Why isn't Julian Assange in Guantanamo? Where are the drones?

Peter King, a member of the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee, said the latest release "manifests Mr Assange's purposeful intent to damage not only our national interests in fighting the war on terror, but also undermines the very safety of coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan".  BBC News

David Seaton's News Links

Let us assume for a moment that the United State of America is a democracy and it's officials represent the American people and that its institutions genuinely represent, define and defend the interests of the American people.

Let us also assume, merely for argument's sake, that as Congressman and member of the Homeland Security Committee of the House of Representatives, Peter King, says, the  release of the latest batch from Wikileaks proves Julian Assange's, "purposeful intent to damage not only our national interests in fighting the war on terror, but also undermines the very safety of coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan". 

Taking these two assumptions as true: that one, America's government has the democratic legitimacy to define and defend the interests of the American people, and two, Julian Assange is aiding the enemies of the United State in time of war, then the following question arises.

Why isn't Julian Assange either dead or imprisoned in the Guantanamo Bay prison camp?

If this question seems overly provocative,  a mere boutade, let me remind readers that at this very moment remote control, drone aircraft are probably flying the skies of Pakistan and Yemen, armed with rockets, looking to fire them at men, women and even children who the US government believes to have "purposeful intent to damage not only our national interests in fighting the war on terror, but also undermines the very safety of coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan". And of course, Guantanamo Bay prison is chock full of people held without trial or habeas corpus, who the US government believes to have "purposeful intent to damage not only our national interests in fighting the war on terror, but also undermines the very safety of coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan".

What makes Assange any different from all of them?

You might think it is because Julian Assange, although not a citizen of the United States, is an Australian and Australia is an American ally... But, there have been  quite a few Australians in Guantanamo and Brits and citizens of other allied countries and American drones over Pakistan have killed citizens of countries allied to the USA and even American citizens. 

What makes Assange any different from all of them? 

Frankly the only difference I can see is that Mr. Assange is not a Muslim.

It is hard not to come to the conclusion that the United States of America has finally gathered to itself, under one flag, all the venal, violent defects of a militaristic empire and combined them with all the potential feebleness of a democracy and the results of this mixture are being splashed all over the world's newspapers and the only reaction up till now is that Sweden is accusing Julian Assange of date-rape. DS

Drones and the banality of evil

What appears to be a group of Muslims at prayer, caught in the cross hairs of a US drone

I heard a drone pilot explain it this way: You're going to war for one hour, and then you get in the car and drive home, and within two minutes you're sitting at the dinner table talking about your kids' homework. This is a very different experience of war.(...) You can see the videos on YouTube. It's turning war for some into a form of entertainment. The soldiers call that "war porn." We can see more but experience less. P.W. Singer of the Brookings Institution interviewed in Der Spiegel

David Seaton's News Links

I have been reading about the lives of American drone pilots. These are men and women who punch in at the office and then spend their working hours killing people who are half a world away by remote control, without any physical risk to themselves and  then they punch out and go home to a perfectly normal American suburban family life. This is truly what Hannah Arendt spoke of when she coined the phrase, "the banality of evil".

If you look at the world we are creating, where very few people control almost all the resources and these resources are shrinking, and then we have a technology where this tiny minority can physically control the rest of the world's population at little physical risk to themselves, you can see that we are going down a very sinister path.

While reading about drone pilots, it came to me that this situation has the makings of a great film, something that in the hands of the right director, armed with the right script, could be a landmark in the history of the American cinema, because to me the situation sums up something about contemporary American life that troubles all of us, something about alienation and disconnection that is difficult to express in prose, something that requires the perfect metaphor. In my opinion the drone pilot's life is that metaphor.

Hollywood is all about archetypes, stereotypes and allegories.

To give you an idea of the possibilities, imagine if Billy Wilder had filmed the situation with Jack Lemon as the drone pilot... "The Apartment", with collateral damage.

Maybe you would prefer Alfred Hitchcock in the director's seat with Jimmy Stewart as the desk bound killer. How would Hitchcock work in the suspense?

How would John Ford have handled it with Henry Fonda as the pilot?

Who could do it best today? Who would you cast in it?

I would like to open a conversation about this "film to be" in order to further explore this metaphor of the banality of evil. DS