I have one piece of advice for Julian Assange right now: Run, and keep running.

Assange is the founder of Wikileaks, a site that provides would-be whistleblowers a medium for leaking sensitive information to the public. Earlier this year, Wikileaks released classified video that purported to show American soldiers casually shooting unarmed Iraqi civilians from a helicopter. (It's almost certain the soldiers believed the civilians to be armed, though a soldier heard in the audio on the video sounds like he's playing a video game.)

This past weekend, the site dumped five years of records pertaining to the Afghan War, 91,000 documents, painting a markedly different picture than what the official government story has been.

Among the revelations: Taliban fighters have been using heat-seeking ordinance to take out U.S. aircraft; some Pakistani intelligence agents have played both sides of the conflict, giving information to the Taliban; and a special ops unit, codenamed Task Force 373, has been secretly carrying out kill strikes on resistance fighters. In some instances, the missions have ended in the unintentional killing of Afghan police and children.

Ultimately, the story the documents seem to be telling is more or less in line with what those of us critical of the Afghan War have been saying all along -- that nearly nine years from the war's start, the government has no clearly-defined, feasible objective.

And this is of course Assange's fault. The White House Monday morning attacked Wikileaks for leaking the documents, claiming that their release is a national security threat that could put the lives of American soldiers in danger. But would the soldiers be so imperiled if we weren't still in Afghanistan?

National security, protecting the troops…these are well-worn tropes in the past decade of American foreign policy. Inconvenient truths are swept under the rug, and the people are asked to accept it in the name of patriotism. "Don't ask, because you don't want the troops to die, do you?"

Of course no one wants to see American soldiers in danger, but neither should the true face of things be kept from the people, if the details would cause questions necessary to healthy, open discourse to be asked: "Why are we fighting?" "What are the soldiers dying for?"

Assange and Wikileaks, thanks to their anonymous source, have put the facts out there so that these questions can be raised. If the public opinion created by the leaks is anathema to what the Federal Government wishes it was is not the fault of the messengers; it's only a symptom of the dysfunction plaguing the conflict in Afghanistan.

Let me preemptively head off any reactionary opinions to what I've just said. Yes, I'm antiwar and have frequently asserted that, but I take umbrage with anyone who reads this and believes that I don't care about the security of the troops in Afghanistan.

Because I do care, for reasons that go beyond any amount of patriotism or loyalty to God and Country. I am 25 years old, and I turned 18 the same day the Iraq War started.

It's my generation fighting and dying over there, my generation that's being asked to lay it all on the line, and I want to believe there's a greater reason for it. I have multiple childhood friends and former classmates that have served in Afghanistan and Iraq, one of whom was lucky to survive the ordeal of being separated from his squadmates on the streets of Baghdad.

At the rate things are going, this generation will never see the Social Security benefits we're paying for. We'll inherit a National Debt larger than anyone ever has and a government more dysfunctional than the one that gave us the Civil War.

If I seem outraged and outspoken about the way the country is right now, it's because I fear the future my generation will have to take on. If I seem opposed to doing things the way they've always been done here in America, it's because I don't see the old ways working in any constructive manner.

If this doesn't set with with all of you, that's okay. That's America! But at the end of the day, we all do want the same basic things, and regardless of how we get them, we'll never see them if we don't start putting aside the bitterness and the attacks and start civil dialogue.

And if our leaders won't do it, it's up to the rest of us.