I am not interested in litigating the virtues of Wikileaks. Perhaps you & I can come to some limited agreement that there clearly are secrets held by the US military that should be disclosed, and that the citizens of the US deserve better oversight over the conduct of our armed conflicts. We probably agree broadly that our conflicts should be radically curtailed as well.
With all that said:
I am simply saying that the military has an extremely valid operational reason for drastically cracking down on servicemembers communicating with organizations like (and including) Wikileaks. The military cannot reasonably leave it up to random servicemembers to determine whether, what, and how things should be leaked. It employes over 1.2 million people.
What I'm arguing --- and I don't assume you agree, but here's my argument --- is that the alternative policy of saying "by all means it is just fine for servicemembers to collaborate with Wikileaks so long as that collaboration doesn't violate any of our other regulations" is so clearly fraught as to be unreasonable.
This article is about government harassment of a cyber systems analyst who dared to "express support for Wikileaks" and attended a pro-Wikileaks demonstration. What is wrong with that?
Pretending people are upset about the existence of classification system is silly. The question is why an organization devoted to promoting government transparency and engaged in supposedly-protected free speech is getting officially classified using language which is used to justify (illegal and criminal) warrantless detention, torture and extra-judicial assassination.
It is entirely possible that the US military could restrict service members from subscribing to the New York Times or the Washington Post, but I don't see Bob Woodward or Tom Friedman getting described as an enemy of the American Republic.
There is nothing wrong with attending pro-Wikileaks demonstrations as far as I can tell, and to the extent that the Air Force is trying to criminalize advocacy on behalf of Wikileaks, I strongly agree that they're irredeemably in the wrong.
With all that said:
I am simply saying that the military has an extremely valid operational reason for drastically cracking down on servicemembers communicating with organizations like (and including) Wikileaks. The military cannot reasonably leave it up to random servicemembers to determine whether, what, and how things should be leaked. It employes over 1.2 million people.
What I'm arguing --- and I don't assume you agree, but here's my argument --- is that the alternative policy of saying "by all means it is just fine for servicemembers to collaborate with Wikileaks so long as that collaboration doesn't violate any of our other regulations" is so clearly fraught as to be unreasonable.