Are Western Governments Taking their Power too Far?

Upon reading Jeff Cohen's piece, "Commentary: Ecuador embassy threatened after aiding Julian Assange ", I thought a lot about everything that America does in the name of "democracy." The piece was about how the British government wanted he Ecuadorian embassy in London to give up prisoner Julian Assange so that he could be sent to Sweden to be prosecuted. But many people were suspicious that the western governments were working together to squeeze a smaller country so that he could be prosecuted on publication crimes, not sexual assault as they claimed. I agree with Cohen in that I do not condone sexual assault, but I also feel that the western governments should not have the right to prosecute Assange on publishing crimes.

I was thinking about all of the times that governments like the U.S. have unlawfully imprisoned people under the theory that they are creating democracy. History textbooks condone this theory, kids grow up believing that the U.S. is always the hero of wartime. Less time is spent talking about all the innocent lives that were lost in incidents like the bombing of Hiroshima.

The U.S. always uses this theory in talking about the war on terror as well. Every time we torture someone, it is justified as helping us to catch the bad guys. But when an American is tortured or killed by a terror group, the U.S. sees it as an act of terror. Though this is something that I personally believe to be true, I feel that the media needs to do a better job of educating Americans about how many terror groups have formed because they feel oppressed by western governments, not simply to wage war on whoever they please.

I feel that the espionage charges that the U.S. have been placing on journalistic whistleblowers are incredibly unlawful because of the first amendment. Journalists themselves have not been prosecuted, simply the people from government agencies that released the documents to journalists. But in this day and age, with so many people that are able to produce content online through blogs, who is to say who is a journalist and who is not?