Wicked Leaks -- Defending the Right: The news of the day is the release again by Wikileaks of thousands of pages of State Department documents. There is a hurricane of commentary on the blogs both pro, con and in between. The NYTimes is taking a particular hit as it was one of the first to obtain the documents from Wikileaks and decided to release them. I added, of course, one more opinion. It was written in haste.

The New York Times is a news organization. It is OBLIGATED to report news it deems of consequence. Many were SO critical of the Times during the run up to the Iraq War as it was accused of being a lap dog for Bush administration policy. Well, now they open up the floodgates to perhaps YEARS of rotten US policy so they are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

My sincere belief is that the root of US problems internationally post WWII has been so dangerous because its policy has been SO toxic and made to prop up the worst of the worst dictatorships in the name of freedom. FREEDOM? Really? It's NOT about freedom. There was NOTHING about freedom with respect to US policy and Iraq. Men and women die NOT for freedom but for economic, political and industrial hegemony in the world.

Having said that I believe the US does nothing different from what policy has been for centuries. The problem is the consequence of bad policy now comes back to bite us in the posterior because we are SO huge and our military is spread all over the world. In history the US and other nations could get away with an invasion or two and it would NOT be on the radar screen of anyone except those who bore the brunt of it -- certainly NOT Americans. We live in a different age and it is a different world. We obviously are not the only ones to have the means to obliterate the world but it appears we act as if we do.

Personally, I would NEVER give to those who want to do the US harm the ammunition to use to do that. The US, though, needs to examine HOW it makes policy, what policy it makes and who bears the brunt of the wrecking crew. The US should NEVER be in a position where it must defend its covert actions because of illegal tactics. In the age of the Internet it is NOT business as usual. Obama talked about CHANGE....well I would LOVE to see that change. It should include a return to the values that allowed us to defeat HUGE German/Japanese armies because we had right on our side and the might to defeat hideous monsters.

Our culture is WORTH saving, WORTH preserving and WORTH defending because the alternative that religious fanatics want to impose on us is UNACCEPTABLE and often so is our foreign policy. Wikileaks may in the end be a good thing IF the US scrupulously examines the etiology of its foreign policy and uses its might ONLY when it must. Our might TRULY must defend the right!