The poor consolation of being right

While the WikiLeaks revelations are unequivocally horrible for American and world interests, there is some validation in what we’ve seen so far. There is no Jewish conspiracy trying to push America into a war with Iran, as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt had unsuccessfully been arguing for years. Instead there are a broad range of nations, interests and actors urging American and Israeli action against Iran, each out of their own self-interest. It turns out that self-interest is a far more important motivating factor than any possible ramifications from the Israeli-Arab conflict.

As for us, it’s finally nice to hear someone who is not Jewish call Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “Hitler.” (The same goes for Saui King Abdullah’s equally delightful comment that America “should cut off the head of the snake” when it comes to dealing with Iran.)

But with all that being said, being right is a pithy consolation, especially as it comes right before a world war. The cables’ publication was like waking up from a bad dream to find out the reality is much worse. It seems that we are going to war and that it is only a question of time.

Possibility of a diplomatic resolution was slim to begin with, and has been utterly eradicated by WikiLeaks, as James Rubin succinctly states in The New Republic.

“The essential tool of State Department diplomacy is trust between American officials and their foreign counterparts,” Rubin wrote. “Unlike the Pentagon, which has military forces, or the Treasury Department, which has financial tools, the State Department functions mainly by winning the trust of foreign officials, sharing information and persuading. Those discussions have to be confidential to be successful. Destroying confidentiality means destroying diplomacy.”

The publication has also given us a clearer picture of who Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, is: a man who is so concerned with exposing what he perceives to be secrets that he is willing to risk thousands of lives. A single-minded fanatic, who will pursue an ideal no matter what the cost. The end is never pretty for people like Assange.

In a sense, Assange has followed the tactics of the Human Rights Watch playbook; he attacked the only country that he knew wouldn’t do something incredibly horrible to him. How long would a whistleblower like Assange survive in China or Russia? Russia executed a former spy who escaped to Britain with a radiated tea pot.

We assume that in some way, Assange believed that by revealing the documents he would do some good for the world; that by exposing secrets he would create a place where secrets would not be needed. But he has accomplished the opposite. He has created a world where secrets will be better kept and policies more obscured. In some way, Assange believed that he could silence the drumbeats of war. He hasn’t. He’s added his very own cymbal.