Admiral Mullen says Julian Assange has “blood on his hands”. The controversy within the controversy seems to be an argument that Wikileaks administrators should have taken it on themselves to redact the names of those Afghans who supported or assisted the US or NATO operationally. I don’t know, maybe, but I’m struck by two very serious problems with this line of reasoning.

First, I wonder how extensive the questions about Wikileaks credibility as an organization would have been when it came to light that the Wikileaks staff themselves were responsible for withholding information within the leaked documents. Oh, it’s painless now to say they would have lost no credibility if all they did was redact the names, and make it clear that’s what they were doing. But I think you get into a real slippery question when, as the facilitator of leaked material, you take on the role of editing or modifying the documents you are releasing. We’ll never know, but the entire process might have been called into question, and for an organization like Wikileaks, your credibility is your stock in trade, and you need to think twice before you start changing, editing, redacting or selectively withholding leaked documents. The narrative from the big media outlets like the New York Times might have looked entirely different in that case.

Second, I understand the concern for the lives of the Afghan people who’s names are in the documents. But I am more than a little appalled at the crocodile tears of the US Military over those lives. These people have been reprehensibly cavalier about the lives of THOUSANDS of Afghan civilians that have been taken or ruined in American and NATO military operations. Issue a perfunctory, bureaucratic ‘apology’, pay some compensation and mount up and move out. If you want to care about civilian deaths, that’s great, but care about all of them, all the time, not just when it serves your propaganda purposes.

It does seem a little precious to accept comfortably that in a war you’re going to have a certain amount of so-called “collateral damage” and even so, if someone exposes some truths about the way that war is being prosecuted and that exposure adds some additional death and suffering to the total, then it’s the EXPOSURE of the facts, and not the war itself that is somehow evil. If there’s an active shooting war, then anything and EVERYTHING you do can and often will result in civilian deaths and the destruction of property. Going to work, gathering firewood, getting married, asking for compensation, accepting compensation, refusing compensation – it’s a war. The same people who are offended by Assange’s willingness to accept that his actions might cause some death and suffering are often quite cavalier about other actions that cause the same kind of suffering. You’ll forgive me if I am skeptical of their motivations.

Now you can say that, if the credibility challenge and the blood on your hands challenge are equal, you should err in favor of less blood and less credibility. And I’m pretty sure I come down in that camp. But to assume there’s some way to run an outfit like Wikileaks and NOT have to figure out how to walk this convoluted path is just cheating. And yeah, you’re going to sound like a heartless dick sometimes. Just like NATO PR….