Josh Marshall has created a firestorm among his liberal readership by coming out pretty strongly against the Manning and Snowden leaks. I think he gives a thoughtful, honest justification for his views, and the key to it is explained in these three paragraphs:
If you see the state as essentially malevolent or a bad actor then really anything you can do to put a stick in its spokes is a good thing. Same if you think the conduct of US foreign policy is fundamentally a bad thing. Then opening up its books for the world to see is a good thing simply because it exposes it or damages it. It forces change on any number of levels.
From that perspective, there’s no [sic] really no balancing to be done. All disclosure is good. Either from the perspective of transparency in principle or upending something you believe must be radically changed.
On the other hand, if you basically identify with the country and the state, then indiscriminate leaks like this are purely destructive. They’re attacks on something you fundamentally believe in, identify with, think is working on your behalf.
Marshall unapologetically associates himself with those in the third paragraph. He defends it by claiming that it is more "balanced". But what does balance mean in a world where power is so asymmetrically distributed? In any event, Marshall's allegiances lead him to write paragraphs like these:
Let me put my cards on the table. At the end of the day, for all its faults, the US military is the armed force of a political community I identify with and a government I support. I’m not a bystander to it. I’m implicated in what it does and I feel I have a responsibility and a right to a say, albeit just a minuscule one, in what it does. I think a military force requires a substantial amount of secrecy to operate in any reasonable way. So when someone on the inside breaks those rules, I need to see a really, really good reason. And even then I’m not sure that means you get off scott free. It may just mean you did the right thing.
So do I see someone who takes an oath and puts on the uniform and then betrays that oath for no really good reason as a hero? No.
The Snowden case is less clear to me. . . . [But] Snowden is doing more than triggering a debate. I think it’s clear he’s trying to upend, damage - choose your verb - the US intelligence apparatus and policies he opposes. The fact that what he’s doing is against the law speaks for itself. I don’t think anyone doubts that narrow point. But he’s not just opening the thing up for debate. He’s taking it upon himself to make certain things no longer possible, or much harder to do. To me that’s a betrayal. I think it’s easy to exaggerate how much damage these disclosures cause. But I don’t buy that there are no consequences. And it goes to the point I was making in an earlier post. Who gets to decide? The totality of the officeholders who’ve been elected democratically - for better or worse - to make these decisions? Or Edward Snowden, some young guy I’ve never heard of before who espouses a political philosophy I don’t agree with and is now seeking refuge abroad for breaking the law?
I don’t have a lot of problem answering that question.
I've always believed that Marshall, like most other mainstream journalists, suffers from what I would describe as Historical Vacuum Syndrome. He is a liberal critic of a system whose rules he basically approves of. He knows they are flawed, but show him a society in which they are not. So, he's right that identifying or not identifying with the government is certainly a factor that will shape your perception of these leaks, but I would add another factor, which is to ask: In which direction do you think our country is moving? Journalists with Historical Vacuum Syndrome don't ask that question.
If I thought that history was static or that things were headed mostly in the right direction, my position would be similar to Marshall's. I don't think that. I believe American history is trending in a bad direction. I was ready to hop on a more optimistic bus when Obama was elected--I really wanted to; I don't like being cynical--but it became clear fairly quickly that the system is running Obama rather than he running the system. For me, at least, it has become clear that the system has a mind and will of its own, and it's not taking us anywhere good. If you don't believe that, if you believe instead that there is nothing new under the sun, that we're in this static pattern of same old, same old, nothing new here, just business as usual, then you can, like Marshall does, adopt the kind of journalistic attitude that he articulates in his post. Me? Count me among those who favor putting a stick in the spokes.
Journalists like Marshall would argue that Historical Vacuum Syndrome is a virtue, that they are not in the business of making judgments about historical trajectories. So this leads them to accept the world as it is and play by the rules as they have been developed, no matter how rigged the game has become. "Are they any more rigged now than they have ever been?" they would retort. This is how I see Brooks, Friedman, and almost all the people who have chosen to make a career in American establishment journalism. How could it be otherwise for them? But as such, I'd argue, that they have become coopted defenders of a system that is out of control. The more embedded you are in the system, the harder it is to have any real perspective on it.
That's the difference in the end between Marshall and Snowden. Snowden understands better what's in control and what forces are driving it. He understands the enormity and the asymmetry, and his gesture, while ultimately futile, was an attempt to simply to say NO.