The only time it’s appropriate to open your mouth in America is when you’re drinking the Kool-Aid
I woke up on Tuesday morning, Sept. 11, and carried out my usual routine of checking the morning news, except that I decided to see what the other side had to say. I typed in “Foxnews.com,” and almost instantly I was bombarded with at least a dozen articles, videos and features with terms like “9/11,” “War on Terrorism,” “remembrance.” But what really caught my eye was a video entitled, in large block letters, “Baker: America Has Forgotten to Keep Its Mouth Shut”, so naturally, I clicked on it.
Mike Baker was a former CIA Covert Operations officer, co-founder and President of Diligence LLC. He was on with Don Harman, (who was wearing a cowboy hat on live television), to talk about The New York Times’s most recent sensation, No Easy Day, by author Michael Owen (pseudonym). The book is a first-hand account of a Navy Seal, who was subsequently identified by the media as Michael Bissonnette, who participated in the operation that found and killed Osama Bin Laden. Bissonnette justifies the book’s publication as part of his duty as an American to notify the rest of the world about what really happened during the operation, and his personal experience as a Navy Seal, from training until said operation.
In the interview, Mike Baker states that Michael Owen, the author, was outwardly defying U.S. Navy protocol, his right as a citizen, and was going against his principles and moral compass by publishing that book, stating that it is “classified information” that the public has no right to know. Don Harman pointed out that Owen said that he wrote the book to correct some of the false information given out by White House officials on the day of the announcement. Then Baker rebuked, saying “cork the pie-hole, it’s not up to him to set the record straight.” He believes that the Seal violated his principles and his morals by publishing the book. This is a little ironic, seeing as the author stated that his reasons for publishing were to the exact contrary; he believed he was honouring his morals and principles.
No Easy Day has created a large controversy in America over its publication, and is seen by some army officials as defiance of the outfit and an outright violation of his permitted rights, which, according to Defence Secretary Leon Panetta, “cannot go unpunished.” On the other hand, many media officials and analysts stated that in reality he was not actually releasing classified information, merely the event as experienced by him.
In the socio-political oxymoron that is free America, where the word freedom has been dropped every few seconds (in a neo-Martin Luther King voice) in this years election speeches, one man who shared his experience in Afghanistan, in a war and an operation that American citizens pay for. Apparently, this is a violation of his rights, and when they put freedom of speech in the Bill of Rights, they were only joking. So, to any Navy Seals out there who are thinking of publishing a diary, the message is clear: shut up, please.
