Barry Crimmins

A Google search of the term "Wilkileaks' intended target" spits back "American power" as its top result. Part of that power, the media, is now participating in a redacted passion play over the thorny moral issues that could tear through the delicate epidermis of American leaders, diplomats and other multi-mugged operatives should the USA's enemies and/or allies suddenly learn what this nation has been doing to them. 

Just one problem -- they already know.

During the late days of US military involvement in Southeast Asia, Garry Trudeau penned a classic Doonesbury strip about Richard Nixon's "secret bombing" of Cambodia. A younger Cambodian asks an elderly couple if the destruction they stand amid was the result of the "secret bombings." The old man says, "Secret Bombings? There wasn't any secret about them. EVERYONE here knew." 

Such is the case with the information streaming from Wikileaks. I'll limit this piece to the two wars the US is actively and openly involved in. Despite the fact that some nasty locals got their comeuppance when the US arrived, the people in Afghanistan and Iraq won't overlook what US military muscle has done to them over lo, these too many years. They know about torture, massacres, unjust detention, and the literally inhuman damage inflicted by drones. They know the supposed democracies America has propped up in their respective countries are hollow and embarrassingly corrupt shams. They live with the devastating consequences of these abominations so they cannot help but know.

Further, diplomats and leaders from the rest of the world know of the duplicitous dialogues that take place as the road to war is paved with unspoken and unholy intentions.

None of these folks need Julian Assange or PFC Bradley Manning or Wikileaks to tell them what's going on. But the American people do.

During nearly a decade of being embed with the US military and, in turn, US foreign policy, the domestic media has taken its duty to inform the electorate and exchanged it for cheap smokes at the commissary and a lifetime pass to the officers' club.

The grisly realities of the past decade have been obscured behind images of fluttering flags and inspirational stories of soldiers learning to live again despite having been emotionally and/or physically maimed in needless war. With our own people pressed into service as mascots for a criminally suspect foreign policy, it's difficult not to opt for unquestioning compliance.

But our silence is beyond expensive.

Thousands of American soldiers have died in places they might  have never been had the citizenry been allowed to fairly weigh the facts. Unfortunately, such enlightenment wouldn't suit the usurpers of American power. It wouldn't be good for those who export and profit from agony and use other peoples children, spouses and parents to deliver the awful goods.

The cynics who own and operate this racket deify the pawns whose boots are on the blood-soaked ground of other peoples' countries. They tell us to thank them for fighting for our freedom while expecting us to smile and wave the flag as we choose between radiation and molestation at the airport.

Everyone gets so spun around by this flimflam that we can't even manage to ask the simplest and most obvious of questions. Queries such as: why would I leave something as precious as my freedom lying around in Iraq or Afghanistan? A sane person would no more do that than store milk on a windowsill in July.

The cynics who set hokum-baited nationalistic traps real slogan is "Support our dupes." Sadly that's what our troops are to them. When orders come from on high, soldiers have to witness and participate in the unspeakable. Then they're expected return home, play nice and smile while they are christened as heroes. A combination of survivor guilt and regular old guilt, complicated by post traumatic stress disorder, causes many of these young people to feel anything but heroic. No wonder so many of them don't dispute redeployment after redeployment. They must figure the hell they escaped overseas holds more hope of redemption than the hell they returned to at home.

Standard issue military hogwash is a lot easier to live with than a bunch of phonies calling you a hero unless, that is, you help do something truly heroic, like shine a light on the back channel pathways to needless war. Illuminate that darkness and you'll  soon learn, as PFC Manning and Mr. Assange already have, that America isn't afraid of high-speed railroads.

It's indisputable that Wikileaks is guilty of targeting American power or what should be American power, anyway. The so-called enemy Wikileaks' information is meant to reach is none other than we the people. When we study what's being revealed rather than get mislead into joining a lynch mob, hell-bent on stringing up those who would enlighten us, we'll do our duty as an informed electorate and demand an end to our nation's suicidal dependency on foreign wars.