WikiLeaks and Its Negative Effects on America’s Role

If the British authorities arrested WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in London as he prepared for travel to Sweden, then the releases of his notorious website will continue to have severe, damaging effects on the American role in the world, especially in the Middle East. On this website, millions of documents exposed the U.S. spying on the Arab world through its diplomats and journalists, as well as correct and incorrect reports on this region, which aims to further the interests of America and its supporters in their unjust and intolerant policies. Numerous Arab politicians have already refuted them, on account of them not being official agreements.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has announced since WikiLeaks began to publish these diplomatic reports that they are harmful to American troops stationed on four continents, and he has called on Interpol to pursue Assange, the website’s founder, and to keep him from exposing more secrets of these communications after he published a cable exposing vital American positions. In the opinion of American officials, this publication is equivalent to arming terrorists. In order to demonstrate what these positions may be, American officials say the cables that were published include ongoing negotiations throughout the world, communications with countries in Europe regarding the establishment of new American military bases, recruitment of spies to chase al-Qaeda, current action against Iran and the position on Iraq, as summed up by more than 400,000 documents, as well as around 70,000 documents about Afghanistan.

The United States did come forward when it heard that there was a release of documents originally amounting to 500,000, pertaining to projects from 2003 to 2010. The Department of Defense began to warn against publishing these documents, because they were considered a threat to the lives of American civilians and troops equally — and this is before they knew any of the content. This wave of releases launched a new tsunami, because in a diplomatic and intellectual way, it did not spare any Arab or international capitals, because the American spies and diplomats who play a prominent role in the Arab world convey an image different from the truth, as well as increasing their presence in the region in these reports. Prince Turki al-Faisal, a prominent Saudi royal, recently invited before the Manama Dialogue organized by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, demanded the implementation of the greatest punishments against the owner of this website, indicative of how the Internet has become a cause of increasing concern on the international stage.

It may be said that the United States may be behind these releases in order to conduct some sort of test to measure the knowledge of Arab and foreign officials of current Arab and international issues. These releases, which were published by the website WikiLeaks, displayed the undiluted content of countries’ secrets, because the unveiling of these secret issues aim to damage some countries with directed propaganda. It probably aimed to confuse Arab and Muslim politicians when one of these documents from the American ambassador in Turkey in 2004 said, “We have heard from two contacts that Erdogan has eight accounts in Swiss banks; his explanations that his wealth comes from the wedding presents guests gave his son and that a Turkish businessman is paying the educational expenses of all four Erdogan children in the U.S. purely altruistically are lame.” These releases, which Erdogan has denied, are an American action intended to disparage the character and position of this Turkish Islamic leader who is able to contend with Israel and America through various circles, calling to erect a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital and the withdrawal of Israel from occupied Arab lands. These American releases represent Washington’s plot aiming to improve its image at every level after it reached rock bottom recently, especially after it failed to convince Israel to freeze its settlement building for three months to hold direct negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis.

Assange, a 39-year-old Australian activist notorious in the computer world and a former Internet pirate, could certainly publish these numerous documents, which American conservatives claim are a waste of blood, portraying him as an evil person opposed to authority, the administration and international stability. Despite persistent condemnation, Assange is not yielding to the moral obligation compelling him to protect the interests of the United States or of its allies engaged in its wars. There are demands to punish the owner of this website, who was arrested in London, to gag the responsible mouth. Among those demanding this is his president, on the grounds that he is a danger to global peace, who threatens American lives all over Iraq, Afghanistan and the rest of the world. He claims that the United States assumes each of these wars for the sake of the common good and to serve the entire world. Perhaps Assange considers himself a danger and a threat to diplomacy and an influence on American diplomacy. This is far from the truth, because the degree of cooperation has been accumulating between countries throughout the last centuries. These relations cannot be completely ruined by a few thousands or millions of documents from these releases, which expose the habits of the great countries after some 25 of their release. It is what was also contained in books of Arab and foreign presidents, especially in the new book by former U.S. President Bush, which describes several meetings with Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak regarding the Iraq War and biological weapons. The book claims that, throughout these meetings, the Egyptian president told him that Iraq possessed biological weapons. One must put an end to this, which the Egyptian presidency has denied saying altogether.

If these documents are released, authorities in the American army are worried about leaker Bradley Manning, since he supplied the website with documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, because there are Americans who loathe the American policy to engage in wars abroad as they contribute to the deterioration of the American economy to a great extent.

This website, which is considered the most dangerous in the world from the American point of view, has caused rifts among the American elite and various politicians with regard to the wars and the threat of launching wars like these in a number of countries, because it indicates the future American point of view, even if in the form of analysis, to lift the veil off American plans for the sake of expanding, controlling and striking some Arab or Islamic nationalist attentions. However, WikiLeaks did not resort to selling or trading large secret banks of information to those capable of paying immense riches for the sake of receiving wealth being equal to other thievery, but rather disclosed the secrets in a manner that does not seek to gain profit, as Suliram Kashulia, head representative of the Jindal Library for International Issues in Sunyan, India, said in an open forum. Thus, he raised the levels of society’s questioning of its foundations. The raised levels of social questioning of government institutions makes Assange a man entitled to protection, and not legal prosecution.