The Crucifixion of Bradley Manning

Bradley Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison rhis week for informing the American public that its government was committing crimes in its name.

The most civilized comment I have run across about this heinous miscarriage of justice is from Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech Privacy & Technology Project.

“When a soldier who shared information with the press and public is punished far more harshly than others who tortured prisoners and killed civilians, something is seriously wrong with our justice system. A legal system that doesn’t distinguish between leaks to the press in the public interest and treason against the nation will not only produce unjust results, but will deprive the public of critical information that is necessary for democratic accountability. This is a sad day for Bradley Manning, but it is also a sad day for all Americans who depend on brave whistleblowers and a free press for a fully informed public debate.”

A government flunky named Colonel Denise Lind sentenced Bradley Manning to those 35 years, the longest sentence any whistleblower has ever been given.  From the beginning the trial was a kangaroo court. There was never any real attempt to prove that Manning helped the enemy or was in the employ of anyone who whished our nation harm but that is what he was charged with and convicted of.

The United States code of military conduct, along with International Law, demand that a soldier has a moral and legal obligation to report war crimes, of which he has knowledge. That’s what Manning did. He followed the code of military conduct when he first tried to report to his superiors what he had found in the documents that crossed his hands and when he was ignored he went to plan B and released those documents to WikiLeaks. Why would he do such a thing? Because he knew that our armed forces were committing war crimes and his superiors were interested only in covering them up. Has that become the American way? It must be, because the defense argument that he had witnessed film of war crimes and was only trying, as was his obligation according to the military code of conduct, to point out those war crimes to the American public, was ruled to be off-limits, by judge Denise Lind, government flunky. But how could they be off-limits when they were what this whole charade of a trial was about?

The files that Manning shipped off to WikiLeaks; that showed war crime after war crime, that had, until then, been hidden by brute dishonesty and cowardly cover-ups, were barred from being presented in court. Why, they were exactly what this trial was about.

On top of that, the big lie, that the released files had harmed or killed our soldiers or friendly participants, was accepted by the court, out of hand, despite the testimony by Brigadier General Robert Carr, that no one had been harmed or killed by the release of said files. He was the government’s own witness but because the government didn’t like his testimony it was conveniently ignored. True, one friendly villager had been reported killed because his name appeared in the WikiLeaks files but General Carr testified that upon inspection of those files the man’s name did not appear putting even that one death down as a lie.

Bradley Manning is going to jail for telling the American people what their government was doing wrong but Richard Cheney, former Vice-President who lied his nation into two wars, who connived to release the identity of an American undercover agent because her husband told the truth about the lies Cheney was telling to get us into a war with Iraq, who thereby put every agent or source that she had been in contact with in deadly danger is still around telling us what a great administration he led. Yeah it was great Dick, too bad you didn’t get the oil. Too bad you killed or maimed thousands of American kids and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis for nothing. Too bad you’re still out of jail.

What this all comes down to is what kind of country you want to live in. How much will you give up for a false sense of security? How much can you trust a government that lies to you repeatedly and then tries with everything its got, to crush the truth tellers?

The problem with the war crimes tapes that Manning released isn’t with the kids who committed them. They were young men caught up in the brutality of war, acting without proper leadership, possibly at the end of multiple tours and completely shell shocked. Yes, I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt, mainly because they aren’t the ones that frighten me. They aren’t the ones that I want to see punished. Their commanders who did nothing about their acts and the men further down the line who did nothing about the inaction of those commanders are the ones that frighten me because they are in positions of command and they appear to have no moral sense that would enable them to command with any sense of honor or integrity. These men represent the American people and they are doing it very badly.

But the biggest problem is that in order to protect these bureaucrats and middle command officers we are willing to crucify the young man who told us about them. He didn’t do it for money, or power or to help one of our enemies. He did it because it was the right thing to do, and now his own government has tortured him for two years and then run him through a charade of a trial, a trial that is a travesty of American justice, at least I hope it’s a travesty because if it really is an example of American justice then we are approaching Armageddon.