Wikileaks document dump: not a triumph for anti-war forces, and not likely to result in War Crimes prosecutions

The giant Wikileaks document-dump has taken place, and all of the usual political elements are in place to regard this as a victory for anti-war, and international law proponents. Superficially, this is true, insofar as US national military forces are dismayed by the release, and insofar as the detailed reports of war are off-putting to many people.

Blunt assessment. Wikileaks release does not legally threaten any significant war-crimes issue for the US, or for any significant number of US soldiers. Moreover, these leaks are more likely to support more war-making than not. Why?

There are two potential US war crimes listed in this article.

1.

Insurgents try to surrender to helicopter gunship, and are gunned down. Unnattractive, and one can easily envision how technological advancement would create additional ethical problems, but US Army lawyer is correct. Individual soldiers cannot surrender to attack aircraft.

The easiest means of understanding this is to use the reciprocity principle. Can attack aircraft or a bomber surrender to an anti-aircraft battery? Not really, and in the same way, ground forces cannot practically surrender to aerial units, except possibly, when large military units engage in mass surrender.

This becomes all the more clear when one considers that aerial assault normally engages forces which are surrounded by their compatriots. Even if one were to imagine that helicopters could drop down to pick up the prisoners (something which is not in fact true, because helicopters will normally have either a configuration, or a load of friendly forces which prevent this) the surrounding enemy forces would attack the aircraft when it slows and enters a vulnerable takeoff and landing phase.

Even for enemy soldiers on the front lines, surrender would require advancing accross no-mans land to meet the enemy. It is unlikely that the soldiers who wanted to surrender would be able to do so on many occasions, because their military compatriots beside and behind them would not allow this. As a practical matter, attack aircraft perform more as munitions than as merciful soldiers in war.

2.

Hundreds of civilians killed at US military checkpoints. Use of completely lethal force, without any particular restraint meets the proportionate use of force standards required in international law because of the use of suicide bombing attack vehicles by Iraqi resistance elements.

Beyond any question of accidental running of military checkpoints by Iraqis, it is highly believable that Iraqi civilians would in fact attempt to run military checkpoints because of the large number of criminals who set up checkpoints for the purposes of theft, and often kidnapping. Thus, while trigger happy action by US forces is likely enough, nothing about gunning down a civilian family stands out as a likely abuse on the basis of the existance of such casualties.

------

I would further note that the Wikileaks documents indicate that Iranian forces supported insurgents, trained forces which kidnapped/prisoner-snatched US military personell, and provided chemical weapons for terrorist use.

This information is very likely to be at least partially untrue, and even in the case that it was not, would fall under the heading of covert actions by states, which should be expected, and which would better be ignored on a small scale, than dealt with openly.

With the open release of these reports, the most significant effect will be the strengthening of the hands of those supporting a war with Iran.

It is in fact, not unlikely that the person or persons who leaked this information, in fact did so as a way of boosting US Iranian tensions. Indeed it is quite possible that a foreign intelligence service was involved in this leak, with most of the nations in the Mideast, and several Lebanese and Iraqi factions being likely candidates for such action. Many of these nations have the necessary capabilities due to proximity of US forces, technical skill, or the presence of large numbers of expatriates, or ethnic compatriots in the US military (particularly important to Lebanese factions).

I do not say that Wikileaks is necessarily a great force for evil because of this, but the release of these reports is not a great triumph for the anti-war movement considering just what was released, and considering the timing of the release, after such point as withdrawal from Iraq has become a moot point from a political standpoint in the US.



This is an excellent example of how government leaks can be more a matter of law-breaking, or civil-disobedience, than a matter of simple government openness.

Death by a thousand cuts: micropayments and journalism

Wikimedia Commons

Pressed by the economic crisis, weakened newspapers are beginning to crumple, with The Tribune Co. and Minneapolis Star Tribune bankrupt, and the New York Times in hock to Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim. Naturally, this is alarming to those in the media, and commentators are weighing in with schemes to solve the problem.

What is interesting, and probably alarming for those people who like newspapers and journalists, is just how many crucial points these rescuers miss, and not just crucial shortcomings of newspapers (and there are plenty) but crucial points about the proposed solutions themselves. Time Magazine's cover story is as good a place to start as any. In Walter Isaacson's piece How to Save Your Newspaper, he suggests that the solution is micropayments.

The key to attracting online revenue, I think, is to come up with an iTunes-easy method of micropayment. We need something like digital coins or an E-ZPass digital wallet — a one-click system with a really simple interface that will permit impulse purchases of a newspaper, magazine, article, blog or video for a penny, nickel, dime or whatever the creator chooses to charge.

