US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta quickly condemned the action caught on tape. Yet what shows a more callous disregard for life: What these Marines did or Panetta’s recent re-authorization of calculated drone strikes in Pakistan?

A detailed study by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism finds that between 391 and 780 civilians have been killed by drone strikes since 2004, including 175 children. Drone attacks have increased under US president Barack Obama’s command, with 259 strikes since he took office. Tariq Aziz, 16 years old, was killed by a drone within 72 hours after he attended an anti-drone strike conference. His 12-year-old cousin was also killed in the October 2011 attack (“Bureau reporter meets 16-year-old three days before US drone kills him,” November 4th, 2011).

This is not “Obama cleaning up the mess Bush got us in.” This is murder as a pillar of the Obama administration’s policy. Saying that it isn’t important or that it’s okay because these people might harbor militants is saying that the lives of the villagers are not important. If they are dismembered by explosions or crushed in their own homes after a nearby blast, that’s their problem. If they are terrorized by the constant prospect of sudden death from the sky, that’s just fine.

The drone attack policy treats the lives of bystanders as unimportant compared to any risk to American lives in missions that minimize the risks of those bystanders. Or maybe Pakistani lives are just less important than the resources such missions would require. It is a devaluing of the lives of people who happen to live elsewhere. This understandably stirs hatred toward the United States and the people who live here.

Nationalism and the operation of the state devalue human life. The “others” who aren’t supposed to matter are the ones violence is projected upon. In varying degrees, people attacked by police, immigrants who disappear into detention centers, and people in the way of military power projection are subject to violence the state regards as legitimate.

The desecration of corpses is an expression of disregard for human life that is not easy to hide or spin. Maybe that is why the government is investigating the men in this video, yet threatened to shoot the messenger when WikiLeaks released the Collateral Murder video. The pilots who giggled about shooting into a van being used to evacuate wounded people, showing complete disregard for the children they shot, have not been punished. But the soldier who allegedly leaked the video was put in solitary confinement for 10 months and threatened with execution.

The development of massive and diverse movements against established power is promising for the future of human life, liberty, and dignity. They can call out the crimes of governments and make the political environment less friendly toward oppression. They can undermine politicians’ sources of power by dispersing state power and developing and defending better options outside the system. The status quo is killing people.

But those of us who harbor no sympathy for bin Laden shouldn’t be blinded by patriotic or victory euphoria. The death of bin Laden does not solve the problems that enabled his rise to fame.

The projection of US government power around the world increases hostility toward Americans and the West. The United States has installed, and currently supports, governments that ruthlessly oppress and severely impoverish people — including governments that murder protesters to stay in power. This in turn rouses sympathy or even allegiance to those who fight or murder Americans.

According to many sources, the flexing of US imperial muscle had included support for bin Laden during the fight against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. True or not, it’s believable — and widely considered an example of how political figures change from good guys to bogeymen depending on the uses that US power has for them.

Waving flags and victory signs cannot cover those rotting in Guantanamo without trial, cannot hide the images of torture at military prisons, and cannot refute the fact that the empire punishes an alleged whistleblower while honoring the anonymous “troops” who committed the crimes bravely revealed to the public. Nor can it compensate for the immigrants confined in homeland Guantanamos crafted in the war on terror, or the police state that intrudes ever more into the lives of Americans and the lives of those on the receiving end of American power worldwide.

The national “unity” of September 11 that Obama celebrated in his victory speech was really bellicose nationalism that enabled more war against Muslim countries. While the absence of mob violence was something to be happy about, prejudice towards Muslims — and general regard for anyone who didn’t fall in line as a traitor or other epithet — does not make for a rosy picture.

As an anarchist, I also feel the need to dispel the sense of triumph surrounding the state. A stateless solution to attacks on innocent people is the only real solution. All states project their power for the benefit of politicians and their partners, and all will trample on those in their way and co-opt effort for freedom into energy for serving new masters.

A proponent of state action could point to the fact that the strike force that killed bin Laden came out of occupied Afghanistan or argue that large state armies denied bin Laden space to comfortably operate in, effectively cornering him. However, this does not mean that his apprehension required a massive state invasion. Following the September 11 attacks, the Taliban attempted to negotiate with the United States government to work out how to cooperate against al Qaeda, but their proposals were rejected. If the Taliban had handed over bin Laden and stayed in power, it’s entirely possible that they themselves would have eventually been unseated by a popular uprising of the type now sweeping the Middle East.

The force that killed bin Laden was relatively small, elite, operating on top-quality intelligence — an example of the efficiency that non-state armed forces would likely display. On the battlefield, non-state actors operate with flexibility against rigid hierarchical foes. Al Qaeda itself is likely not a command structure, but a dispersed threat — another reason that bin Laden’s death won’t solve the major problem.

It remains to be seen whether or not Osama bin Laden will be less influential as a martyr than as a living personality. But the position of Public Enemy Number One will be filled again, and the security-state apparatus will keep squeezing American life as the weapons of foreign policy extinguish lives.

