I confess to being a little mystified by the US reaction to the current crop of wikileaks documents. Much froth and splutter about their unacceptability, dottle and bile about lives at risk and what have you. It makes me wonder if they've actually stopped to think about what's come to light.
The big ones that the british media are running with, for example, do in fact rather help the US. Don't they look less warlike in the wake of the news that arab countries have been urging them to attack Iran? There we all were thinking that US aggression and imperialism in the middle east was one of the main drivers of global tension; now we discover that they've been positively restrained, all things considered, and as it turns out Saudi Arabia and Jordan actually agree with Israel about some aspects of foreign policy.
Furthermore the news that the Chinese are fairly relaxed about North Korea also points to a level of global consensus that we were unaware of. I don't know about you, but I take some solace from the implication that were those crazy Koreans to do something nuts then the Chinese wouldn't necessarily throw their weight behind them. Makes the world seem a little safer, does it not.
Oh, and Prince Andrew is a berk. Who knew?
Bearing all this in mind it seems to this uneducated commentator that the spluttering surrounding this current crop of revelations is more to do with a sense of outrage that the game isn't being played to their usual rules rather than any actually damaging exposes. They're like a bunch of MCC members coughing up their Gin and Tonics because a woman's been seen in the Long Room. Not Done, clearly, but hardly the end of the world.
The big ones that the british media are running with, for example, do in fact rather help the US. Don't they look less warlike in the wake of the news that arab countries have been urging them to attack Iran? There we all were thinking that US aggression and imperialism in the middle east was one of the main drivers of global tension; now we discover that they've been positively restrained, all things considered, and as it turns out Saudi Arabia and Jordan actually agree with Israel about some aspects of foreign policy.
Furthermore the news that the Chinese are fairly relaxed about North Korea also points to a level of global consensus that we were unaware of. I don't know about you, but I take some solace from the implication that were those crazy Koreans to do something nuts then the Chinese wouldn't necessarily throw their weight behind them. Makes the world seem a little safer, does it not.
Oh, and Prince Andrew is a berk. Who knew?
Bearing all this in mind it seems to this uneducated commentator that the spluttering surrounding this current crop of revelations is more to do with a sense of outrage that the game isn't being played to their usual rules rather than any actually damaging exposes. They're like a bunch of MCC members coughing up their Gin and Tonics because a woman's been seen in the Long Room. Not Done, clearly, but hardly the end of the world.
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