Democracy Now provides an excellent “…roundtable discussion with Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg; Greg Mitchell, who writes the Media Fix blog at The Nation; Carne Ross, a British diplomat for 15 years who resigned before the Iraq war; and As’ad AbuKhalil, a professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus.” Not that we don’t already know our government lies to us but rarely do we have so much, in your face, proof as the Wikileaks Cablegate release of US diplomatic dispatches.
CARNE ROSS: The trouble with all of this is we tend to place government in this sort of superior, elite position; that they know things we do not know; that governments are entitled to know things that the public do not know. I think the balance is way too far in the government’s favor. Far more information should be released and made transparent. I’m not sure, however, that the way WikiLeaks has done this is the right way. This is a very random, blunt instrument to attack the problem of a lack of transparency of government. This should ideally be done through the mechanisms of democratic accountability. Of course, it’s not been done that way so far. Hence, WikiLeaks.
As’ad AbuKhalil advises the release has opened the eyes of the Arab world. “I think the Arab public today woke up wiser than before, more cynical than before, and certainly more critical of the government.”
AS’AD ABUKHALIL: On the question of Israel, what people are going to notice is the extent to which there is a close correlation between the Israeli government and the American government on all issues pertaining to the Middle East- including Pakistan- and the extent to which that kind of coordination is absent in these discussions between the American officials and the Israelis. I should also say that we have seen documents in which the opinions of the Head of the Mossad Dagan were detailed in an American cable. It is also striking, the extent to which the head of the Mossad- a highly touted organization- does not seem to have that many insights or information or analysis that is insightful about what is happening in the Middle East. Certainly, the location of Israel is extremely high in the esteem of the United States, but the low esteem to which the Arab governments are held by U.S. officials is quite apparent in these documents.
