Conflicts and curtain pulling with WikiLeaks documents | Brian Beckley

I have to tell you, I'm a little conflicted over this latest batch of WikiLeaks documents. As a journalist, I believe we should have access to, well, just about everything. The only way to get a real sense of exactly what my government is doing is to be able to read the actual documents.

I have to tell you, I’m a little conflicted over this latest batch of WikiLeaks documents.

As a journalist, I believe we should have access to, well, just about everything. The only way to get a real sense of exactly what my government is doing is to be able to read the actual documents. At the same time, I know not everything can be made public. I know that there are aspects of national security, and especially international diplomacy, that need to remain out of the public eye.

But I do love seeing things I am not supposed to see.

And while I believe the outing of sources and agents should be prosecuted and prosecuted hard (unless you are Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, of course, then outing undercover agents is just part of the job), I see this batch of WikiLeaks documents as more of an emperor-has-no-clothes kind of move that pulls the little, green curtain back on the Wizard of Diplomacy’s giant floating head.

It makes my inner punk rocker happy enough to spit.

In Dungeons and Dragons terms, I view WikiLeaks as having a “chaotic neutral” alignment, essentially an anarchist or free spirit character who shirks rules and traditions and follows their own ideals of freedom, without really worrying about how their freedom affects yours.

What struck me most in reading the first batch of reporting (and a handful of the actual documents themselves) is the variety of Arab state officials – in particular King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia – encouraging the United States to attack Iran, even while their countries officially take a far less confrontational approach.

But there it is in black and white: The king of Saudi Arabia wants the US to “cut the head off the snake” in Iran, basically so they don’t have to get their hands dirty.

While it was already easy to assume that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was not particularly well-liked in his neighborhood, getting it out in the open that it’s the Saudis apparently pushing for his assassination – while the United States is holding back – can only be good for our standing in the Arab world and especially Iran, right?

Not necessarily, because we are dealing with a madman who makes up his own reality no matter what the facts on the ground are.

Ahmadinejad’s assessment, according to the New York Times, was to portray “the documents as American psychological warfare that would not affect his country’s relations with other nations.”

Never mind that a variety of regional officials and leaders called for the bombing of his country and for his death personally, this is obviously the United States trying to “punk” him.

It’s the kind of analysis that comes from someone so convinced they are right they can’t even see the inconsistencies in their own reasoning.

Speaking of, former half-term Gov. Sarah Palin recently saw a document (of sorts) released that openly calls for the Republican party to cut the head off her snake.

Former Republican Congressman and current highly-paid right-wing MSNBC talking head Joe Scarborough published a column on the website Politico, calling Palin a “spoiled brat” who “mocked Ronald Reagan’s credentials, dismissed George H.W. and Barbara Bush as arrogant ‘blue bloods’ and blamed George W. Bush for wrecking the economy.”

Now, I happen to believe that Reagan was one of the worst presidents in history in that most, if not all, of the problems threatening to overwhelm and destroy this country seemed to start on his watch (and I will be happy to debate that with anyone who can remain rational about the facts involved). But I also happen to believe that he was absolutely qualified to be president. I mean, the man ran the most populated state in the union for eight years prior to his election.

I also think that while George W. was a spoiled little blue blood who did, in fact, run the economy into the ground, his father is a true American war hero who in retrospect was a pretty good president.

President George H.W. Bush did the right thing instead of the political thing when he raised taxes in an attempt to rectify the ongoing disaster that is Reagonomics (which Bush called “Voodoo Economics” during his debates with Reagan).

It was the right thing to do and was necessary for the fiscal health of the country, so Bush the Elder – like Reagan did more than 10 times before him – raised taxes while knowing full well it would probably cost him the election.

Similar to the WikiLeaks cables that lay bare how foreign governments say one thing in public and another in private, Scarborough begins his column with a paragraph about how Republican leaders “are too scared to say in public what they all complain about in private” and concludes with “it’s time that Republican leaders started standing up and speaking the truth to Palin.”

Palin is yet to respond to Scarborough’s piece, though one has to imagine her hired writers working feverishly on a folksy, yet vapid and soundbyte-filled 140-character response. So it remains to be seen – in this matter – if Palin, similar to Ahmadinejad, just doesn’t care about facts and will simply decide on her own what she thinks is true, reality be damned.

My bet is that she takes the Ahmadinejad approach. After all, one of her most stunning achievements is her contribution of “death panels” hysteria to the public debate on health insurance reform, despite the fact that there was no such thing and it was actually HER misunderstanding of a program proposed by Republicans.

Let’s make one thing clear: I don’t think Sarah Palin is as crazy or dangerous as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Then again, five years ago, he too was just a religious conservative who took a populist approach to the campaign by emphasizing his own, relatively normal life and two years as mayor of Tehran while promising to share Iran’s oil profits with poor Iranians.

However, I also don’t think Palin wants the actual responsibility of being president.

Now, if we could just get Ahmadinejad a reality show…