The poor and oppressed of the world are rising and moving in ever greater numbers.

If there is no hope of their getting opportunity for bettering their lives in their own countries – though they might demand it as now in Egypt – they go where they believe opportunity already exists: to the prosperous Western democracies.

At the same time, the borders of the prosperous Western democracies are becoming ever more porous.

Last year 36,000 migrants walked into the EU through its Western frontier, the Greek-Turkish border, ten times the number who had slipped through in the year before. That’s 90% of all the illegal immigrants entering Europe.

Mark Steyn writes about it. Not for the first time (see his book America Alone on the ominous demographic decline of the indigenous European populations) he draws attention to a trend that will bring about historic change.

The influx has shattered the rhythm of life in one of Greece’s most isolated regions. Farmers in the main, the locals speak of the fear they have felt at suddenly encountering thousands of bedraggled men, women and children from the likes of Afghanistan and Iraq, Algeria and Morocco, India, Palestine, Congo and Somalia.

“It’s been an unbelievable caravan of humanity. I must have seen at least 10,000 of them pass,” said Giorgos Liakides, who runs a little mini-market in Nea Vissa, the first village after the border. “You wake up and find them on your doorstep, and at night when you go to water the fields you find them hiding in the bushes. We understand their plight, we are human as well. But we’re afraid. None of us ever used to lock our doors before; now we worry all the time.”

Mostly economic migrants, those who do get in readily hand themselves over to Greek police, eager to elicit the documents that will allow them to stay for up to 30 days in the EU member state.

In theory, they are meant to be deported after that, but in practice many just blend into the back streets of Athens before attempting to sneak into another European country by train, boat or bus. …

Global population is supposed to peak at about nine billion in 2050, then level off and start to decline. If you’re one of those eco-fetishists who think of humanity as a species, then that nine billion is the number to watch, up from six billion at the turn of the century. But, if you don’t think of the world as one unified global parking lot, you’re less interested in the big number and more in its constituent parts: On the road to that nine billion, almost all the increase in global population will come from Islam and sub-Saharan Africa – ie, “the likes of Afghanistan and Iraq, Algeria and Morocco, [the Muslim minority of] India, Palestine, Congo and Somalia”.

Between 2010 and 2030, the worldwide Muslim community  is predicted to increase from somewhere between a fifth and a quarter of the global population to one third of humanity. … They’ll be “citizens” of countries which have done a cracking job of killing almost all human progress of the modern age. In the first decade of the 21st century, Niger, which is over 90 per cent Muslim, increased its population by almost half – from just over ten million to just over 15 million. In 2000, half a million of its children were estimated to be starving, but hey, that’s no reason not to add a few million more. Its population is predicted to hit just under 100 million by the end of this century – in a country that can’t feed a people one-tenth that size. Is it likely that an extra 90 million people will choose to stay within Niger?

Sub-Saharan Africa will double its population between now and 2030. They’re poor and getting poorer. Excepting South Africa, the Dark Continent’s per capita income averaged $355 in 2004, but is expected to fall by almost 20 per cent to $290 by 2030. … It would be asking an awful lot for untold millions of them to remain in the teeming, disease-ridden shanty megalopolises into which Africa’s population is consolidating – rather than to, say, head for the lusher fields of Giorgos Liakides’ village.

If any citizens of the EU fancy themselves safe from a colossal invasion by destitute hordes from the Third World, they are living in a fool’s paradise.

What’s to stop that vast “caravan of humanity” just walking in and taking it the way Robert Mugabe’s thugs took any Zimbabwean farm that tickled their fancy?

Nothing. Nothing at all.

The hands of Europeans raised in horror will not be seen as a stop signal by the desperate multitudes who have nothing to lose and everything to gain by pressing on to where democratic law and order, freedom, education, and the ideas and work of millions of  individuals have brought prosperity.

The dreadful irony of it is, their coming to share in that prosperity will almost certainly destroy it: not because there is not enough opportunity for millions more to make their contributions in freedom, but because freedom itself, the necessary condition for prosperity, is slipping away.

Freedom depends on law and order. You think you are secure in your own property because you have a title-deed?  What if that title-deed ceases to be recognized as proof of anything? A piece of paper is all it will be.

A ragged army of the wretched comes along your street and some turn and walk into your house and settle in it. What are you going to do?

In most Western European countries it’s already hard to find a police force that would come to your aid.

In America there is an administration in power that is happily defying the law right now.

It could be argued that the weakening of the United States by its present leadership has expedited the chaos spreading through the world.

That clamor we hear in Egypt, that sound of many feet marching towards Athens, are harbingers of what’s coming to all of us. We had better look to our defenses; arm ourselves; and as soon as we can in America, empower a new government which will re-enforce the strongest protector of civilization: the law.

