I should be up front that while I’ve loosely followed the story of the recent Wikileaks, um, leaks, I’m not very comfortable with my sense of the specifics of the laws that may have been broken, or the potential damage that may arise. That said, Andrew Sullivan’s recent defense of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange seems weak to me. He first notes a compelling argument from Joe Klein that the leaks may result in the death of people working with the US in trouble spots like Afghanistan. Sullivan then states…

This is indeed a terrible possibility, but would arresting Assange really put an end to Wikileaks or something like it? The point, surely, is that Assange is to Wikileaks as bin Laden is to al Qaeda or Mark Zuckerberg is to Facebook.

Certainly there is a “whack a mole” element to prosecuting/assassinating some of these people, but is Sullivan really arguing that we shouldn’t go after Osama bin Laden just because his organization will doubtless continue without him?

And can any reasonable person really argue against assassinating Mark Zuckerberg?