{"id":11979,"date":"2012-04-18T06:48:30","date_gmt":"2012-04-18T10:48:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theredphoenixapl.org\/?p=11979"},"modified":"2012-04-18T06:48:30","modified_gmt":"2012-04-18T10:48:30","slug":"the-liberal-betrayal-of-bradley-manning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/2012\/04\/the-liberal-betrayal-of-bradley-manning\/","title":{"rendered":"The liberal betrayal of Bradley Manning"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Bradley Manning (Credit: Reuters\/Jose Luis Magana)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Charles Davis<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

More than three years into the presidency of Barack Obama, it\u2019s almost a clich\u00e9 now to ask: What if George W. Bush did it? From dramatically escalating the war in Afghanistan to institutionalizing the practice of indefinite imprisonment, Obama has dashed hopes he would offer a change from the Bush\u2019s national security policies \u2013 but he hasn\u2019t faced a whole lot of resistance from liberals who once decried those policies as an affront to American values.<\/span><\/p>\n

Like those on the right who now crow about fascism but spent the Bush years gleefully declaring left-wing celebrities \u201c<\/span>enemies of the state<\/span><\/a><\/span>,\u201d many of those on the liberal-left treat issues of war and civil liberties as useful merely for partisan purposes. When a Democrat\u2019s in power those issues become inconvenient. And usually ignored.<\/span><\/p>\n

Former dean of the Yale Law School Harold Koh, for instance, used to<\/span> rail against the imperial presidency<\/span><\/a><\/span>, speaking of the horror of torture and \u201cindefinite detention without trial.\u201d Now a legal adviser for the Obama State Department, he recently declared that \u201cjustice\u201d can be delivered with or with out a trial. Indeed,<\/span> \u201cDrones also deliver<\/span><\/a><\/span>.\u201d Don\u2019t expect much more than a yawn from Democratic pundits, though, much less any calls for impeachment. It\u2019s an election year, after all. And what, would you rather Mitt Romney be the guy drone-striking Pakistani tribesmen?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cObama and the Democrats being in power in Washington defangs a lot of liberal criticism,\u201d Chase Madar, a civil rights attorney in New York, told me in an interview. Indeed, but with a<\/span> few exceptions<\/span><\/a><\/span> \u2013 Michael Moore, Dennis Kucinich, The Nation \u2013 those who would be inclined to defend Manning were Bush still in office are the ones either condemning him or condoning his treatment, which has included spending the better part of a year in torturous solitary confinement, an all<\/span> too common<\/span><\/a><\/span> feature of American prisons. Even his progressive defenders, remaining loyal to the Democratic Party, tend to downplay Obama\u2019s role in the Bradley Manning affair; his authorizing the abuse of an American hero is certainly no means not to vote for him again.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole civil libertarian message only really seems to catch fire among liberals when there\u2019s a Republican in the White House,\u201d says Madar. When there\u2019s not a bumbling Texan to inveigh against, all the sudden issues that were morally black and white become complex, and liberal media starts finding nuance where there wasn\u2019t any before.<\/span><\/p>\n

That much is clear in the case of Manning, the young soldier accused of leaking State Department cables and evidence of war atrocities to WikiLeaks. Under different conditions, he might be a liberal hero. After all, much \u2013 though certainly<\/span> not all<\/span><\/a><\/span> \u2013 of what he exposed, from the<\/span> killing of Iraqi civilians<\/span><\/a><\/span> to US complicity in<\/span> torture by the Iraqi government<\/span><\/a><\/span>, happened during the Bush years. But it is the Obama administration that is imprisoning him. It is Barack Obama who<\/span> pronounced him guilty<\/span><\/a><\/span> before he so much as had a trial (which he\u2019s still waiting for after almost two years in captivity). And so justifications must be made.<\/span><\/p>\n

One popular way is by attacking Manning\u2019s character, by arguing that unlike Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked top secret Pentagon documents detailing U.S. failures in Vietnam, Manning \u2013 who, if the charges against him are true, didn\u2019t leak a single piece of top secret information \u2013 was simply a troubled young man. The New York Times, for instance, published a piece that spent several thousand words to essentially say he did it because he had \u201c<\/span>delusions of grandeur<\/span><\/a><\/span>.\u201d And because he was gay, probably.<\/span><\/p>\n