We say in the post below, Hope and change in the Arab world, that the violent revolts could develop into a conflict between a movement for freedom and religious tyranny. We say that if America ignores the dramatic change occurring there, Islamic forces (the militant Iranian Shia regime, the Muslim Brotherhood, Taliban-like al-Qaeda) stand a better chance of winning.

Already the dark Islamic forces are positioning themselves to seize power.

Oliver North writes at Townhall:

What’s most important right now is how the Obama administration handles the increasingly intense cries for greater freedom sweeping from Tunisia to Yemen — threatening every authoritarian Muslim regime in that region save one: Iran’s.

The theocrats in Tehran didn’t foment the “Jasmine Revolution” — the youth-driven popular uprising that forced Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to flee the presidential palace he occupied for 23 years. … But the ayatollahs are capitalizing on the expanding chaos.

Expatriate Iranian opposition figures claim that members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds force have been dispatched to Tunis “to help guide developments.”

Ominous! And worse news follows – if it is true:

Tehran’s government-controlled Fars News Agency has since quoted Jamil bin Alawi, a Tunisian “student activist,” as saying, “The advanced revolutionary and Islamic models like the Hezbollah of Lebanon can provide a bright and promising prospect for Tunisia.”

Jamil bin Alawi sounds to us – as he does to Oliver North, we guess, since he puts the words “student activist” in quotation marks – like a parrot-mouth for the Ayatollahs rather than a spokesman for the Tunisian revolutionaries.

In Egypt — where riot police and the army are confronting angry protesters with tear gas, batons and gunfire — the Iranians may well see another autocratic regime ripe for Islamic revolution. Student-led riots opposing the 30-year reign of President-for-Life Hosni Mubarak erupted Monday in Cairo and quickly spread throughout the country.

Unlike their counterparts in Tunisia and Lebanon, the Egyptian police and army thus far appear loyal to their leader, Mubarak, and the government has all but shut down press access and communications, including many Internet links. …

Now reports are coming out of Egypt that at least some policemen and soldiers are discarding their uniforms and joining the protestors.

The Arab world on both the Asian and the North African sides of the Red Sea, and Iran, and Pakistan, are heating up internally to the point of explosion.

Lebanon

On Wednesday last, January 12, 2010, the rickety “unity government” of Lebanon collapsed when the 10 Hezbollah members (out of 30 members in all) left it.

Why? Hezbollah fears the indictments soon to be issued by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, sitting at the Hague, for the murder in 2005 of then Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in a truck-bombing in Beirut, in which 22 others were also killed. The tribunal has hard evidence that Hezbollah was responsible for it.

This terrorist organization – “The Party of God” is what its name means – is backed (which is to say is manipulated; is subject to the orders of) Syria and – chiefly – Iran. President Assad of Syria may be indicted too, so he’s as frightened of the tribunal as is the Hezbollah leadership. And now there are rumors that the mighty Ayatollah Khamenei – Iran’s head of state – may also be on the indictment list.

The Hezbollah members of the government demanded that the present prime minister, Saad Hariri, the murdered Rafik’s son, should declare that his government rejected whatever the findings of the Tribunal might be, now, before the indictments are issued.

Saad Hariri refused, so the Hezbollah members walked out and the government fell.

Hezbollah is very likely to try to deflect attention from the crisis within Lebanon by attacking Israel. Israel is prepared for the onslaught if and when it comes.

Tunisia

In Tunisia, the explosion came this week. A popular uprising erupted – the Arabs call it an intifada – which unseated the dictator Zine al-Abideen Bin Ali. He fled the country with wife Laila Tarabulsi. The couple have been in power, luxuriating in corruption, for 24 years.

Reaction among influential Arab commentators has been enthusiastically on the side of the revolutionaries. They hope the idea of violent rebellion will spread and unseat other despots, such as those who rule over Morocco and Libya.

The despots themselves are frightened. Some moved quickly to placate their populations.

Jordan

The King of Jordan, reacting to demonstrations in his own country, and spurred on by the events in Tunisia, hoped to subdue discontent by hastily setting controls on food prices.

Algeria

The repressive Algerian government, experiencing the same sort of internal unrest as Jordan – but worse -, and seriously disturbed by the Tunisian upheaval, took similar measures to keep prices down. But there it may be too late; the regime may fall.

Egypt

President Mubarak is ill and may die soon. There is a huge amount of political unrest in his country. He has harshly suppressed his chief opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood (action which, taken on its own, the rest of the world should probably be grateful for). Recent violent attacks on the persecuted Coptic Christians gave rise to demonstrations and have intensified the crisis. Chaos threatens.

Gaza

Hamas has warned that the leadership in the West Bank – headed by Abou Abbas – should expect the same fate as Bin Ali of Tunis. But Hamas itself could soon be at war if the region is ignited by a Hezbollah attack on Israel.

