Leak as Learning Opportunity

Today, Easter Monday, I returned home from my extended family in New York.  The sun was warm on a calm afternoon with a gentle breeze.  I ate watermelon ice cream with my two girls in our driveway after the four hour drive, happy to be home and alive on a beautiful Spring day.   I came up to my office and began looking through my incoming messages, to see ‘what’s behind door numbers one two and three,’ or in other words find out what’s new and exciting in the technosphere.  I was surprised and saddened to find the item below, from a site called Mediaite.com:

“In the past few weeks, the Pentagon has been waging battle on a whole new front: classified information that ends up on the Internet…In the following video, US Military in an Apache helicopter gravely mistake a group of Iraqi men for insurgents (what appears to be a camera is viewed by those in the helicopter to be a RPG.) Warning, the video below is graphic in nature.”

Mediaite labeled Wikileaks as the problem and its target in the article.  I’m really not sure why.  Wikileaks’ ‘…primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but … also expect[s] to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations.” 

I did not bring a dog to the fight between Wikileaks and anyone else; as a group it appears to have released information that matches its stated goal of exposing unethical behavior.  The most important thing in my humble view is that the story is out there, and maybe now we can discuss how to prevent the recurrence of such an incident.  The costs of this outcome are substantial, and long-lasting.  Perhaps the outcomes should be considered the (quoting Mediaite again) ‘…real threat to national security…’  

·        Our troops are killing non-combatants, and it’s being covered up.  There’s a good chance if the event is whitewashed, the effects on those troops is likely to be ‘unseen’ by military management, as well.  Threat to us:  more emotional problems, suicides, dislocation in military families, occurrences of substance abuse.

·        Our actions show we no longer recognize medical evacuation as part of the ‘rules of combatant engagement.’  The video and audio show the attack team is given permission to continue shooting at people who have been wounded, and are crawling away.  Threat to us:  If the hors de combat designation of the Geneva Convention won’t be honored by one side, there’s no incentive for the opposing side to do so.

The threat to the country’s security was exposed by Wikileaks when it published the story.  The man or woman behind the gun should not have to live with responsibility for the deaths of non-combatants, especially for shooting wounded.  Particularly, when the persons they’re shooting do not shoot back.  This ‘real threat’ remains, until the procedures our troops follow are changed.  Expediency can carry the day, but will serve our troops poorly.  

If the Military does not change those procedures to make the job safer for the soldier (and in the process for others) then the Military can only blame itself, or try and shoot the messenger, over the result.