Wikileaks, Transparency and You

The current Wikileaks imbroglio forces many thoughts to surface, not the least of which is that I find myself agreeing with some public figures with whom I rarely find common ground and disagreeing with others whose political positions are usually closer to mine.  While I acknowledge the need for some level of secrecy in governmental dealings, I am not of the mind that official secrets should remain so in perpetuity.  The damage risk from disclosure seems to pale against the risk from the possibility that those in power can pull the wool over our eyes with no fear of exposure.

That said, what Wikileaks teaches the rest of us--those of us not running governments--is that virtually anything we do can become public knowledge at some point.  Remarks that might otherwise be construed as catty, however honest and forthright, are probably best kept out of our correspondence.  And when things are going badly, as they certainly seem to be with efforts to form a legitimate government in Afghanistan, at some point we need to be honest with those whose trust we need (the electorate for public officials and constituents for school heads and board chairs).  

From Washington to Tehran to you, it is getting harder and harder to keep things under wraps.  We can bemoan the death of secrecy (I'm not really sure it was ever alive in the first place) or we can figure out how to lead in the open.  It might make realpolitik a bit tougher, but it will likely avert a great many embarassments and phone calls to explain what we really meant by what we wrote/said.