[lbo-talk] On Wikileaks

[c b]

The Pentagon Papers had a context, a very large and militant anti-war
movement. There is no evidence that they _directly_ changed anyone's
mind; they gave some added vigor to the movement, and they _may_ have
shifted the perspective of some of those who were already marginally
active. They did nothing by themselves.

Carrrol

^^^^^^^
CB: U r correct. The Vietnamese were a leftwing adversary. A
substantial portion of the US's current war adversaries are
right-wingers. There was also a Soviet Union at the time of the
Pentagon Papers. It was a very much more left world.

My question implicitly included the notion "what about the impact of
the Pentagon Papers in context and in conjunction with other factors
?" Despite a more rightwing , interimperialist rivalry character to
today's context as compared with the Vietnam era,  it cannot be said
with certainty that the wikileaks' context and other factors at play
in conjunction with them will have a "null" effect today.   U cannot
be sure that Julio is wrong.


>CB: What about the impact of the Pentagon Papers ?