Shooting the Messenger

Taking an almost random sample of the response to the Wikileaks revelations of the criminal slaughter of Afghan civilians by the overwhelmingly U.S military, Foxnews diatribe by Gutfeld is perhaps the local maxima.

It’s curious that while Gutfeld is accusing Julian Assange of selectivity in what he is choosing to leak: “The fact is, their goal is to “expose” only the people they hate — meaning the U.S military — and get famous for it”, Gutfeld’s diatribe is significantly greater in it’s selectivity and hypocrisy.

Taking an almost random sample of the response to the Wikileaks revelations of the criminal slaughter of Afghan civilians by the overwhelmingly U.S military, Foxnews diatribe by Gutfeld is perhaps the local maxima.

It’s curious that while Gutfeld is accusing Julian Assange of selectivity in what he is choosing to leak: “The fact is, their goal is to “expose” only the people they hate — meaning the U.S military — and get famous for it”, Gutfeld’s diatribe is significantly greater in it’s selectivity and hypocrisy.

That is, in Gutfeld’s view, war crimes are committed by anyone other than the U.S. military. When the U.S. military kills Afghan civilians, it’s justified as a “to-do list”. This is while the U.S. is bound by international war crimes treaties including the Geneva convention, under article 6 of the U.S. constitution. When the U.S. military continuously covers up these murders, this is selectively chosen by Gutfeld to be “we’re fighting evil here”. However, when Hamas launches home made rockets that kill less civilians in Israel than motor vehicles, or when Taliban set off IED’s aimed at military targets, that’s terrorism, i.e a crime.

As Gutfeld says war is reprehensible in all forms. The question is, will Gutfeld acknowledge that all lives are equally worth saving, and not befall racism by assuming U.S. lives have greater value, and that the U.S. military is above the international treaties it is bound to? The key point behind the Wikileaks revelations are that the U.S. presence in Afghanistan has escalated the conflict. The U.S. as the most militarily powerful actor has the power to simply cease the conflict, but due to the financial interests of the backers of the conflict, chooses not to. Wikileaks exposing the truth of the colonial adventure has also exposed the edifice of such pro-war advocates as Gutfeld and Foxnews.