I made this point in a more lengthy fashion in a parallel comment [0], but it seems really odd to me you would ignore the circumstance that the lion's share of the work towards endangering those civilians was done by the US, by recruiting them to be collaborators in a hostile country. Why does the US government have more moral license to endanger Afghan civilians than Assange/Wikileaks?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22205463

The US government decision to invade Afghanistan involved a number of other factors. Whether or not you agree with that calculation is subjective. The difference between that and what Assange did is that Wikileaks could have taken the time to redact these names, as they were immaterial to the point they were trying to make.

If this was a tradeoff between "not expose abuses by the US government" and "name these civillians", I think your point would be reasonable. But there was no tradeoff. Wikileaks was just lazy about it.

Wikileaks asked the DoD to help redact the documents. DoD refused and later put out a statement claiming that Assange lied about asking for help. This statement was shown to be false.

Due to the limited time window for release, the choice was either to release as-is or to never release at all.

Calling Wikileaks lazy is myopic. They didn't have the resources to redact the documents in the time window they had to work with, and they asked for help. The US govt knew exactly what would happen if they refused to help. It was a calculated move to maximise collateral damage and help drive the narrative that you now subscribe to. They didn't give a single fuck about the collateral damage, their response was focused on discrediting and prosecuting the source of the leak to send a message to anyone else considering exposing their wrongdoings.

The US govt acted like a bunch of insidious cartoon villains, and gaslighting its citizens about how this situation played out.

"It should be obvious that these leaks endangered these people. All you have to do is look at them to see that."

Which, specifically? I have heard that claim before. Would you mind linking to the specific leaks that endangered civilians? WikiLeaks is online and searchable, but I have not seen them.

At this stage it is not actually important if anyone could be hurt or dies. The topic is the global state of human rights and persecution of criminals in important positions. Hundreds of millions gave their lives for our freedoms many of which didn't sign up for it. We want future generations to enjoy those freedoms. Trading them for some claims of endangerment is not a good deal.

>> civillian collaborators with the US

Maybe those were helping (unknowingly) US troops to kill other people...