Iraq

On January 5, the Shia cleric Muqtada Sadr, a close ally of Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah, returned from Iran to Iraq. On the same day, the Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi arrived on an official visit to Baghdad. Civil war could break out at any time between the Shias and Sunnis of Iraq.

Saudi Arabia

The Saudi regime is constantly targeted by al-Qaeda. In this conflict, two brands of Islamic fundamentalism are pitted against each other. But more than al-Qaeda, the Saudis fear a nuclear-armed Iran.

Iran

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s hold on power is increasingly precarious. He is protected at present by the head of state, Ayatollah Khamenei. But as we noted under the heading of Lebanon, Khamenei’s own position may not be secure.

Pakistan

As Pakistan has nuclear weapons, the prospect of a take-over of power by the Taliban and al-Qaeda, both of which are constantly and violently trying to topple the government, is extremely threatening not just to the region but to the world.

*

What does all this instability, revolution, and threat of war mean for the United States?

Is there any chance that President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have an answer to that question?

We are strongly in favor of second-amendment rights. We believe that a citizenry is safer for being armed.

Tom Hinkson, a member of the National Rifle Association, has this to say about the anti-gun reaction of left-wing pundits to the shooting yesterday of Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, Arizona, by a psychopath named Jared Lee Loughner.

Within hours of the horrific attack in Tuscan, Arizona yesterday, liberal pundits are attacking our civil liberties. As has been the norm for the last 30 years, the leftists are blaming the violence on rhetoric, guns, and of course, racism. It seems that they will take every opportunity to attack our first and second Amendment rights in the name of “stopping the violence”.

No doubt, by the time this article reaches your eyes, there will be several more examples of what I am talking about, but they all follow the same formula. Here are some examples from this most recent tragedy.

The most egregious so far is this statement by the Pima County Sheriff, Clarence Dupnik: “When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government -. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous, and unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.” What a way to take advantage of a situation! There was no racial component whatsoever to this shooting. Dupnik further states that “free speech… is not without consequences”, as if we should re-think our First Amendment protections or take the chance of getting shot and killed in a random act of violence.

Further attacks on our Constitutional rights stemming from this incident come from people like Gary Hart and Josh Sugarmann, who both wrote articles published by the Huffington Post.

Hart states that, “So long as we all tolerate this kind of irresponsible and dangerous rhetoric or, in the case of some commentators, treat it with delight, reward it, and consider it cute, so long will we place all those in public life, whom the provocateurs dislike, in the crosshairs of danger.” So, because some commentator didn’t like a political position, this shooting was destined to happen?

Sugarmann, a gun-control activist, writes that, “Congress should act immediately to reinstate an effective ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines and move quickly to pass an effective assault weapons ban.” Ah, the “guns create violence” argument never gets old does it? But Sugarmann also goes one step further by taking a quote from the NRA’s Executive Vice President, Wayne LaPierre out of context. LaPierre stated, years ago that, “The guys with the guns make the rules… if the only guys with guns are the bad guys, we’re screwed!”. Sugarmann threw the “guys with the guns make the rules” part back at LaPierre without context, by stating that “one more guy with a gun made the rules”. Sugarmann’s solution of course is to take away everyone’s guns.

The shooting at the Safeway in Tuscan, AZ was a horrific act, perpetrated by a mentally deranged lone gunman. In the aftermath of this tragedy, as with any other, the enemies of liberty and freedom claim that we must make a choice between our rights and freedoms and our safety. This is no choice because if we give up our freedoms, we will be at the mercy of people in power, whether they be politicians, terrorists, the lone gunman, the thief in the dark alley, or foreign governments. Benjamin Franklin wisely stated, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

I am on the side of Benjamin Franklin. I believe that tragedies like this most recent one in Tuscan illustrate the need for more people to exercise their freedoms as Americans. The claim that one political pundit or another is somehow responsible for this shooting is false and irresponsible. We should put the blame squarely where it belongs: on the head of the perpetrator of the violence. To the gun-banners, I say that there are no gun-free zones, only good-guy-gun-free zones – as in Tucson, where apparently only the bad guy had a gun. If someone has malicious intent, a simple law adding one more crime to murder, armed robbery, or any other violent act is not going to be a deterrent. I say criminalize the acts of violence, not the preparation for self-defense or the defense of others.

So far, 6 people have died, and 13 people are reported injured from this shooting in Arizona. The gunman was subdued as he was reloading his only gun, by two people who tackled him. Ask yourself how different this could have been had there been legally armed citizens in attendance. I do not claim that there would have been no death or violence, but I firmly believe that fewer innocent people would have been killed or injured. I commend the two heroes who subdued the assailant, but had they been armed, wouldn’t this situation have been ended more quickly and much more safely?

Aside from the appalling cost of life on 1/8/11, the cost to the taxpayers for the legal process that is going to begin will be enormous. Incarceration costs alone, which vary from prison to prison, average about $50,000 per year. Justice would have been served much more quickly and a whole lot more cheaply if an armed citizen had simply shot back. Do not be fooled into giving up your freedoms. Instead, exercise your freedoms, and if the opportunity presents itself, make a positive difference.

