The Liberal Betrayal of Bradley Manning...

[Luminous Animal]

http://news.salon.com/2012/04/10/the_liberal_betrayal_of_bradley_manning/singleton/

Similarly, those on the right who condemn Manning do so in a manner repellent to the more refined liberal palette. Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, for instance – in the midst of selling his children’s book, Can’t Wait Till Christmas! – declared that for Manning, “anything less than execution is too kind a penalty.”

How uncouth. How vulgar. On the center-left, the position is much more sensible: don’t outright murder the guy, at least not without a show trial, but don’t you dare let him see the light of day again. As Obama himself pronounced, “He broke the law,” which is something that must be obeyed by everyone but bankers and torturers and presidents. We can’t just expose the state-sanctioned torture and murder of innocents willy-nilly. We can’t just listen to our own consciences when confronted with institutional evil. That’d be anarchy. Which is bad.

To be fair, liberals can’t really be blamed for their reaction to Manning. What he did was fundamentally radical, not reformist. He didn’t settle for working within a system explicitly designed to thwart the exposure of wrongdoing, through a chain of command that callously ignores concern for non-American life. Having access to evidence of grotesque crimes no one around him seemed to care about, he engaged in direct action, exposing them for the benefit of the world and those paying for them, the U.S. taxpayer.

“(I)f you had free reign over classified networks for long periods of time,” Manning reportedly wrote to the man who ultimately turned him in, “and you saw incredible things, awful things… things that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC… what would you do? ” We know what his answer was. And we know what the guardians of establishment liberalism would have had him do: Nothing.

Judge for yourself which is more defensible.

[Lionessa]

1. Uhm, am I that far behind on this issue?

"...What he did was fundamentally radical, not reformist. He didn’t settle for working within a system explicitly designed to thwart the exposure of wrongdoing, through a chain of command that callously ignores concern for non-American life. Having access to evidence of grotesque crimes no one around him seemed to care about, he engaged in direct action, exposing them for the benefit of the world and those paying for them, the U.S. taxpayer. ..."

I didn't think he'd been legitimately convicted of anything yet, nor confessed. Am I wrong?

[Luminous Animal]

2. No he hasn't been convicted yet. Though, Obama has proclaimed his guilt.

Charles Davis (the author of the post) is indeed jumping the gun.

What do you think of Manning's chances of escaping conviction?

[Angleae]

8. Chance of acquittal = virtually zero.

Military prosecutors are more anal-retentive about their conviction record than their civilian counterparts. They won't even file charges unless they have a slam-dunk or are forced to by their superiors.

[sudopod]

3. That's rather the problem, isn't it?

If the case is open and shut, why deny him the right to a timely trial and, if appropriate, a conviction?

If there is no case, then how can they hold him?

Regardless of the above, why lock him up in solitary for the better part of a year and leak nasty innuendos about his personal life?

[Angleae]

7. If I remember correctly, the trial is being delayed by the defense, not the prosecution.

[Luminous Animal]

9. That excuse has long since sailed.

[OnyxCollie]

4. K&R. nt

[Luminous Animal]

5. Kick.

[Laughing Mirror]

6. Excellent article

I doubt if many around here will be comfortable reading it, however. It's not what they want to hear.

[saras]

10. Bradley Manning broke the law. They should have fined him $1000

and then spent all the rest of the money, time, and energy on prosecuting the orders-of-magnitude-larger criminals he exposed.

Fair's fair, after all. He DID break the law.

[kenny blankenship]

11. If Bush were still President, Manning would be a saint at DU

a martyr to Bush's imperialist & racist war for world domination and his fascist subversion of the American republic.

[Zax2me]

12. He is that now.