[wordup] Cablegate - Thoughts from the Arabist

[Adam Shand]

This has my panties in a bunch.  We certainly live in interesting times ...

Source: http://www.arabist.net/blog/2010/11/29/cablegate.html

Cablegate

By Issandr El Amrani
Monday, November 29, 2010

I've only had time to look at a handful of the Wikileaks cables, but
while many may just confirm certain widely held theories, they also
provide tremendous insight into the day-to-day analysis of Embassy
officials and a fascinating record of conversations with world
leaders, security chiefs, senior politicians and diplomats across the
Middle East. It's a treasure trove for any journalist or analyst to
understand US positions and compare them to public positions, but even
more of a find for doing the same for Middle Eastern states.

There is so much information flowing around about US policy — and
often, a good deal of transparency — that a smart observer with good
contacts can get a good idea of what's happening. Not so in the Arab
world, and the contents of the conversations Arab leader are having
with their patron state are not out in the Arab public domain or
easily guessable, as anyone who reads the meaningless press statements
of government press agencies will tell you. Cablegate is in important
record from the Arab perspective, perhaps more than from the US one.

I'm quite shocked, to a greater extent than the Iraq leaks, about the
diplomatic damage this will do. It's still early days, and much of
this will be recuperated for the regional media wars. Part of me loves
the anarchist side of Wikileaks. But there's obviously more than
"information wants to be free" at stake here: Wikileaks is also a
project against American power projection around the world, or US
imperialism. I suspect this is driven in good part (at least for the
person or people who leaked or hacked the cables) by hatred of US
policy under the Bush administration. A type of information blowback,
if you will. This kind of leak is just not supposed to happen, and
will probably have consequences we can barely start to imagine. I
think it will also contribute, in the Middle East at least, to the
growing perception among the various regimes that the US is an
unreliable partner that has trouble restoring its pre-Bush
credibility.

It's only normal that American politicians, as well as the Obama
administration, have condemned the leaks. But listening to US
politicians on the radio says that Wikileaks "is not being patriotic"
betrays a complete misunderstanding of what's at stake here, and an
assumption that foreigners should be patriotic to the US. They don't:
they're not American. The disconnect here is between an American
perception of the US as world leader and non-American rejection of
this, probably in good part to a loss in moral authority in the last
decade.

Wikileaks may be irresponsible, but it's also a manifestation of a
shifting world order. We just don't know what it's shifting into yet.

--
"If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." -- Emma Goldman