We invite more readers to let us know their opinions on this subject.

“Suddenly, it’s not about secret information anymore, or diplomatic relations. It’s about control. The atmosphere chills.”

So Diana West writes on the continuing Wikileaks affair in a Townhall article which needs to be read in full. (We have quoted her before on this subject in our post Thanks to WikiLeaks? December  3, 2010.)

WikiLeaks is exposing the way our government conducts “business.” It is not a pretty process. …

The rock-bottom worst of the revelations … shows Uncle Sam patronizing the American people, lying to us about fundamental issues that any democracy catastrophically attacked and supporting armies abroad ever since doesn’t merely deserve to know, but needs to know. Our democracy demands it, if it is to remain a democracy.

Most pundits, certainly on the Right, disagree. As Commentary editor Gabriel Schoenfeld wrote in the WSJ this week: WikiLeaks “is not informing our democracy but waging war on its ability to conduct diplomacy and defend itself.”

Funny, but I feel more informed — and particularly about what a rotten job the government knows it’s doing in conducting diplomacy and waging war on democracy’s behalf. I know more about the government’s feckless accommodation of incomparable corruption in Afghanistan; its callousness toward Pakistani government support for the Taliban and other groups fighting our soldiers in Afghanistan; its inability to prevail upon “banker” China to stop facilitating the military rise of Iran … and its failures to prevail upon aid-recipient Pakistan to allow us to secure its vulnerable nuclear assets.

One running theme that emerges from the leaked cables is that the U.S. government consistently obscures the identity of the nation’s foes, for example, depicting the hostile peoples of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States as “allies.” It’s not that such hostility is a secret, or even constitutes news. But the cables reveal that our diplomats actually recognize that these countries form the financial engine that drives global jihad … But they, with the rest of the government, kept the American people officially in the dark.

Then came WikiLeaks, Internet publisher of leaked information, prompting the question: What is more important — the information theft that potentially harms government power, or the knowledge contained therein that might salvage our national destiny? …

The body politic should be electrified by the fact, as revealed by the leaked cables, that nations from Pakistan to Afghanistan to Saudi Arabia are regularly discussed as black holes of infinite corruption into which American money gushes, either through foreign aid or oil revenue, and unstaunched and unstaunchable sources of terror or terror-financing. If this were to get out — and guess what, it did — the foreign policy of at least the past two administrations, Democrat and Republican alike, would be unmasked as a colossal failure.

And maybe that’s what behind the acute distress over WikiLeaks. Last week, I put it down to political embarrassment; this week, a new, more disturbing factor has emerged. The state power structure, the establishment more or less, believes itself to be threatened. Its fearful response has been quite startling. First, there were calls for WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange’s execution; these have simmered down to calls for trial. Amazon and PayPal cut off service to the WikiLeaks website. Then, in a twist or kink perhaps beyond even Orwell’s ken, Assange was arrested without bond this week on an Interpol warrant over very fishy-sounding charges about “unprotected” sex in Sweden — a country, we may now ironically note, of draconian laws governing sexual intercourse and no laws whatsoever governing violent Islamic no-gone-zones.

Those two harpies – a pair of celebrity groupies? – who conspired together to get a man they’d chased after arrested on absurd charges under ridiculous Swedish sex laws, are contemptible, and the Swedes who made and enforce such laws are beneath contempt.

Assange has not committed an act of treason since he is not an American citizen or resident in the US. If he is guilty of espionage for publishing the cables someone stole, then so is the New York Times, and if he is extradited and prosecuted for it, the responsible NYT people should be too.

We have yet to hear if any person has been exposed to danger or actually harmed by the leaks, and no cables that we have read could so expose anyone. We have been told by a commenter, CEM, that we “lack understanding as to the seriousness of the Wikileaks release of classified documents and information”, that “there  does not have to be a direct leaking of names to expose agents and sources”, as “often, the information alone can be innocuous”, but “the content and context of the data alone can provide clues to counter agents and governments as to the identities of agents and sources that can place them in grave danger”. He may be right. Some of us have, however, had some years of experience dealing with organizations concerned with international affairs and have learnt something from them (enough to state confidently that by far the greater part of “secret information”, about 95%, is from open sources, and of the remaining 5% very little is ever useful). In our judgment, the claim that these cables could harm the United States’ foreign relations, implicate secret friends among enemies, or dissuade any foreign power from dealing with the US if it needs to, would be hard to substantiate.

