Putting lives in danger

Image courtesy: Lance Cpl. Dwight Henderson

On September 11, 2001, 19 hijackers, trained and financed by Taliban-harbored terrorists in Afghanistan, launched a series of coordinated attacks that killed almost 3,000 people in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. On October 7, 2001, President George W. Bush ordered the U.S. military to topple the Taliban regime and destroy al Qaeda inside the country where the attacks on America were planned.

On July 25, 2010, with Taliban remnants still threatening Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden still ordering attacks around the world, American troops are fighting valiantly to accomplish a mission now set by President Barack Obama. On this same date, an organization called WikiLeaks put the lives of our brave men and women in danger, as well as the civilians they are ordered to protect. Even in the aftermath of a recent smear attempt against U.S. troops in Iraq that was quickly exposed as a humiliating failure by various experts, the group is putting thousands of classified military documents about the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan on the internet. According to the organization itself, journalists inside several newsrooms around the globe were given an 'exclusive' first look.

The Obama administration quickly and correctly condemned the release of the documents. Speaking to The New York Times, national security advisor Gen. James Jones blasted "the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security." I am sure any former Bush administration official would issue a nearly identical statement, as responsible, patriotic Americans put their country and the people defending it above being a Republican or Democrat.

The agenda-driven activist behind WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, made this disgusting remark to CNN.

"This material doesn't just reveal occasional abuse by the U.S. military," he said. "Of course it has U.S. military reporting on all sort of abuses by the Taliban. ... So it does describe the abuses by both sides in this war and that's how people can understand what's really going on and if they choose to support it or not."

The CNN article brands WikiLeaks as a "whistle-blower website," even after its founder equated the U.S. military with terrorists who behead troops, contractors, journalists, and innocent civilians. Doesn't that make Assange a radical activist leveling serious accusations against the men and women of the United States military? While many agenda-driven journalists in the mainstream media would say avoiding such labels is a sign of "balance," I call it flat-out dishonesty. Perhaps correspondent Atika Shubert, the article's author, thought Assange's channeling of Joseph Stalin, which she published, would provide better perspective for her readers.

The New York Times, which increased anti-American sentiment in the Middle East with endless front-page coverage of the Haditha 'massacre' that has since been discredited, repeatedly editorializes in an article posted Sunday about WikiLeaks. Despite acknowledging that the documents are "clearly an incomplete record of the war" in the article's 19th paragraph, the six different Times reporters who teamed up opine in earlier passages that the documents provide "an unvarnished, ground-level picture of the war" and somehow prove that "the Taliban are stronger than at any time since 2001."

The journalists also claim that Afghanistan "until recently was a second-class war, with money, troops and attention lavished on Iraq while soldiers and Marines lamented that the Afghans they were training were not being paid." I would love to see those six Times reporters call the war in Afghanistan "second-class" in front of the men and women who volunteered to fight it. While there are certainly valid concerns about our troops getting necessary equipment and protective gear, the high standards and exceptional performance of the U.S. military are second to none. While these reporters are entitled to their opinions, there was an era when personal views were strictly banned from hard news articles, especially during wartime.

Since The Unknown Soldiers launched in December, readers have been presented hundreds of stories of battlefield heroism that have been missing from the national narrative. Time and again, the mainstream media in the United States has chosen to obsess about celebrity or political bickering instead of battlefield heroism, usually only pausing to notice the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq during times of extreme controversy. Even as a Navy sailor remains missing on the battlefield and dozens of American families mourn their fallen heroes, another media-driven firestorm is erupting. As shouting matches over these classified documents fill the airwares, last week's incredible attempt by Cpl. Joe Wrightsman to save a drowning Afghan soldier will remain mostly invisible.

Instead of noting that WikiLeaks is as a discredited organization that despises the United States military, the leaking of these classified documents is already being treated as a 21st century version of the Pentagon papers. Yet what Assange and many U.S. journalists fail to understand is that America overwhelmingly reveres its military, and refuses to give the benefit of the doubt to our enemies. Fair-minded Americans also recognize that civilians are tragically killed in even the most righteous conflicts, and that secrets must occasionally be kept from the public during wartime. A vast majority will also understand that these documents will make finishing our post-9/11 mission more difficult for our troops, embolden the enemy, and lead to an increase in anti-American propaganda. That means every American is less safe than the moment he or she woke up this morning.

Freedom of the press is guaranteed by the Constitution. Without the brave service of thousands of Americans in Afghanistan since the attacks on the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and United Flight 93, the precious document itself might have been vaporized in a dirty bomb attack on the nation's capital. Al Qaeda wants to destroy the United States, so our military must destroy the terrorist organization first. We cannot forget why this war started, or how fortunate we are to have the finest volunteer warriors in the world defending our freedom. Even in the darkest of times, I remain confident that no radical group or unpatriotic news organization can break the will of the American people.