Oh, Bradley Manning. An individual that challenges ordinary political alignment, much in the way Edward Snowden has more recently (and, perhaps, more successfully, since he evaded the tendrils of the United States government). Many friends have stated strong opposition to my views on Manning, and I have likewise expressed my concern over his treatment. From first glance, it seems that Bradley Manning's supporters and detractors break down like this: those tied to institutions of government, who oppose his actions, and a more chaotic collective of supporters who are skeptical of the government's capacity to deal with secrets and responsible declassify relevant information to it's "informed" citizenry. With that *cough* unbiased description of the two positions, where do you think this author falls?
It's unfair to paint a one-sided picture, and it's also intellectually dishonest, cheap, and lazy. So I will briefly explore the other side of a fairly Boolean issue, to improve the dialectic quality of my position and demonstrate some intellectual rigor. Let's begin with the facts, and then break down the interpretation of events.
Bradley Manning distributed vast amounts of information to Wikileaks in 2010 (Wikileaks had been set up in 2006) while he was still a private in the United States army. Famously, he pretended to be listening to Lady Gaga while downloading information, and sent immense amounts of data concerning controversial and broadly classified information. Information included what Wikileaks (under Julian Assange's leadership) labelled "Collateral Murder"-- wherein, during the Fog of War. soldiers shot and killed journalists who were carrying cameras, misidentified at the time as possible rocket launchers. The attitude during these slayings can objectively be described as nonchalant and even playful-- horrifying when it is revealed that the casualties were civilian.
Bradley Manning felt disaffected in the military, describing a culture that echoes impressions many of us have received: uber-machoism, insensitivity, and recurring incidents moral failure. This is certainly not to implicate the entire military, but there are certainly members of the armed forces who actions are beneath the oaths they take. The prevalence and mishandling of sexual assaults, for example, is egregious. Granted, it is this author's opinion that the extraordinarily long-term, ill-defined nature of military service in difficult arenas fosters stress-induced horribleness, but there are also bad apples in the academies who have yet even seen combat. Soliders can face inhuman conditions and dehumanizing jobs, and are probably not in a psychologically healthy profession; this can be made worse by agents such as Donald Rumsfeld, who felt that some men have to be expendable for the greater good of the nation.
But let's face it: some military information does need to be classified. Revealing military troop movements, certain necessary clandestine methods for intelligence gathering, weapon and armor capacities. Heck, let's not show restraint: nuclear launch codes. It certainly shouldn't be at the discretion of a military private to discern what information should be public and what should not. Right?
In any case, Bradley Manning revealed himself to a "former great hat" hacker named Adrian Lamo, and sad for him, his information ended up in the hands of the FBI. Fast track to his arrest, which was occurring with concurrent releases to the public of videos that might be considered analogous to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal (for which, it could be argued, Rumsfeld eventually resigned. After all, the Economist, famously restrained, academic, and determined for impartiality, did publish this cover:
Manning was put into extreme isolation, comparable to that which yo think fitting for Hannibal Lecter. He was then put on "suicide watch", which allowed further avenues of control. To me, it distressingly brings up memories of Atlas Shrugged, wherein John Galt is being tortured to provide his engineering genius for the benefit of the government. This is a vastly different situation, but it's the zeitgeist that seems familiar: the closest the United States gets to brainwashing someone into compliance.
As previously mentioned, some information needs to be classified; it is entirely foolish to argue otherwise. Moreover, it's foolish to leave the declassification of materials to someone too low on the pyramid to make such decisions. And I will even grant that Bradley Manning was guilty, and deserves his guilty verdict, which he received, today getting a sentence for 35 years, possibly hoping for parole in roughly a decade.
And he should be pardoned, by President Obama, before his term ends.
I think that it is a bit of political cowardice that the Presidential pardon is almost exclusively used almost entirely at the end of a President's term. The one notable exception that springs to mind is Ford's pardon of any criminal liability for former-President Nixon, following the Watergate scandal. This has historically been seen as a benign attempt to move forward from the scandals, which is incredibly kind: Ford was never elected, and after Agnew resigned was appointed into Vice Presidency and ultimately the White House. The idea that there was no possible favor-trading seems as suspicious as the eighteen minutes of deleted tape from the magnetic tapes Nixon installed into the White House and were eventually acquired by the courts.
Nixon was a blatant Anti-Semite, responsible for a cover-up worse than the crime, and a man who believed himself above repercussions. Things like bombing Cambodia illegally are brushed over as necessary evils. And this man got pardoned. I think someone with a true desire to deliver information is following Obama's own words: "the best disinfectant is sunlight." In other words, transparency is the best cure for corruption brought on by the clouds of secrecy.
Bradley Manning was guilty. But the system is also guilty, the military-industrial complex warned about by President Eisenhower is in full force and has become the forewarned monster he feared, just as political parties have become the exact thing of which President George Washington was so wary. Secrecy has become the policy, and transparency the exception. It clearly should be the other way around: transparency, and considerable barriers that must be passed through to demonstrate a necessity for classification. Otherwise, the criticisms that the Obama Administration has conducted a "war on whistle-blowers" will be a claim most damning indeed.
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