We respect the views of those who think otherwise. We share their patriotic instincts. We have thought long and hard about the whole affair (giving special consideration to the reasonable points made by Fernando Montenegro – see our post More on Wikileaks, December 4, 2010). From what we can discover about Julian Assange we do not think he would be on our side of most issues. If the publication of the cables really harms any individual, we wouldn’t think of defending it. If it has damaged the United States in any way that we would recognize as damage, we would be as angry as the angriest. But as far as we can see now, and knowing that we risk the disagreement of some of our highly valued readers, we line up with Diana West. Our libertarian instincts have been strongly roused. We wonder if some of our more libertarian readers feel and think the same way. We hope all our readers will consider our arguments as carefully as we try to consider theirs.

The WikiLeaks operation could be put to permanent good effect – if only our fellow conservatives who hold liberty to be the highest value would learn the real lesson from it, and let the information they have been given make a difference in the future to the sort of people they trust to steer the ship of state.

It should ensure that never again is there another captain like Obama.

And that no administration and Department of State goes on treating citizens like kids who must be kept from knowing what they’re doing.

Afghans have been asked their opinions. A lot of them prefer the Taliban to the US.

How free and safe they felt to say what they thought, we are not told. But here are some of the results of the poll, as reported by the Washington Post:

Afghans are more pessimistic about the direction of their country, less confident in the ability of the United States and its allies to provide security and more willing to negotiate with the Taliban than they were a year ago, according to a new poll conducted in all of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.

Nationwide, more than half of Afghans interviewed said U.S. and NATO forces should begin to leave the country in mid-2011 or earlier. More Afghans than a year ago see the United States as playing a negative role in Afghanistan, and support for President Obama’s troop surge has faded. A year ago, 61 percent of Afghans supported the deployment of 30,000 additional U.S. troops. In the new poll, 49 percent support the move, with 49 percent opposed.

They hope for the highly improbable:

“We want the Afghan forces to be able to control security so the foreign forces can leave,” said Mohamed Neim Nurzai, 40, a farmer from Farah province who participated in the poll.

For all the effort put in by US forces to “win the hearts and minds” of the Afghans, the US is more hated now than it was last year

More than a quarter of Afghans again say attacks against U.S. and other foreign military forces are justifiable.

Overall, nearly three-quarters of Afghans now believe their government should pursue negotiations with the Taliban, with almost two-thirds willing to accept a deal allowing Taliban leaders to hold political office.

Whether out of certain experience, wishful thinking, or weary hope, “nearly a third of adults see the Taliban as more moderate today than they were when they ruled the country.”

And if the Taliban proves itself more moderate when it returns to power, and if Afghan forces show they can control security – two very big ifs – would that be enough for the Obama administration to claim a US victory?

It would have to be.

The US can hardly expect anything more, and the sad thing is it’s highly unlikely to get even that much.

One of our readers, Fernando Montenegro, disagrees with the (conjectural) conclusion to our post Thanks to Wikileaks? immediately below, and usefully points out:

– [as CEM, another commenter mentions], the context around the information is valuable as well [as the information itself].  [CEM writes that we do not understand the seriousness of the Wikileaks release of classified documents and information. “There does not have to be a direct leaking of names to expose agents and sources. And often, the information alone can be innocuous. However, the content and context of the data alone can provide clues to counter agents and governments as to the identities of agents and sources that can place them in grave danger.”]

– it is IMPOSSIBLE for an organization (a family unit, a company, a government) to formulate positions for any negotiation with another party without some measure of privacy. What WikiLeaks did is steal that privacy.

– Sure, government must be accountable, but that is why there is a Senate Intelligence committee, secret FISA courts, etc… WikiLeaks can’t be the judge, jury and executioner of determining what gets released.

– The “misguided foreign policies” are the responsibility of the political leadership, but there’s no hope that any leader can craft good policies without accurate information. One consequence of the leak is that not only foreign services will be more careful in their discussion with the US, but that individuals will be more guarded in what they write.

– While I think that Palin/Huckabee/… need to tone down a LOT, I think all those involved in the theft and illegal disclosure of sensitive information should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

We are grateful for this. We hoped that readers would give their opinions. We accept the good sense of the arguments, and make only two points in reply:

Suppliers of information to foreign powers must assess the risk for themselves.

When it comes to families and companies, we agree with Fernando. We see governments, however, as a different kettle of fish. We can best explain our view by discussing what others are saying about the WikiLeaks operation.

Caroline Glick starts off her column on the subject, here at Townhall, by strongly condemning the leak:

Make no mistake about it, the ongoing WikiLeaks operation against the US is an act of war. It is not merely a criminal offense to publish hundreds of thousands of classified US government documents with malice aforethought. It is an act of sabotage.

And she deplores “the impotent US response to it”.

Yet this is what the documents tell her:

The leaked documents themselves expose a profound irony. To wit: The US is unwilling to lift a finger to defend itself against an act of information warfare which exposed to the world that the US is unwilling to lift a finger to protect itself and its allies from the most profound military threats endangering international security today.