Alyssa Rosenberg, a blogger for the Center for American Progress,<\/span> declared her<\/span><\/a><\/span> \u201cmain opinion of Bradley Manning\u201d to be that \u201cit sounds like he has pretty serious emotional problems and turned out not to be a particularly effective whistleblower.\u201d Conveniently, Manning is to blame for the fact the WikiLeaks revelations did not alter the behavior of the American empire, not the institutions of state power so often fawned over by Rosenberg and her colleagues as fundamentally good and just.<\/span><\/p>\n

Joy Reid, a Democratic pundit who often appears on MSNBC, likewise dwells on Manning\u2019s alleged emotional problems and gayness. Because he allegedly divulged to a hacker-turned-informant that he was struggling with his gender identity, Reid \u2013 ignoring all the inconvenient comments about being outraged by torture and civilian deaths \u2013<\/span> argued that<\/span><\/a><\/span> Manning was no hero at all, but rather \u201ca guy seeking anarchy as a salve for his own personal, psychological torment\u201d caused by his sexuality. In this case one might well ask: What if Rick Santorum said it?<\/span><\/p>\n

When the Nixon administration sought to discredit Ellsberg back in 1971, it played by the same book as Reid and other Obama loyalists unwilling to believe their president is persecuting a hero,<\/span> breaking into<\/span><\/a><\/span> his psychiatrist\u2019s office in a vain attempt to uncover evidence of mental illness. Today, the liberal media does the government\u2019s work for it.<\/span><\/p>\n

A lot of that, obviously, has to do with partisanship. Though Ellsberg\u2019s leaks primarily exposed the lies of Nixon\u2019s Democratic predecessor\u2019s, he was the target of a loathed Republican administration, so liberals rallied to his defense; there was a president to take down, after all. By contrast, the treatment of Manning \u2013 labeled \u201c<\/span>appropriate<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u201d by Obama; as \u201ccruel\u201d and \u201cinhuman\u201d by the UN<\/span> special rapporteur on torture<\/span><\/a><\/span> \u2013 threatens the mainstream liberal narrative about the American state. If a Democratic president is torturing a whistle-blower who primarily exposed atrocities authorized by his Republican predecessor, it\u2019s almost as if . . . well, best not to think about that.<\/span><\/p>\n

But it\u2019s just brand loyalty that explains the liberal condemnations of Manning \u2013 or the even more common silence. As Madar, who just wrote a book on the alleged WikiLeaks source, \u201c<\/span>The Passion of Bradley Manning<\/span><\/a><\/span>,\u201d notes, when it comes to Manning and the broader issue of Obama\u2019s continuation of Bush\u2019s war on terror, it\u2019s about more than simple party politics.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a long tradition of liberals, especially in the first few decades after the Cold War, of being opposed to, say, the vulgar witch-hunting, hysterical anti-communism of Joseph McCarthy,\u201d says Madar, \u201cbut being supportive of the much more professional anti-communism of, say,<\/span> Harvard University<\/span><\/a>.\u201d You can see the same dynamic at play now. Bush\u2019s imperialism was crude and unilateral, so it was condemned; Obama\u2019s is more sophisticated and multilateral, so it\u2019s condoned \u2013<\/span> or cheered<\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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 \u2013 in the midst of selling his children\u2019s book, Can\u2019t Wait Till Christmas! \u2013<\/span> declared that<\/span><\/a><\/span> for Manning, \u201canything less than execution is too kind a penalty.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

How uncouth. How vulgar. On the center-left, the position is much more sensible: don\u2019t outright murder the guy, at least not without a show trial, but don\u2019t you dare let him see the light of day again. As Obama himself pronounced, \u201c<\/span>He broke the law<\/span><\/a><\/span>,\u201d which is something that must be obeyed by everyone but bankers and torturers and presidents. We can\u2019t just expose the state-sanctioned torture and murder of innocents willy-nilly. We can\u2019t just listen to our own consciences when confronted with institutional evil. That\u2019d be anarchy. Which is bad.<\/span><\/p>\n

To be fair, liberals can\u2019t really be blamed for their reaction to Manning. What he did was fundamentally radical, not reformist. He didn\u2019t 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c[I]f you had free reign over classified networks for long periods of time,\u201d Manning reportedly wrote to the man who ultimately turned him in, \u201cand you saw incredible things, awful things\u2026 things that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC\u2026 what would you do? \u201d We know what his answer was. And we know what the guardians of establishment liberalism would have had him do: Nothing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Judge for yourself which is more defensible.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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