Friday, December 3, 2010

Feared Information to Expose Attitudes?

Michael Richardson reports:

WikiLeaks has disclosed that it controls 3,456 documents that relate to Taiwan. A spokesman for the American Institute in Taiwan, Christopher Kavanaugh, told the China Post, “We condemn such unauthorized disclosure.” The WikiLeaks documents originated at the AIT in Taipei and 1,425 are marked “confidential” with another 136 listed as “secret.”


Michael Turton shares the details on one leaked document.

Reading the tidbits, a question arises: do U.S. State Department officials turn off their minds when it comes to considering the clear distinction between Hong Kong's situation and history and Taiwan's situation? Are they thinking that Taiwan should be like Hong Kong?

There likely will not be any earth-shattering revelations from these documents. However, they will very probably give distinct clarity to the attitudes and operating worldviews of those in the U.S. State Department.

As more documents come out -- will we see a callous attitude towards Taiwan, human rights, and justice, an embrace of pragmatism?

Pragmatism is never pragmatic. There are always unintended and often disastrous consequences to carrying out seemingly pragmatic solutions instead of acting on principle.

In these past few decades, brutal communist regimes in North Korea and China are the result of U.S. State Department pragmatism.

In the mid-twentieth century, brutal fascist regimes were the result of the U.S. State Department pragmatism.

In the next few decades, detonation of nuclear weapons by Iran and North Korea or some terrorist organizations to which they were sold could be the outcome of current U.S. State Department pragmatism.

When has the State Department ever been a benefit to the United States, or to the world? When it acts on principles of democracy and inalienable human rights.

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