In spite of the unanimity of the US’s closest Arab allies that Iran’s nuclear installations must be destroyed militarily – a unanimity confirmed by the documents revealed by WikiLeaks – the US has refused to take action. Instead it clings to a dual strategy of sanctions and engagement that everyone recognizes has failed repeatedly and has no chance of future success.

In spite of proof that North Korea is transferring advanced ballistic missiles to Iran through China, again confirmed by the illegally released documents, the US continues to push a policy of engagement based on a belief that there is value to China’s vote for sanctions against Iran in the UN Security Council. It continues to push a policy predicated on its unfounded faith that China is interested in restraining North Korea.

In spite of the fact that US leaders including Gates recognize that Turkey is not a credible ally and that its leaders are radical Islamists, as documented in the classified documents, the US has agreed to sell Turkey a hundred F-35s. The US continues to support Turkish membership in the EU and of course embraces Turkey as a major NATO ally.

The publication of the US’s true feelings about Turkey has not made a dent in its leaders’ unwillingness to contend with reality. …

The documents show … that China is breaching … sanctions against Iran …

And at the same time as asking: “Why is [the US ] allowing WikiLeaks to destroy its international reputation, credibility and ability to conduct international relations and military operations?”, she also asks: “And why has it refused to contend with the dangers it faces from the likes of Iran and North Korea, Turkey, Venezuela and the rest of the members of the axis of evil that even State Department officers recognize are colluding to undermine and destroy US superpower status?”

In these instances, it is extremely important information that has been leaked, both the new and the confirmatory; information that Americans should know. In sum, Glick’s article provides good arguments for the document leak rather than against it.

Charles Krauthammer, in the Washington Post here, also deplores the leaking of the documents and the weakness of the US government’s response to it. He wants the leakers to be severely punished. “Throw the WikiBook at  them” his column is titled.

He gives these reasons:

First, quite specific damage to our war-fighting capacity. Take just one revelation among hundreds: The Yemeni president and deputy prime minister are quoted as saying that they’re letting the United States bomb al-Qaeda in their country, while claiming that the bombing is the government’s doing. Well, that cover is pretty well blown. And given the unpopularity of the Sanaa government’s tenuous cooperation with us in the war against al-Qaeda, this will undoubtedly limit our freedom of action against its Yemeni branch, identified by the CIA as the most urgent terrorist threat to U.S. security.

That’s one lesson that could be drawn from the revelation about the lie. We draw another. Why should the Yemeni government be allowed to lie about the bombing? Why shouldn’t the US pursue al-Qaeda wherever they’re hiding?*

Second, we’ve suffered a major blow to our ability to collect information. Talking candidly to a U.S. diplomat can now earn you headlines around the world, reprisals at home, or worse. Success in the war on terror depends on being trusted with other countries’ secrets. Who’s going to trust us now?

This seems to us an empty argument. If other countries want the US to know something, they will impart that information. Nations never did and never will trust each other. They’d be ill-advised to do so. When they have common interests they co-operate. The occasional leaking of documents will make no difference to that.

Third, this makes us look bad, very bad.

If he means the leaking itself makes the US look bad, it’s an irrelevant judgment because it wasn’t by its own will that it happened. (Though it should guard its secrets better, and no one should ever expect internet secrecy.) If he means what the documents reveal, that they make American diplomats, the State Department, the Obama administration look bad, it’s because they are bad, and it’s good for the American public to have the proof of it.

Whether or not foreign governments trust the US matters far less than how far US citizens trust their own government. They should be able to trust it, of course, yet it would be naive of them to do so. In the same issue with Krauthammer’s column, the Washington Post reports on a release by  the government itself of documents about its illegal spying on US citizens. We are no fans of the ACLU, and we think that likely terrorists (who they are we’ll leave to our reader’s suspicions) should be constantly surveyed, but we quote this as a reminder that governments can and do abuse their powers, sometimes with justification, sometimes without:

The federal government has repeatedly violated legal limits governing the surveillance of U.S. citizens, according to previously secret internal documents obtained through a court battle by the American Civil Liberties Union.

In releasing 900 pages of documents, U.S. government agencies refused to say how many Americans’ telephone, e-mail or other communications have been intercepted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act – or FISA – Amendments Act of 2008, or to discuss any specific abuses, the ACLU said. Most of the documents were heavily redacted.

We think that state secrecy is justifiable when it is concerned with preserving the country’s power and protecting its citizens. (Whatever goes on in a war should be kept as secret as possible. Mrs Thatcher knew this when she made war on Argentina over the Falklands. She allowed only one daily report, a brief boring bulletin delivered in lugubrious tones by a spokesman who earned the name Mogadon Man. No embedding of journalists. No press photographers. No announcing a date when the forces would start withdrawing. She fought the war to win it, and she did.)

What emerges from the WikiLeaks documents, as Caroline Glick makes plain, is that the Obama government is not intent on preserving the power of the US and protecting its citizens.

