At the University of Michigan, where I attend college, we organized a day on the center of campus in which a group of students wore the Wikileaks map of Iraq showing the unaccounted villages that had been destroyed by American occupation. Many on campus were stunned at the level of information the government withheld concerning Iraq, and sought to learn more about the Wikileaks project in itself.
When information such as this is revealed we begin to question what are the true intentions of our government, and the fact that there is classified information may be a reason to question the confidentiality in itself. This all goes back to a central concern when teaching history. History can be taught in which ever way it is chosen to be told. Our government has chosen to tell us bits and pieces of our nation’s history in an attempt to maintain public support and justify unlawful incursions on civilian populations. The government is very well aware that without its public it could not survive so the use of war and fear of terrorism seems ideal as a way of intimidating the people into support. Just as we were being falsely taught information about Columbus “discovering America” in elementary school, we are unaware of all the information that our government fails to tell us. This is why it is central to continue to question what we are told and never blindly follow what it is that others tell us, whether it is from a teacher or by government officials.
I find the Pentagon Papers to be applicable to the present given the relevance it has in a nation that has invested its interests across the globe through occupation and acquisition of foreign resources. The Pentagon Papers marked a period in which the Johnson administration failed to inform the American public about details concerning the Vietnam War, and revealed that it was blatant lie that the United States government didn’t plan on invading Vietnam. Presently, we are dealing with similar leaks of classified information including the recent Wikileaks, which revealed among other things, the failure of the United States government to tell its people about masses of Iraqi civilians that were massacred without being accounted for.