The dubious viability of micropayment schemes is not exactly unknown to internet users. Has Isaacson somehow failed to get the message? Apparently not.

Admittedly, the Internet is littered with failed micropayment companies. If you remember Flooz, Beenz, CyberCash, Bitpass, Peppercoin and DigiCash, it's probably because you lost money investing in them. Many tracts and blog entries have been written about how the concept can't work because of bad tech or mental transaction costs.

From the sound of things, he has in fact been burned already by this notion. Surely then Isaacson has a new angle on the subject; a new and reformed micropayment system? Unfortunately not. Isaacson has been burned, but refuses to acknowledge that the stove is hot.

But things have changed. "With newspapers entering bankruptcy even as their audience grows, the threat is not just to the companies that own them, but also to the news itself," wrote the savvy New York Times columnist David Carr last month in a column endorsing the idea of paid content. This creates a necessity that ought to be the mother of invention. In addition, our two most creative digital innovators have shown that a pay-per-drink model can work when it's made easy enough: Steve Jobs got music consumers (of all people) comfortable with the concept of paying 99 cents for a tune instead of Napsterizing an entire industry, and Jeff Bezos with his Kindle showed that consumers would buy electronic versions of books, magazines and newspapers if purchases could be done simply.

It would seem very reasonable to define "bankrupt" as meaning that people do NOT need or want your services enough to pay for them in their current form. "But things have changed" is precisely the sentiment that has brought a form of prosperity to Las Vegas, and the reverse of prosperity to millions of individuals throughout history. To be sure, necessity IS the mother of invention, but invention means CHANGING a mechanism to obtain a result. Needing or wanting are not, as several billion desperately poor people around the globe can tell you, the same as invention.

Not only is this solution illogical, but Isaacson has committed a minor journalistic atrocity by slapping us, yet again, with overly mentioned fads like the iPod and Kindle. Most of the 'Dot Bombs" were popular with somebody, but just HOW popular matters a great deal. It is far from clear that the Kindle for example, can be viewed as a substitute for anything, rather than being an additional income and distribution opportunity, being supplemental just as web advertising is for newspaper publishers, and a convenient means of distribution, just like impulse-buy bookracks at gas stations, druggists, and grocery stores.

Isaacson should note that Steve Jobs and the iPod (which are more significant in music than the Kindles is in publishing) have NOT in fact, stanched the bleeding in the record industry. The public has little enough to worry about in this, because the record industry does not in fact contribute especially much to the content and normally musicians get only a small portion of the income from album sales, but a newspaper publisher is not 95% a groupie hanger-on like a record label.

The real problem with Isaacson's suggestions however, is not in his overenthusiasm for the iPod or Kindle, but is rather in his failure to recognize the lessons that their example presents. The best example is in the most important of the two; iTunes and the iPod. Apple did NOT by any means "permit impulse purchases of a newspaper, magazine, article, blog or video for a penny, nickel, dime or whatever the creator chooses to charge." To the contrary, the iPod was successful PRECISELY because they did not permit price variation, but sold all songs at a flat fee (Apple apparently intends to tamper with their model, but the business was built on flat fee).

Looking at iTunes, we also have a big hint as to why past micropayment schemes have not worked well. SOME people are willing to cough up 99 cents for a song, although this is certainly not the only source of music ultimately supplied to iPods. Any song purchased can be listened to again and again, and more importantly, if you pick your songs with foreknowledge, you will WANT to listen to the song repeatedly. This is NOT true of most newspaper articles. Most of the things that micropayments could be used for have been overpriced. To be fair to Isaacson, he is not completely unaware of the problem.

Under a micropayment system, a newspaper might decide to charge a nickel for an article or a dime for that day's full edition or $2 for a month's worth of Web access. Some surfers would balk, but I suspect most would merrily click through if it were cheap and easy enough.

This is not exactly a bad analysis, but it isn't enough to work with either. A person buying a newspaper has traditionally expected to be making what is essentially a micropayment that will provide them with a broad selection of current news and entertainment. Nobody was willing to pay for individual articles in the past, and there is no reason to expect that this has changed. A dime for a days access to the paper would not be unreasonable, at least if the buyer can easily download individual articles in handy, can-be-passed-around-freely form, but access would need to be at minimum, access to the entire paper. Everyone who has read newspapers or magazines is used to a headline or title story not being as interesting as expected, and the fact that magazines and newspapers are sold to readers, while tracts are sold only TO proselytizers rather than BY newsstands shows that article by article sales are not a viable business model.