That is what is shameful. If only the law extended to punishing those guilty of this betrayal. Their inaction against America’s enemies, their covert connivance with them – these are acts of sabotage deserving condign punishment.

*

Footnote:

*Furthermore, there is something deeply immoral, as well as counter-productive, in the persistent policy of the West to allow Arabs to lie. It has become a bad habit. The British have done it for a hundred years. When the Australians liberated Damascus from the Turks in 1918, the British ordered them to withdraw and allow their own pet Arab army (the con-man T.E.Lawrence’s well-bribed little outfit) to march in and claim the victory as their own. That distortion was one of many that wove so tangled a web of deceit and pretense that it still keeps Middle East policy in knots from which Britain cannot extricate itself even if it wanted to – which it doesn’t. The US State Department – its policy towards the Arabs always too affected by the nefarious British Foreign Office – is imitating this indulgence and will achieve no better results.

We are libertarians – though firmly on the small government (patriotic, conservative) end of the libertarian spectrum, nowhere near the anarchist end. And being so, we fail to see why an elected government should have any secrets from its electors except those which are truly necessary to protect the nation.

If the people running WikiLeaks – Julian Assange is the name of one we are told – have released information that identifies individuals who provide secret intelligence to America (or any Western country) in order to help national defense and security, they have committed a crime. If agents have been killed, the crime is capital.

As far as we know, no such names have been published, and no one has been killed as a result of the WikiLeaks action.

So, with that important exception borne in mind, how in general do we evaluate what WikiLeaks has done?

We do not like the hue and cry for blood. We hear Mike Huckabee’s demand that Julian Assange be executed, and note that it comes from one who, as Governor of Arkansas, commuted death sentences on convicted murderers, at least one of whom was released from prison to murder again. (See our post, The deadly danger of Christian forgiveness, December 1, 2009.)

The two most interesting opinions we have found are in contrast with each other. One is Diana West’s, with which we agree, and the other is Theodore Dalrymple’s, with which we do not agree (though we almost always do agree with, and appreciate, the articles and books of that wise and erudite writer).

Here (in part) is Diana West’s opinion:

I am still working out why I watch the high dudgeon sparked by Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks dump of a quarter-million State Department cables that has given rise to the most heated, bloodthirsty chorus I have ever heard in Washington, notably from conservatives, and feel strangely numb.

I observe the fits over “sovereignty” lost, and note that some of the same people find such emotion in bad taste when the prompt is our unsecured, non-sovereign border. I hear the arguments that our national security is hanging by a computer keystroke, and note the fecklessness of a U.S. government that hides from us, the people, its own confirmation that North Korea supplies Iran with Russian-made nuclear-capable missiles; China transfers weapons materiel to Iran (despite Hillary Clinton’s pathetic entreaties); Iran honeycombs Iraq; Syria supports Hezbollah; Pakistan prevents the United States from securing its nuclear materials; Saudis continue to provide mainstay support to al-Qaida (despite pie-faced denials come from Saudi-supplicating U.S. administrations). Everything good citizens need to know, in short, to see through the dumbed-down, G-rated (“G” for government), official narrative, all “engagement” and “outreach,” to throw the ineffectual bums out – all of them – and start from scratch.

But what we’re supposed to see in Assange’s Internet release of thousands of “classified,” mainly non-sensational, if often embarrassing, documents (something journalists usually call a scoop in the singular) is an act of “terrorism,” say Republican leaders … [It] has drowned out all other news this week, including the murder of six American trainers by an Afghan “policeman.”

Why?

These six unnecessary, punishing deaths may well have resulted from the disastrous statecraft and policies that come under discussion in the leaked cables, but as far as news coverage went they just couldn’t compete with the leak frenzy itself. The establishment, right and left but mainly right, coalesced around melodramatic accusations that Assange did have, or would have “blood on his hands.” As I have read my way through some fraction of the leaked record, no evidence for this frequently leveled charge yet appears, certainly none that begins to compare to the blood already spilled to implement a hopelessly misguided U.S. foreign policy that, from the Bush administration to the Obama administration, determinedly ignores Islam in its prosecution of wars in the Islamic world. …

More see-no-Islam evidence comes straight from the leaked cables … but that’s official U.S. policy, as supported from the pro-war right to the Obama left. More than that, it’s part of the shambles WikiLeaks confirms U.S. foreign policy to be. Could this be why the establishment condemns WikiLeaks as the worst thing ever? The Pakistan cables alone [ of which she gives examples – JB] should stop the presses …

But the reaction instead is to kill the messenger – literally, say many. The more I read, however, the more I wonder whether the raging rhetoric is less about blood on WikiLeaks’ hands than about egg on the faces of others, including a secretive Uncle Sam.

Yes.

