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Wikileaks: Undiplomatic Diplomacy
Jules Witcover
Thanks to that latest Internet spawn called WikiLeaks, the world now knows that diplomats like all other human creatures gossip, tattle on each other and even on occasion bend the truth to their own purposes.
This disclosure calls to mind that delicious scene in "Casablanca" wherein
A significant element in the art of diplomacy has always been dissembling. Customarily, though, it's couched in careful observations designed to persuade, rather than in offhand comments that alienate, as much of the latest WikiLeaks "dump" seems bent on achieving.
The most salacious of the revelations appear to use distinctly undiplomatic descriptions of certain foreign leaders that are so simplistic that they reflect more on the speaker than on his target. Example: that Russian President
Other U.S. cable leaks put into words what had long ago been said or known publicly, such as the characterization of French President
Nor is
But courtesy seems to have become a general casualty in the current breakdown of discourse in both public and private conversation. One longs for a return to the balanced slander of the late Democratic Sen.
More than discourteous language is at stake, however, in the leaks of the American diplomatic cables. The report that
More directly involving American interests is a leaked cable in which President
The cable says Saleh complained to Petraeus about the collateral damage to innocent civilians, which were attributed to the Yemeni air force but actually were flown by American pilots. But Saleh is represented as telling Petraeus, then running the U.S. Central Command in the whole region but now the American commander in
The comment is not the sort needed to sustain the reputation for candor and the general credibility that Petraeus has so widely enjoyed, particularly in his own country, as he continues to be the point man in President Obama's efforts to extricate America from the
This latest avalanche of leaked diplomatic cables has offered little of the punch of the earlier documents that graphically challenged administration representations of military progress in both
Nevertheless, the American news media, a select segment of which got the cables from WikiLeaks and others that have piggy-backed on them, have devoted an immoderate amount of space and on-air commentary to the combination of insight, intrigue and just plain gossip.
Meanwhile, the professional journalism trade increasingly limps along with diminished revenue and manpower, and in many cases diminishing initiative, to do the investigative work of its own that once was its brightest light.
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Wikileaks: Undiplomatic Diplomacy
(c) 2010 Jules Witcover