is “Program MKULTRA.” This program was funded by the U.S. and sought to use U.S. and Canadian citizens to study the effect of many extreme measures (LSD, Isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, etc…) on the human psyche. Another program, the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, was a study on the natural progression of syphilis in the human body. This was preformed on impoverished African-American sharecroppers which were United States citizens. But violent acts upon United States citizens is not necessarily the only carte-blanche situation that calls for the immediate publication of government covert actions.
There is a fine line between a major case of human right’s abuses and genocide. The latter obligates the U.S. to intervene, the former does not. Any connection of the state to genocide – or “the G-word” as it is known in the State Department, is a crime against humanity itself and any covert or overt programs are difficult to justify, even as an act of national security. Moreover, a military or violent action against an entire culture of people, justifying it by national security, is considered immoral on many different levels as well as an international crime against humanity. The repulsiveness of these actions is usually dumbed-down through euphemisms. For example, in the Rwandan revolution between the Hutu and the Tutsi, the genocide of the Tutsi people was referred to as “bush clearing.” By referring to the genocide as bush clearing, the seriousness of the acts of murder and rape calmed the public’s perception of the magnitude of the mayhem going on right under their nose. This is a tactic often used by the Nazi’s in the holocaust, communism in Russia, China, and Cambodia and the Socialist Slobodan Milošević in Yugoslavia. Therefore, because violations of international crimes against humanity – domestic or foreign – ultimately endanger the criminally acting nation’s civilians and the receiving nation’s civilians, the actions of the state that is violating international law should be publically known. The problem with human right’s abuse being separated from genocide is one that can only be determined with a definition of both terms. Most interestingly, the United States government, to the best of my knowledge, has failed to define either. It is not surprising though, because if there were explicit definitions of the two, it would then obligate the U.S. to intervene in all future escalations – and that is a difficult and demanding responsibility.
So far, the justification for publicizing confidential government documents has been limited to the disclosure of violent acts against citizens of the United States for national security and violence against a specific culture or race because they are a part of the culture or race – regardless if they are in a foreign or domestic setting. The final point which may justify publicizing confidential government documents is simply any actions a country takes which evoke fear or terror within other people or countries, but more specifically, those actions are being executed without the justification of national security. And those acts employing a counterstrike should be supported by sufficient evidence, intelligence and information. Moreover, the intelligence and information is the most important part of these counterstrikes because they hold the keys to the knowledge needed to accurately and successfully defend the country and attack the enemy. But the most important issue does not end with the obtaining the information, it must be conveyed in a way that is unknown to the enemy. And regardless of the efforts of the Ambassadors for the U.S., a breech in the confidentiality of the method information is sent to the White House proves disastrous to any foreign relationship, regardless of how strong the relationship was when the line of communication was perceived as secure. Therefore, any information disclosed to the general public at the expense of national security, should, in fact, be seen as an attack, not only on the confidentiality of our information, but more seriously, as an attack on the United States itself. And because the information available to a sphere of people unfamiliar with the context of the confidential material - including those in the host country - it should, more importantly, be seen as a lingering threat needing to be taken out, immediately.
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