The Legal Logic of Military Occupation
Wall Street Journal Opinion about Julian Assange applies same reasoning as the German administration of occupied Poland in 1939-1945.
The Wall Street Journal’s June 25 Opinion Julian Assange Is No Hero, reminds me of the German occupation of Poland in 1939-1945. As the WSJ editors wrote:
Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo once described WikiLeaks as “a nonstate hostile intelligence service,” and the label fits. When the U.S. indicted Mr. Assange under the Espionage Act in 2019, Assistant Attorney General John Demers cited the totality of his conduct, soliciting and dumping online classified information that could put the lives of American allies in jeopardy: “No responsible actor—journalist or otherwise—would purposely publish the names of individuals he or she knew to be confidential human sources in war zones.”
When the German army invaded Poland in 1939 and occupied it until 1945, the occupational authorities did not allow press freedom. The fact that no one reported the conduct of the German military and SS in Poland during this period proved to be an essential element in the massive crimes committed by German military and paramilitary units in Poland during this period.
German authorities applied the legal logic of military occupation. The state and its military claimed that—due to the perils faced by military and police units—maintaining secrecy was necessary for conducting military and police operations.
US authorities claim that Assange’s crime was publishing documents that damaged US national security and put lives at risk. This included video footage of a US helicopter crew firing on civilians in Iraq, and details from diplomatic cables that were embarrassing to U.S. officials.
Assange and his lawyers claimed he had redacted material that could cost lives. They added that Assange was under no oath of allegiance to the United States and broke no US law. He acted as a publisher and reporter, not as a traitor. He did not reside in the US at the time and nor was he a US citizen. He is a foreign national who published documents of US military units firing on civilians, and US diplomatic, intelligence, and military units behaving in a variety of unlawful and unethical ways abroad.
It’s not enough for the US government and military to assure the American people that they would never act like the German administrators of occupied Poland. There must be some mechanism of holding the US government accountable for its actions abroad, or it will yield to the temptation to commit abuses.
As we have long understood, this is precisely the job and the duty of the press. Do the editors of the Wall Street Journal really not understand this, or are they so keen to maintain cosy relations with US government officials that they have adopted such as state-friendly posture?
Julian Assange exposed and embarrassed US government and military officials when they thought no one was watching and no one would hold them accountable. Naturally these officials were enraged by his actions and sought to punish him.
In our Constitutional Republic, our state officials should always consider the inherent hazard of using force to control foreign peoples, and do so only when it is absolutely necessary for defending the American homeland. Forcibly governing foreigners invariably leads to the use of methods that would shock the sensibilities of decent people back home.
Generally speaking, if the men and women who wield state power are so keen to keep their actions a secret, they should think hard about not committing them in the first place.
Got my first student discount subscription to the Wall Street Journal as a college sophomore in 1977. I kept the subscription for 43 years. I finally had had enough, watching what was once arguably the pinnacle of American journalism descend, slowly for many years and then quickly for the past five, into what it has become today, a Yellow Rag with 21st century pathology. That pathology was born of generational mis-education and of a burgeoning love of money, the main ingredients of the fall of America.
I was fond of participating in the online edition Comments section of articles, particularly opinion pieces, during my last years as a subscriber. Increasingly my comments, fact and opinion(one must know the difference) were taken down by the “moderators” or not allowed to be posted by the algorithms. This became so bad in 2020 that I could no longer stomach the subscription price or the product.
As Glenn Greenwald pointed out last week, the security state regularly misrepresents two important facts about Assange: First, they falsely suggest that, unlike other journalists, Assange never gave the US government advance notice and opportunity to review its trove of evidence; this is false. Assange, though under no actual obligation to do so, made precisely this offer to Hillary Clinton’s State Dept; State chose to refuse, preferring to villainize Assange later. Second, they falsely suggest that Assange put lives at risk, both of American soldiers and Iraqi collaborators. In fact, despite repeated demands for an example, as well as independent journalist investigations, there is no proof that a single life was lost due to the publication. MSM like WSJ continue to discredit themselves by publishing these lies.