Daniel Ellsberg Sees Bradley Manning's Conviction As The BEGINNING OF THE POLICE STATE

[Adrahil]

39. I would agree that we tend to over-classify.

I think there is a tendency to classify information that is merely sensitive. And where the information is embarrassing, it's even more tempting. A good example is civilian casualties.... there is a genuine conflict there. On the one hand, we SHOULD acknowledge when our guys screw up, or even when one goes rogue and deliberately murders civilians. OTOH, the release of that information improperly handled can result to putting our troops in danger. And couple of green on blue incidents have been traced to such things. It's a tightrope, and for my part, one reason why we severely limit our involvement in such conflicts. The military is best used as a hammer. It can accomplish a lot with sudden violence, especially if your problem looks like a nail. But it is not a screwdriver, a tool of more subtlety. One of the main problems we have is that there is too much of a tendency to look at the military as the tool by which anything can be accomplished. After all, we have the best military in the world by far (we had better, for all we pay for it!) Look at Syria, with John McCain practically begging Obama to get engaged militarily. While I'm shocked at Assad's atrocities there, I admire Obama's resistance to get engaged there militarily.

And on to your point. Our tendency to get mired into every conflict at one level or another (Huge Armies, Spec Ops, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) means we have developed a long and deep list enemies.... enemies who understand that to fight us, they have to fight an asymmetrical conflict (read: terrorism). In a world where any terrorist success just HAS to be someone's fault (I'm looking at you, 24 hour news channels), we have become very risk averse. Philosophically, most people would agree that there is some cost and risk to living in a free and open society, but try making that argument after another 9/11 happens. People just won't accept it, having been whipped into a frenzy of paranoia.

I think fighting the rising police state doesn't mean we need more Mannings or Snowdens. Frankly, any outrage they generate will be swept away without a trace in the wake of another spectacular terrorist event. Instead, we must work to undermine the paranoia. Rather than arguing that we don't need such measures to protect ourselves, we need to argue that such events, as spectacular as they are, represent a relatively small risk to us individually, and they are certainly not worth sacrificing every one of our values. We need to emphasize that the President's primary job is NOT to "Keep America Safe," But to protect our liberties.

And oh yeah... we need to restructure our foreign policy to not view every problem as a nail...


Sorry for the Wall of Text.... this is a subject I care deeply about.