Governments have always been extremely secretive about their military operations, and usually it is with good reason. The safety of the troops and the mission requires those in the armed forces to keep tight-lipped about what’s going on the ground. But what if the secrecy was in place to cover up military mistakes and agendas that are condemned by the rest of the world? Today, the website Wikileaks released about ninety thousand pieces of documents that revealed sensitive military operations conducted by the United States of America in Afghanistan during the past 6 years. To be fair, the documents were from the time before President Barack Obama’s new strategy for Afghanistan. Is this move by Wikileaks a strike to international stability and security or is it a victory for those seeking more transparency and accountability in an illegal war (illegal because Congress never officially declared war)?

The documents themselves range from things like secret meeting notes to collateral casualty reports on the civilian population in Afghanistan. The most startling discovery revealed showed that the Pakistani government secretly supported the Taliban through their intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The Pakistani government receives more than $1 billion a year, and now we know some of that money might have been used to kill American troops. The interesting thing is that the White House acknowledged the ties between Pakistani and the Taliban when asked to comment about this extraordinary leak of information. Now can you imagine the U.S. government telling us any of this voluntarily without Wikileaks forcing this information into the light? It’s easy if you try because the U.S. would never ever do that.

The world finally has a whistle blowing organization that can create some kind of transparency in the illegal military activities going on today. Wikileaks might or might not interfere with military operations or the safety of the troops overseas, but at least the people of the world is finally able to get a better picture on how the war is going; it’s not going that well. These documents show just how little progress American troops have made and how counterproductive it is to fight an enemy who is being helped by our “ally” Pakistan. In the world of secret military operations and murderous helicopter attacks on innocent reporters, there needs to be a Wikileaks to create accountability for an organization that is made out of a sea of drones following orders. The U.S. military should not forget the people it serves, and the right we have to know what is being done under our names and tax dollars. We need to see who is responsible for heinous war crimes and hold those people accountable for covering it up. It is true that revealing this kind of classified information might be risky to national security and detrimental to foreign relationships, but withholding the true activities and actions of our government will be dangerous to the democracy of the people.