How Wikileaks is good and bad for America

Julian Assange is the founder and owner of what is known as Wikileaks. Wikileaks last year released thousands of classified documents that were only intended for State Department and Pentagon eyes. These documents pertain mostly to the conflict in Afghanistan. These documents portrayed the American effort in Afghanistan as no longer "winning hearts and minds". It depicted the conflict as a special op's operation without an end in site. With night time assasinations and IED's as the normal standard. 

Ever since Vietnam America has always had wars brought to the television screen showing the horrible violence occuring overseas. The person responsible for bringing this information to light was a private in the Army. This private is currently in prison for commiting treason. So why isn't Julian Assange being put on trial? Not because he is a Journalist or claims to be one. Because he is not an American Citizen. Only Americans can be tried for treason under American law. In fact only Americans who are employed by the Government or Millitary can be held responsible for not disclosing state secrets. If a civilian journalist discoveres dirty laundry, nobody can stop him from airing it out for everybody to see.

Although I understand Julians motivations as too expose how horrible the situation is in Afghanistan to try and promote popular opinion to end the conflict. This has had a opposite result in my opinion. By releasing these classfied documents that describe in detail the horrific nature of conflict. It defintly has the desired effect of turning off the American public, but it also makes them aware of how dangerous the situation is. Also some information was classified because it was important to the war effort that certain places and documents were kept secret because as soon as these reports went public, they also fell into enemy hands. 

Julian also dropped a big egg yok on China exposing the communist states opinion of it's proxy North Korea. "A spoiled step child" being the words chosen to describe the rouge communist nation that shelled an island off the coast South Korea that killed Civillians and Marines. This helped the United States and South Koreas position in defiance too North Korean hostility. With it's dictator (Kim Jong Il) aging and ready to be replaced we must watch the korean peninsula closley . His son hopefully will not be as close minded and prone to Nuclear weapons as his Father. 

Julian is not a Journalist in my humble opinion. He is a owner of a special interest group that is motivated to aquire classified and private documents as to expose private business decisions and sensative state information. This "transparency" theory is very popular and cries out for Governments to have no secrets and all it's operations to be in public forum. This sounds great but in reality it's horrible way to operate your Government. The United States needs to have the ability to keep secrets and opinions private. This "expose" or "ambush" style of so called "Journalism" really just creates more world instability and makes it harder for the State department and other agencies to work on the relations they have with foreign countries. With people predatorialy seeking out secret information will automatically have the opposite effect on Government. If Uncle Sam knows you have the ability to intercept cable transmissions from Embassys abroad to the Pentagon, Uncle Sam simply won't use those cables anymore. In fact they will keep information more tightly gaurded and make it more difficult for accurate information to be gathered via traditional means. More harm than good may come from Julian and his Wikileaks.