Then maybe you shouldn't (repeatedly, incessantly, decade after decade) engage so shamelessly with forces of corruption and darkness such it that inspires people to take great personal risk to expose that information.
This has nothing to do with corruption. People talk even without getting paid. Not everyone realizes what they're saying is important or will become important in the future. Most of the time it's just background information.
Also, there's not necessarily an element of "great personal risk". It may just be social or embarrassment or minor damage to a career. If some flunky at a Peruvian consulate has a bit too much to drink and says his boss is an asshole, it gets written down and goes into a file somewhere. When people see that on the internet they think "Man, I really need to watch what I say to the Americans."
Everybody knows what you say to a diplomat from any country is going to get written down. But there's always been a tacit agreement that not everything gets shared with the world.
And I think you're mostly jumping at shadows here. Diplomacy is a lot less interesting and less nefarious than you seem to believe.
Diplomacy is a lot less interesting and less nefarious than you seem to believe.
About 95% of it, yes. But if the other 5% were so profoundly uninteresting then people wouldn't be talking about how "embarrassing" and "damaging" it was to have it released.
This is a business about people. You can have information that's not "embarrassing" or "damaging" to the US that's both embarrassing and damaging to individuals in other countries.
Again, there's a practical side here. As I asked in another post, just how much would you share with a friend or family member that was going to immediately run to publish what you said in a Facebook post? Because that's essentially what Manning did.
No, that's not what she did. She gave the archive to a third party (Assange) who turned out to be unreliable. But that's not "the same" -- or even "essentially" the same -- as just outright posting it on Facebook.
Can we just end the discussion there, please? I'm not saying this issue is cut-and-dried, or that there's no validity in your arguments. But if we keep going back and forth about the basic event chronology, then there's really not much a of a point.
>No, that's not what she did. She gave the archive to a third party (Assange) who turned out to be unreliable. But that's not "the same" -- or even "essentially" the same -- as just outright posting it on Facebook.
Yes it is. Once it's there on the internet, people are linking to it, and it's a topic of discussion, anything that gets you into any kind of trouble is out there for people to see.
>Can we just end the discussion there, please? I'm not saying this issue is cut-and-dried, or that there's no validity in your arguments. But if we keep going back and forth about the basic event chronology, then there's really not much a of a point.
If you're really intent on ending a conversation, try not attempting to slip in the last word.
Diplomats need to engage with other countries, no matter how they're run. They also need to be able to talk clearly with one another about what they think things are like without it getting dumped all over the internet.
