LIMITED FREEDOM

If we go by popular media, Americans love to say “It’s a free country.” They express pride in their freedom but as the rest of the world knows to its peril, American freedom does not always allow for the freedom of other nations. In fact, it usually comes at the expense of some other nation’s freedom.

Wikileaks should be applauded for living up to a quintessentially American ideal – the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press. Instead, the USA is persecuting it, appearing to put far more effort into this than they have into nabbing any terrorist group. President Obama, who was the source of hope and inspiration to many around the world, now seems to be no less imperialist than any of his predecessors. It is unfortunate that he may feel compelled to defend a war he did not start but one cannot feel too sorry for him when there is evidence of innocent lives being recklessly taken by US soldiers with the same careless abandon they might use while playing a video game.



Shocking yet true. While there is outrageous uproar on ‘security concerns’ and ‘treason’, there is no denial of the facts. What is even more distressing is that the debate is centred on whether or not Wikileaks has any moral right to do what it did rather than on whether the US war policies & practices are moral or not!

For all the rhetoric around US soldiers risking their lives to protect ‘freedom’, the real heroes are the whistle-blowers who have the courage to stand up for what really matters. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan – those who still believe in the good intentions of the USA waging war on foreign soil are either hopelessly naive or themselves malicious warmongers.

And to be fair, the USA is not the only government and military keeping secrets from its citizens. This is probably why few countries are offering Wikileaks tacit support in the terms of non-prosecution. Indeed, most governments are probably hoping that the US will deal with Wikileaks before it becomes their problem.

As ordinary citizens, we reserve the right to know. But do we really want to know? If we criticise and condemn, do we not have to make things right? That takes some hard work. First, accepting that a mistake has been made in our name, then that we are now responsible for correcting the situation – for holding accountable the people we have chosen to represent us.

As an Indian, I do realize how difficult this is to do. As comedian Vir Das put it, when we were struggling for freedom, we had politicians who went to jail but were not criminals and today we have politicians who are criminals but don’t go to jail.

The definitions of ‘freedom’ have always been flexible – it’s up to us to decide whether we feel safe with the limited freedom our governments want us to have or if we have the courage to fight & stand for unrestricted freedom, which involves having to deal with unpalatable truths. And please let’s not use patriotism or any other ‘ism’ as an excuse for our reluctance to face up to true criticism. True freedom, like everything else worth having, comes at a price.