Daniel Ellsberg displayed a great deal of courage in leaking and getting the Pentagon Papers published. As a person, I have done nothing that rises to that level.
Similar things could be said about Amy Goodman, who was beaten by Indonesian thugs while covering East Timor.
I don't fault either of these people much. Everyone makes errors in judgement, and my reasoning could be wrong too.
But the reason they have remained leading 'Antiwar' icons in the US (and not been assassinated, discredited, etc) is probably this: they both have a talent for both-sidesing. Many of the same people I knew who were demanding that we fight the Taliban, Saddam, or Gaddafi, or Maduro were also big fans of Ellsberg. Whatever they learned in reading the Pentagon Papers somehow didn't generalize much beyond Vietnam.
In a recent message delivering the sad news that he has cancer and will not be treating it, Ellsberg chooses to deploy both-sidesing with regards to the war in Ukraine.
Russia is making monstrous threats to initiate nuclear war to maintain its control over Crimea and the Donbas–like the dozens of equally illegitimate first-use threats that the U.S. government has made in the past to maintain its military presence in South Korea, Taiwan, South Vietnam,
Russia was merely stating Russian nuclear policy, which is essentially defensive, as compared with US nuclear policy, which is aggressive. Russia says it will use nukes to defend its existence as a state. US says it will US nukes whenever its interests are threatened.
Crimea and Donbas were part of Russia for over 200 years. They are populated by a majority or near majority of ethnic Russians who speak Russian. After the illegal US sponsored coup in Ukraine in 2014, the post-coup 'Ukrainian' government dominated by Banderite fascists made the Russian language illegal. Crimea then had a referendum in which the vast majority of Crimeans voted to join Russia. That result has since been verified by a large number of western-sponsored polls.
In 2014, Russia strongly discouraged a re-unification referendum in Donbas. Instead, a vote was taken on independence from Ukraine, which got a solid majority. That was 2014. In 2022 a vast majority of those in Donbas voted to join Russia.
These are nothing like US designs on Korea, Vietnam, and Taiwan. The US suppressed a vote on re-unification in Vietnam. The US was fighting in South Vietnam for a government most South Vietnamese hated and wanted to overthrow.
Western governments refuse to recognize these clear results, claiming that they were not monitored by official international monitors. But that was the choice of the 'International Monitors' who are, like the UN itself, largely dominated by US. They are simply never going to monitor a referendum that goes against US interests.
Daniel Ellsberg did not scoop the Mai Lai Massacre, Seymour Hersh did.
Daniel Ellsberg did not reveal the Gulf of Tonkin fabrication.
No one has ever given me a simple answer of what the Pentagon Papers revealed that should not already have been known to a thoughtful person. Of course the US was meddling in Vietnam against the will of most of the Vietnamese! Many if not most Americans did not need the Pentagon Papers to reveal what a catastrophic sham the Vietnam War was.
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