I only meant to point out that being an informant for occupying force is not some clear cut morally good situation from an outside POV on the informant, when the giving of information leads to:
- killing people by bombings
- locking people up without usual safety/legal process regards, and torturing them (either directly, or by having a pretty nasty jail)
Innocent people are often killed, and locked up. This is not some precise process.
Also being an informant druing war for one side is not the same thing as being an informant for police in the peaceful western country, or informing on curruption via leaks. These are wildly differing contexts.
You can't view informants with high regard, unviersally. People will falsely report on neigbours, to settle some past grudge, because they know trigger happy Americans will bomb/storm the place, if they can make the story plausible enough. Even if you assume good reports, bystanders get killed, or snatched up too. And through all this you have to still assume us-vs-them mentality, that all Taliban members are bad, and informing on them is good.
So there's a grain of truth in the view that was ascribed to Assange, above. But it's unreasonable, to go full way, and make all informants be traitors and whatnot.
There's this book, that makes good points about the complexity of the situation in Afghantistan, and the US intervention:
- killing people by bombings
- locking people up without usual safety/legal process regards, and torturing them (either directly, or by having a pretty nasty jail)
Innocent people are often killed, and locked up. This is not some precise process.
Also being an informant druing war for one side is not the same thing as being an informant for police in the peaceful western country, or informing on curruption via leaks. These are wildly differing contexts.
You can't view informants with high regard, unviersally. People will falsely report on neigbours, to settle some past grudge, because they know trigger happy Americans will bomb/storm the place, if they can make the story plausible enough. Even if you assume good reports, bystanders get killed, or snatched up too. And through all this you have to still assume us-vs-them mentality, that all Taliban members are bad, and informing on them is good.
So there's a grain of truth in the view that was ascribed to Assange, above. But it's unreasonable, to go full way, and make all informants be traitors and whatnot.
There's this book, that makes good points about the complexity of the situation in Afghantistan, and the US intervention:
https://www.amazon.com/No-Good-Men-Among-Living/dp/125006926...