Tomorrow's historians will want to know what brought about the #Occupy movement (aside from the class war and obscene inequality.) A portion of the credit will go to WikiLeaks, which helped usher in this new age of activism. Its maverick journalism revealed the criminality and corruption of the ruling class as well as the potential power of citizen action. Along with Anonymous, Uncut and other anti-bank groups, the Arab uprisings, and the Wisconsin protests, WikiLeaks demonstrated the importance and possibility of confronting the established order.
And as the troops come home from Iraq, we should note that WikiLeaks helped end the American occupation of Iraq (to the extent that it's ending.)
There's understandable resistance on the left to claim the withdrawal of American troops as a significant victory -- understandable because of the death and destruction that has preceded it, and because some troops will remain as "trainers," to say nothing of mercenaries, and because the American embassy, the largest in the world, is essentially a military base.
But the facts remain: 1) Iraqis forced George Bush to accept the Status of Forces Agreement and 2) Iraqis forced President Obama to adhere to the SOFA. Yeah I'd say this is a victory over imperialism and the National Security State, however partial, although all the credit goes to the Iraqis and none to the American antiwar movement, if such a thing even exists.
Iraq and the United States tried for months to negotiate an agreement that would allow American troops to stay beyond the end of the year. The primary sticking point was immunity for American troops. Make no mistake: The United States wanted to keep to troops in Iraq...
Under intense U.S. pressure, Iraqi leaders announced early Wednesday they had agreed to start negotiations on keeping some American soldiers in the country after the current Dec. 31 deadline for all U.S. troops to have left Iraq.
...but insisted that they not be subject to Iraqi law. Prime Minister Al-Maliki refused, knowing the parliament wouldn't accept such an arrangement.
So how does WikiLeaks fit into this picture? Here's how.
The negotiations were strained following WikiLeaks' release of a diplomatic cable that alleged Iraqi civilians, including children, were killed in a 2006 raid by American troops rather than in an airstrike as the U.S. military initially reported.
Gotta love the corporate media: alleged? More like proved. Greenwald adds detail and provides perspective:
That description from CNN of the cable’s contents is, unsurprisingly, diluted to the point of obfuscation. That cable was released by WikiLeaks in May, 2011, and, as McClatchy put it at the time, “provides evidence that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence, during a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of Ishaqi.” The U.S. then lied and claimed the civilians were killed by the airstrike. Although this incident had been previously documented by the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, the high-profile release of the cable by WikiLeaks generated substantial attention (and disgust) in Iraq, which made it politically unpalatable for the Iraqi government to grant the legal immunity the Obama adminstration was seeking. Indeed, it was widely reported at the time the cable was released that it made it much more difficult for Iraq to allow U.S. troops to remain beyond the deadline under any conditions.
In other words, whoever leaked that cable cast light on a heinous American war crime and, by doing so, likely played some significant role in thwarting an agreement between the Obama and Maliki governments to keep U.S. troops in Iraq and thus helped end this stage of the Iraq war.
Elsewhere Greenwald uses headlines to remind us of just some of WL's other crime-and-corruption-exposing scoops.
Wikileaks releases video depicting US forces killing of two Reuters journalists in Iraq
'Ha ha, I hit 'em': Top secret video showing U.S. helicopter pilots gunning down 12 civilians in Baghdad attack leaked online
Iraq war logs: Secret order that let US ignore abuse
Iraq war logs reveal 15,000 previously unlisted civilian deaths
Clinton ordered American diplomats to spy on U.N. officials
Obama and GOPers Worked Together to Kill Bush Torture Probe
U.S. Pressured Germany Not To Prosecute CIA Officers For Torture And Rendition
Yemeni president lied about US strikes
Contrary to public statements, Obama admin fueled conflict in Yemen
Wikileaks: India 'tortured' Kashmir prisoners
UK training Bangladesh 'death squad'
WikiLeaks: Pope refused to cooperate in sex abuse investigation
Wikileaks, Open and shut: the case of the Honduran Coup
WikiLeaks cables: US special forces working inside Pakistan
Afghanistan war logs: Massive leak of secret files exposes truth of occupation
It's also widely accepted that WL helped to trigger the Arab Spring.
Not bad for a terrorist outfit.
Bradley Manning, by the way, is still in prison.