Commentary: The Messy but Necessary Leakocracy

Summary

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I suspect many of us reacted with some glee at the initial tale of the big Wikileaks document dump concerning the Afghan war. I suspect, though, that few continued to feel unmixed glee at hearing reasonable-sounding claims that the revelation of the documents might cost lives, for instance among the U.S. network of Afghan informants, now identified to the Taliban.

It's a familiar dance of ambivalence. We all like seeing government cut down to size. But we also want government to remain strong enough to do whatever it is we happen to like seeing government do.

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Commentary: The Messy but Necessary Leakocracy

So it balances out. Except for true-blue anarchists, most of us want government to have some secrets. We understand that military and intelligence organizations whose doings were an open book would not be able to function. We don't usually want our military plans to be freely known, nor the names of our secret agents.

On the other hand, these are ...

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