"They are my enemy, and I support any use of state force against them, up to and including lethal force. "
....
really? I'm going to try to think of something to say about this that doesn't fall afoul of Godwin's law. It might be a while.
....
really? I'm going to try to think of something to say about this that doesn't fall afoul of Godwin's law. It might be a while.
So Daniel, here's why I think you're wrong.
Firstly, you're justifying this on the basis that what Wikileaks is doing is analogous to war against the US. But it's really only analogous to it, it's not an actual war. Nobody has been killed in this "war" yet, and I really don't see a reason to start.
Secondly, it would set a bad precedent. By all means we can assassinate Osama bin Laden, but if you scale that back to Julian Assange then who else can we justify assassinating? There's all sorts of individuals making weakly-analogous and ineffectual "war" upon the US Government from various extremal points on the political spectrum.
Thirdly, it's unnecessary. Even in an actual war, we prefer to capture rather than to kill unarmed men where possible. If Assange has broken US law then there's a perfectly reasonable set of procedures we can go through in order to put him on trial.
Fourthly, it would just be a public relations disaster for the US, in ways that I don't feel the need to explain.
In conclusion, Daniel, I know you were being hyperbolic with the kill-Assange thing, but I think you'll agree that under careful consideration of the options that it's probably not the best option.
As has been said a million other places, there's way more embarrassing stuff about other gov'ts than there is stuff about the US in these cables.
But all you see the news media talking about is "whether Assange is unamerican".
Cui bono?
Since he's an Australian, it's not much of a question to ask.
But then, you knew what I meant, right? Glad to see that my typo was the most important part of the post.