The rare inside look at current foreign policy holds immense value for people trying to gain a detailed understanding of politics. The fact that released cables date back to 1966 aids in the value of historical research as well.

But what matters of importance can be found within the drama of the release?

It should not be surprising that government officials make disparaging comments about each other. National leaders are probably ready to pounce on whatever personal weaknesses they find in US diplomats as well. But is interesting to see exactly what kind of assessments they have of each other. Although revelations of information gathering at the United Nations were initially surprising, they really should not be a shock. Of course diplomats are trying to get the upper hand on each other and reporting items of interest to other government agencies. If anything each country only varies in its audacity. However, the human interest part of the story does provide a direct, personal confirmation of what people should realize about government officials. They have human flaws like the rest of us, so how do they get so much power? Partly because at every level they are working to gain advantage over one another.

There are at least six issues raised in the initial cable leaks that ought to be major news.

1) American diplomats offered to trade Guantanamo detainees to foreign nations in exchange for favors. The New York Times reports that “Slovenia was told to take a prisoner if it wanted to meet with President Obama, while the island nation of Kiribati was offered incentives worth millions of dollars to take in Chinese Muslim detainees.” American officials also “suggested that accepting more prisoners would be ‘a low-cost way for Belgium to attain prominence in Europe.’” (All New York Times quotes are from November 28 article “Leaked Cables Offer Raw Look at U.S. Diplomacy”)

2) The government of Saudi Arabia wants the US to attack Iran. Antiwar.com, which has provided excellent analysis of the leaked cables, reported that “Saudi King Abdullah has been repeatedly pressing the United States government to launch a unilateral attack on his long-standing rival, Iran.” Islamic sectarianism may be a motivating factor for Abullah. It should be remembered that the Obama Administration has just made the largest arms deal US history with Saudi Arabia, a theocratic state with a terrible record on civil liberties and gender equality. In addition, the New York Times reported that leaked cables indicate “Saudi donors remain the chief financiers of Sunni militant groups like Al Qaeda.” The influence of regional rivalries suggests balance-of-power politics at work in US foreign policy.

3) The United States told the Turkish government to toe the line on Iran. Antiwar.com describes how in late 2009, the Obama administration “privately warned the Turkish government not to criticize unsubstantiated allegations against Iran’s civilian nuclear program, in particular warning that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s comments made Turkey ‘vulnerable to international community criticism.’”

4) Afghan President Hamid Karzai claims that the Pakistani government is forcing Taliban militants to keep fighting coalition forces. If it is true that Pakistan is intentionally lengthening the war, it should be considered evidence that war is not unavoidable but is a deliberate policy for furthering state power.

(See The Raw Story, “Pakistan forcing Taliban militants to keep fighting, Karzai says in leaked cable” by Daniel Tencer)

5) Zia Massoud, the vice president of Afghanistan, was found to be carrying $52 million in cash when he visited the United Arab Emirates. Despite suspicion of corruption, the New York Times reports Massoud was ultimately allowed to keep the cash “without revealing the money’s origin or destination.”

6) Yemen officials boldly lie about US bombing. While it has been previously reported that the Yemeni government was involved in covering up the US government’s role in missile strikes aimed at Al Qaeda, leaked cables provide an inside look at the attitude toward deception. The New York Times quotes the Yemeni president as stating “We’ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours,” which prompted the deputy prime minister to “joke that he had just ‘lied’” to the country’s parliament by telling them Yemeni forces were responsible for the strikes.

The leaks also contain confirmation of unsurprising bad deeds. They reveal that US officials pressured German authorities to prevent them from arresting CIA operatives for the mistaken abduction and detention of a German citizen with the same name of a suspected militant.  Government agents expect to operate above the law, and a more powerful government can leverage its power to prevent rivals from holding its agents accountable.

Similarly unsurprising, but nevertheless interesting for their viewpoint, are numerous allegations of corruption, descriptions of the Russian mafia state, and revelations of hacking directed by the Chinese government. Also of note are political assessments of North Korea.

But perhaps the biggest story is how the cables made it to the news in the first place. It is believed that a disgruntled soldier named Bradley Manning downloaded files from a government information network then gave the information to Wikileaks. Manning, a low-level intelligence analyst, was one of 2.5 to 3 million US citizens with access to the network. The US government had apparently set up the vast network for the sake of facilitating the exchange of information between different government agencies, preventing communications failures from becoming weak points.

(See Der Spiegel, “Leaked Cables Reveal True US Worldview” and The Guardian, “How 250,000 US embassy cables were leaked” )

The dilemma of the vast, vulnerable information network demonstrates tension between security and bigness, but also between security and secrecy. The more people who have access to the network, the more likely one person will take information from it. Yet the fewer people who have access to information, the harder it is to share vital information and pick up on unnoticed connections.

It should also be noted that these are State Department cables, none classified at the highest level of secrecy. What information exists in the bowels of intelligence agencies remains to be seen, possibly after a leak.

So take the opportunity to see the world through the eyes of the State Department. Go to Wikileaks and reach into the stash. And ask why such information was only meant to be seen by a privileged minority.