August 03, 2010

What should happen to the leakers?

Blogger Ace of Spades is suggesting that the two "men" responsible for the leak of 93,000-odd intel summaries from Afghanistan deserve the death penalty.

While my gut feeling is totally with Ace on this, I think pragmatism suggests that the death penalty is probably a bad choice, since it polarizes American public opinion against the military.

This of course is almost certainly the real reason the Left wanted gays to be able to serve in the military--not because there was a big queue of gays chomping at the bit to defend the country, but because as long as the controversy continued, it would damage the military.

And if the Left succeeded in forcing the military to let gays serve (as happened), the absolutely inevitable and predictable clusterfucks and breaches in discipline, or negative reactions by straight troops, or a thousand other absolutely predictable events, would again put our forces in a bad light.

Which, of course, is exactly what has happened.

A commenter at Ace's noted that many on the Left don't appear to realize that the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy was instituted by Clinton. To the Left, that's not a negative. DADT was a deliberate effort to get the "nose of the camel" into the tent--a seemingly benign move that was designed to be easy to push through... because clueless people with no military experience couldn't imagine that it could have any negative effects. (See two 'grafs above for the counter.)

Of course the real strategic thinkers on the Left knew exactly what planned sequence of moves was, and effect they would have. They must have been quite pleased at having succeeded in throwing a wrench into the military's generally smooth-turning machinery.

Remember that both Clintons loathed the military--with Bill pulling strings to get a coveted ROTC slot (which he then never showed up to fill, once he reached England) to avoid the draft.

I do believe both Manning and Assange should be turned over to a group of Afghanis--selected because each lost a loved one to the Taliban after the docs were leaked. Let that group decide how to deal with the pair--with no U.S. pressure, no interference, no legal appeals.

Ironically, it's exactly the same fate to which hundreds of Afghani moderates have been condemned by the joint actions of Manning and Assange.

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