Is Julian Assange a conservative fifth columnist?

Assange’s stated purpose is to reveal America as an international mass-murdering right-wing bully. But the stolen State Department cables Assange released to the media keep showing the very opposite: America as an international hyper-liberal busy-body. In an item posted by Daniel Greenfield, we learn that in January 2007 the State Department ordered its officials in France to use French media to pressure the French government to “empower” France’s “disenfranchised” Muslim minorities (what? they didn’t have the vote?) who at that moment happened to be rioting and burning cars throughout France, while the French police stood back and let them riot.

Greenfield makes a mistake in his introduction, however. He says it was the Obama administration that was doing this. In January 2007, George W. Bush was president, and the woman he publicly described as his “sister,” Condoleezza Rice, was the Secretary of State. While I doubt that the following criticism applies to Greenfield, who is a smart fellow, many conservatives remain unable to grasp the simple fact that Bush was a hyper-liberal. Specifically, in his solicitude to empower minority groups as minority groups (as stated in the 2007 cable); in his mantra that all peoples in the world deserve democracy just as they are, through the agency of the United States government; in his insistence on treating all American air travelers as equally suspect of being terrorists as young Muslim men; and in his openly stated desire to Hispanicize the United States, Bush was not even a right-liberal (who believes in individual rights based on natural law), he was a left-liberal (who believes in unconditional openness to all groups and equality of outcome for all groups).

Greenfield writes:

Back at the Wikileaks ranch meanwhile, more information on just how Obama turned the entire apparatus of American foreign policy into a vehicle for promoting the will and whim of the Dar Al Islam. [LA replies: No, it was the conservative Republican Bush who turned the entire apparatus of American foreign policy into a vehicle for promoting the will and whim of the Dar Al Islam.]

The U.S. State Department directed its staff to “engage” and help to “empower” France’s Muslim minorities, according to classified documents released by WikiLeaks and reviewed by WND.

The cables reveal U.S. government staff were instructed to use the French media to educate that country’s public on minority issues and to improve the lot of French Arabs and Muslims. The process called for “considerable discretion, sensitivity and tact.”

A cable dated January 2007 and directed to various U.S. missions in France outlined that the U.S. government must show it “takes seriously the threat of disenfranchised and disadvantaged minorities around the world, including in France, and we are committed to empowering minorities as part of our fundamental belief in participatory democracy.”

The directive accused the French news media of “falling short both in its coverage of discrimination towards them (French Arab and Muslims) and of juvenile delinquency among them.”

U.S. staff members in France were asked to engage in a French news media blitz “to convey official policy messages” on the issue of France’s Arab and Muslim minorities.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 03, 2010 07:21 PM | Send