Posts Tagged ‘Jamie Rubin’

WikiLeaks on Public TV: Defending the 'Interests of the West'

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

Last night's broadcast of the PBS NewsHour (11/29/10) offered a discussion of the WikiLeaks documents. Who were the guests? As Judy Woodruff announced: "We turn to two former national security advisers with extensive experience in making and carrying out U.S. foreign policy. " That would be Carter's Zbigniew Brzezinski and George W. Bush's Stephen Hadley. The discussion was about as illuminating as one might expect.

Hours later on the Charlie Rose show, guest host Jon Meacham featured a typical Charlie Rose discussion: two reporters from the New York Times and former Clinton State Department aide Jamie Rubin. The Times reporters more or less retold stories they are reporting in the paper, so it was left to Rubin to hurl accusations against WikiLeaks:

I think the widespread dissemination of pretty much everything that the U.S. State Department does is an attack on the U.S. ability to operate in the world.  It's not on one policy, like I'm against Iraq War or I'm against the Afghan War.  It's an attack against the American government's ability to conduct its foreign policy, meaning America's being attacked in a cyber attack by a particular group of individuals who are trying to harm American foreign policy and therefore America, and therefore, in my opinion, harm the interests of the West.

Rubin went on to add:

And ironically, the State Department are the people who are trying to do the job that the WikiLeaks founder says he's trying to do, which is world peace.  It's not going to happen if the State Department can't make secret agreements sometimes with foreign leaders.

I wasn't aware that the State Department's job is to create world peace. But Jamie Rubin worked there, so he'd know better.