Outrageous.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/21/bradley-manning-sentence-birgitta-jonsdottir

Bradley Manning's sentence: 35 years for exposing us to the truth
This was never a fair trial – Obama declared Manning's guilt in advance. But 
Manning's punishment is an affront to democracy
 
Birgitta Jónsdóttir
theguardian.com, Wednesday 21 August 2013 10.29 EDT
Jump to comments (…)

Link to video: Bradley Manning: 35 years in jail for an outsider who had 
trouble fitting in – video

As of today, Wednesday 21 August 2013, Bradley Manning has served 1,182 days in 
prison. He should be released with a sentence of time served. Instead, the 
judge in his court martial at Fort Meade, Maryland has handed down a sentence 
of 35 years.

Of course, a humane, reasonable sentence of time served was never going to 
happen. This trial has, since day one, been held in a kangaroo court. That is 
not angry rhetoric; the reason I am forced to frame it in that way is because 
President Obama made the following statements on record, before the trial even 
started:

President Obama: We're a nation of laws. We don't individually make our own 
decisions about how the laws operate … He broke the law.

Logan Price: Well, you can make the law harder to break, but what he did was 
tell us the truth.

President Obama: Well, what he did was he dumped …

Logan Price: But Nixon tried to prosecute Daniel Ellsberg for the same thing 
and he is a … [hero]

President Obama: No, it isn't the same thing … What Ellsberg released wasn't 
classified in the same way.

When the president says that the Ellsberg's material was classified in a 
different way, he seems to be unaware that there was a higher classification on 
the documents Ellsberg leaked.

A fair trial, then, has never been part of the picture. Despite being a 
professor in constitutional law, the president as commander-in-chief of the US 
military – and Manning has been tried in a court martial – declared Manning's 
guilt pre-emptively. Here is what the Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg 
had to say about this, in an interview with Amy Goodman at DemocracyNow! in 
2011:

Well, nearly everything the president has said represents a confusion about the 
state of the law and his own responsibilities. Everyone is focused, I think, on 
the fact that his commander-in-chief has virtually given a directed verdict to 
his subsequent jurors, who will all be his subordinates in deciding the guilt 
in the trial of Bradley Manning. He's told them already that their commander, 
on whom their whole career depends, regards him [Manning] as guilty and that 
they can disagree with that only at their peril. In career terms, it's clearly 
enough grounds for a dismissal of the charges, just as my trial was dismissed 
eventually for governmental misconduct.

But what people haven't really focused on, I think, is another problematic 
aspect of what he said. He not only was identifying Bradley Manning as the 
source of the crime, but he was assuming, without any question, that a crime 
has been committed.

This alone should have been cause for the judge in the case to rethink 
prosecutors' demand for 60 years in prison. Manning himself has shown 
throughout the trial both that he is a humanitarian and that he is willing to 
serve time for his actions. We have to look at his acts in light of his moral 
compass, not any political agenda.
Manning intentions were never to hurt anyone; in fact, his motivation – as was 
the case for Ellsberg – was to inform the American public about what their 
government was doing in their name. A defense forensic psychiatrist testified 
to Manning's motives:

Well, Pfc Manning was under the impression that his leaked information was 
going to really change how the world views the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, 
and future wars, actually. This was an attempt to crowdsource an analysis of 
the war, and it was his opinion that if … through crowdsourcing, enough 
analysis was done on these documents, which he felt to be very important, that 
it would lead to a greater good … that society as a whole would come to the 
conclusion that the war wasn't worth it … that really no wars are worth it.

I admit that I share the same hopes that drove Manning to share with the rest 
of the world the crimes of war he witnessed. I am deeply disappointed that no 
one has been held accountable for the criminality exposed in the documents for 
which Manning is standing trial – except him. It shows so clearly that our 
justice systems are not working as intended to protect the general public and 
to hold accountable those responsible for unspeakable crimes.

I want to thank Bradley Manning for the service he has done for humanity with 
his courage and compassionate action to inform us, so that we have the means to 
transform and change our societies for the better. I want to thank him for 
shining light into the shadows. It is up to each and everyone of us to use the 
information he provided for the greater good. I want to thank him for making 
our world a little better. This is why I nominated him for the Nobel Peace 
Prize, for there are very few individuals who have ever brought about the kind 
of social change Manning has put in motion.

The wave of demands for greater transparency, more accountability, and 
democratic reform originate with Manning's lonely act in the barracks in Iraq. 
He has given others – such as Edward Snowden – the courage to do the right 
thing for the rest of us. The heavy hand dealt Bradley Manning today is a 
massive blow against everything many of us hold sacred – at a time when we have 
been shown how fragile and weak our democracies are by the revelations of, 
first, Manning, and now, Snowden.

There is no such thing as privacy anymore; nor is there such a thing as 
accountability among our public servants. Our governments do not function for 
the benefit of the 99%. If Manning had received a fair sentence that was in 
proportion to his supposed crime – which was to expose us to the truth – then 
there would have been hope.

Instead, we are seeing the state acting like a wounded tiger, cornered and 
lashing out in rage – attacking the person who speaks the truth in order to 
frighten the rest of us into silence. But to that, I have only one answer: it 
won't work.


-- 
Liberationtech is a public list whose archives are searchable on Google. 
Violations of list guidelines will get you moderated: 
https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. Unsubscribe, 
change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at 
compa...@stanford.edu.

Reply via email to