WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is a courageous man.

Some might say he is troublemaking or foolish. Since he released earlier caches of U.S. military documents on Afghanistan and Iraq, he’s had to go underground for fear of reprisals. He regularly alters his appearance and camps out on friends’ sofas. Nobody knows for sure where he is now but there’s a suspicion that he’s traveling around the UK.
With the release of American diplomatic cables on Sunday evening, published by newspapers in the U.S., Britain, France, Germany and Spain, Assange has “target’ written on his back. Once again, Washington shies away from explaining itself in favor of shooting the messenger when the blame should go to those responsible for U.S. national security. If America has failed to guard its own secrets, it deserves to be embarrassed.
Assange’s website and Twitter page has come under attack, U.S. lawyers are attempting to take him to court as a spy, Peter King, a New York Republican Congressman wants WikiLeaks to be designated “a terrorist organization” that will open the door to assassination squads, and the Swedish appeals court has upheld an arrest warrant accusing Assange of rape that has been forwarded to Interpol.
But however the powers that be decide to punish Assange, the grim truth is out there and may irreparably damage State Department diplomacy for the foreseeable future.
Thus far, comparatively few of the 251,287 leaked U.S. Embassy cables, dating from 1966 until the end of February 2010, have been put into the public domain; the rest are to be published in stages over the coming months, leaving the State Department on tenterhooks. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has begun a tour of the Persian Gulf and Asia during which she will, no doubt, have much red-faced explaining to do.
President Barack Obama has yet to address the leaks, preferring to spend time on the basketball court...and who can blame him! Usual diplomatic damage control isn’t helpful when world leaders now know exactly what the U.S. government really thinks about them. The macho Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin might be flattered to be known as an “Alpha Dog” but President Dmitry Medvedev will be furious at being characterized as a “pale and hesitant” person who “plays Robin to Putin’s Batman”.
Other leaders whose feathers have been ruffled include the French President Nicolas Sarkozy, “an emperor with no clothes, with a thin-skinned and authoritarian personal style”, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel who “avoids risk and is rarely creative”, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi labeled “feckless and vain”, the Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi thought of as “strange”, the Afghan President Hamid Karzai described as “paranoid” and the North Korean leader Kim-Jong-Il who was called “a flabby old chap”.
It can’t have made comfortable reading for world leaders and UN delegates to learn that U.S. diplomats have been instructed by Hillary Clinton to garner their personal credit card and frequent flier numbers, iris scans, fingerprints, work schedules, e-mail addresses, fax numbers, passwords and encryption keys. This secret “National Human Intelligence Collection Directive” was sent by the State Department to its embassies all over the world.” U.S. ambassadors can now expect to be monitored during official visits to heads of state to ensure they don’t walk away with the drinks glasses or access computers.
Aside from the hurtful rude remarks and invasions of privacy, which thicker-skinned leaders may be able to brush aside, the cables contain extremely serious revelations.
We have also learned that the U.S. has tried to bribe small countries such as Belgium to take-in Guantanamo detainees using such carrots as an official visit from Barack Obama and that Germany was pressured not to prosecute CIA operatives who abducted Khaled Al-Masri, an innocent German car salesman, for rendition to a secret prison at Bagram air base in Afghanistan where he was tortured.
One question yet to be answered is whether the U.S. can ever be trusted again. Will the leaks cause a major rift between the superpower and the rest of the world or will most countries try to play the controversy down? All that we know for sure is this: With a lot more secrets bursting to get out of the box, Obama and his administration are in for the rollercoaster ride of their lives.
(Source: Arab News)
Photo: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange speaks at a news conference at the Frontline Club in central London, July 26, 2010. (Reuters phtoto)