And here (in part) is Theodore Dalrymple’s opinion:

It is not, of course, that revelations of secrets are always unwelcome or ethically unjustified. It is not a new insight that power is likely to be abused and can only be held in check by a countervailing power, often that of public exposure. But WikiLeaks goes far beyond the need to expose wrongdoing, or supposed wrongdoing: it is unwittingly doing the work of totalitarianism.

The idea behind WikiLeaks is that life should be an open book, that everything that is said and done should be immediately revealed to everybody, that there should be no secret agreements, deeds, or conversations. In the fanatically puritanical view of WikiLeaks, no one and no organization should have anything to hide. It is scarcely worth arguing against such a childish view of life.

The actual effect of WikiLeaks is likely to be profound and precisely the opposite of what it supposedly sets out to achieve. Far from making for a more open world, it could make for a much more closed one. Secrecy, or rather the possibility of secrecy, is not the enemy but the precondition of frankness. WikiLeaks will sow distrust and fear, indeed paranoia; people will be increasingly unwilling to express themselves openly in case what they say is taken down by their interlocutor and used in evidence against them, not necessarily by the interlocutor himself. This could happen not in the official sphere alone, but also in the private sphere, which it works to destroy. An Iron Curtain could descend, not just on Eastern Europe, but over the whole world. A reign of assumed virtue would be imposed, in which people would say only what they do not think and think only what they do not say.

While we share Dalrymple’s loathing of totalitarianism, and of all government prying into private lives, we do not see how the WikiLeaks action threatens any private citizen, or how it is an attack on the principle of privacy. What a government does should not be private (with the exception we noted above). The lives of individuals must be as private as they desire. We don’t believe that ordinary people’s emails would be sought out and downloaded by Wikileaks, though we don’t doubt that an Obama government might do it. Of what conceivable interest or use can they be to the world at large?

WikiLeaks works to destroy government secrecy, not “the private sphere”.

If it makes government more circumspect in what it communicates, more aware that it is answerable to those it governs, WikiLeaks may have delivered a service to America rather than a blow.

Abraham H. Miller, professor emeritus of political science, has an article at PajamasMedia that we applaud, because he succinctly endorses our own opinion of Obama’s treacherous and catastrophic pro-Islam policy – which we suspect springs from deep emotional ties to that cruel, totalitarian, and deathly religion.

Sharing Professor Miller’s indignation, we cannot resist quoting a fair chunk of his commentary, and hope you will go here to read all of it:

You’re about to be groped, X-rayed, and generally humiliated in the airport. The Islamic Fiqh Council, however, has issued a fatwa prohibiting Muslims from going through an X-ray machine. Separately, CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) is advising Muslim women to avoid pat-downs beyond the head and neck. Our culturally sensitive administration will undoubtedly acquiesce. You, however, will be groped and X-rayed, unless of course you show up at the airport dressed in a tent. …

After stooping and genuflecting to the Islamic world and cutting Israel off at the knees, President Barack Obama has had such a positive impact on the Muslim street that its attitudes toward America were slightly better during Bush’s last year.

Cultural sensitivity has fared no better in Afghanistan, where the rules of engagement put the lives of our soldiers at greater risk in an effort to reduce civilian casualties. The administration has decided to trade American deaths for Afghan lives. The Afghan people, however, seem to have engaged in the rational calculus that it is better to side with those who will be there, the Taliban, than those who have announced their intention to leave. …

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is still unable to utter the words “Islamist terrorist,” preferring to engage in Newspeak about “man-made disasters.” The real man-made disasters are the multi-ethnic states of Iraq and Afghanistan, lines on the map encompassing diverse people who have found familiarity breeds contempt and contempt breeds irrational violence. But more irrational is our hubris, thinking that we can suddenly transform seventh century societies into modern democracies amid the most virulent and transformative ideology on the planet, radical Islam.

The wars persist. Victory is as elusive as it is undefined. The spilling of blood and treasure goes on. We cannot kill our way to victory, and we cannot reshape the foundation of these cultures.

Our status in the world diminishes. …

And the Obama administration, having disengaged from Israel, has decided, in an act of consummate recklessness, to create a Saudi hegemony, to balance Iran, with the largest arms deal in the history of our nation, sixty billion dollars. Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it. This was the policy of prior administrations with regard to the shah of Iran, who was supposed to be the hegemonic power in the Persian Gulf, offsetting then Soviet interests in that region. And we all saw how well that turned out.

So now we are banking on an aging royal family with the legitimacy of Weimar standing in the headwinds of rising fundamentalism, a family that has walked the tightrope of dealing with the West while exporting its own brand of Islamic fundamentalism to undermine Western traditions and institutions. We are afraid to confront them, for in our multicultural mindset one culture is as good as another. …

Our influence in the world declines along with the value of our currency. We elected a president whom the world’s leaders do not take seriously. We are saddled with large unemployment in an economy that exports jobs faster than it creates them. We are becoming Britain of the post-World War II era, but now there is no America in the West to step into the power vacuum.