The Passion of Bradley Manning (7 page)
Manning was kept on POI watch despite month after month of both brig and independent psychiatrists affirming that the prisoner was not a suicide risk. Opposition to his punitive pretrial solitary confinement in the United States and abroad was growing during this time, but Quantico only clamped down harder. In March of 2011, they began stripping Manning naked, depriving him of his glasses as well. The torture and humiliation of the leaker became an even bigger story than the leaks, which at that point included the Iraq War Logs and “Cablegate,” the 251,000 State Department cables.
Manning's pretrial torture became an international scandal. British Members of Parliament started protesting the treatment of a Welsh subject's son. The Bundestag's human rights committee sent a letter to Obama expressing concern. Two hundred law professors, including Obama's former mentor Laurence Tribe, wrote an open letter to the president condemning Manning's treatment, if not defending his alleged deeds. (Few are the American intellectuals who unequivocally defend the leaks: Michael Moore, Jesse Ventura and CodePink's core of leftwing peace activistsâand that's about it.) Even the hyper-conservative
National Review
blasted the pretrial solitary confinement of Manning as a draconian affront to the rule of law.
On March 10th, State Department spokesperson P. J. Crowley condemned Manning's treatment as “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid” at an MIT speaking engagement. He resigned two days later.
And where did President Obama stand on this? On the campaign trail, Obama had praised whistleblowers for their patriotism, pledging to protect and promote them. But upon installation in the White House, the Obama Department of Justice launched more Espionage Act prosecutions against leakers than all previous administrations combined. Asked about the issue the day after Crowley's outburst, Obama reassured the reporter that he personally looked into the matter and that the months of pretrial solitary confinement were all for the soldier's own good. Confronted by a group of Manning solidarity activists, who thanks to a benefactor had infiltrated a $5,000-a-plate fundraiser for the President at the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco, Barack Obama informed them with exasperation that Bradley Manning “broke the law. I can't do open source diplomacy!”
If Manning were so abused by the Bush-Cheney gang, it would have been one more proof of the Republicans' noisome barbarity. But with Obama in office, Democrats have been remarkably mellow about the matterâsave, of course, those Obama loyalists who have aggressively condemned Manning's alleged deeds, mocked his defenders and praised his incarceration as essential to national security.
It's tempting to figure that Manning's sexual preference and gender identity played a large role in his alleged deeds. A young sensitive gay man, alienated and brutalized by the Army's macho cultureâit makes some intuitive sense. It is a temptation worth resisting, as it is not supported by any of the available evidence. The informant who turned Manning in is gay, as is the former Army counterintelligence special agent, Tim Webster, whom Lamo first turned to after receiving the alleged confession from FOB Hammer, and who then connected Lamo with the military authorities. Webster told
The Guardian
he had no time whatsoever for the fixation on Manning's sexuality. “The notion that the Manning case has anything to do with his sexuality is categorically absurd. Many thousands of homosexual and bisexual men and women are serving honorably and to suggest that their sexuality renders them any less effective in the defense of our nation is bigoted nonsense.” There are thousands of gays and lesbians in the military, many with security clearance, and they have been largely happy to obey all their orders, both legal and illegal, and would never dream of doing what Manning is alleged to have done.
Manning himself never linked his sexual preference or gender identity to his alleged deeds. In fact, the way he described the military, it seems a virtual magnet for gays and lesbians. There was the colonel that Manning had a fling with back when he was a Starbucks barista in Maryland; the interrogator at FOB Hammer who has a civil union back in New Jersey; the claim that “half the S-2 shop [military intelligence unit] is at least bi.”
(It should also be pointed out that some of the most bellicose politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are rumored to be gay. The South Carolina chapter of the Tea Party has delightedly outed again and again their über-hawkish but otherwise insufficiently conservative senator, Lindsey Graham, as a homosexual. Liam Fox, the recently resigned minister of defense in the Tory-Liberal Democrat government in the United Kingdom, is a neocon ultra who carried out his official duties abroad very frequently in the company of his “best friend,” a man seventeen years his junior without any governmental position but bankrolled as a “consultant” by various wealthy individuals close to Fox.)
In the United States, mainstream LGBT activists have been more than happy to shun Manning; with the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy of prohibiting “out” gays and lesbians from the military finally and triumphantly repealed, why defend an accused traitor who just happens to be gay? In the United Kingdom, where the LGBT rights movement is less beholden to the military, the mood is different and leading gay rights and human rights activist Peter Tatchell has promoted solidarity with Manning (he of the Welsh mother) at every opportunity.
Whistleblowers are always pathologized; their governments refuse on principle to comprehend their political motive, no matter how overt and obvious. In the United States, we are barely able to even comprehend a political motive, given that the whole category of the political has eroded so severely, fatally associated with the ghastly talking heads who appear on Sunday morning talk shows. Despite the clarity of Manning's stated
mens rea
in the chatlogs, a political motive simply won't do. His motive must be sexual, as we have seen. Or it must be emotional. (As if Bradley Manning, who was dumped by his boyfriend in January of 2010, is somehow different from the thousands of other soldiers and sailors similarly jilted every year.) It must be psychiatric. (That mental illness is rampant throughout the armed forces is rarely mentioned, nor the fact that the leading cause of death among active duty troops in 2009 and 2010 and likely 2011 is not enemy fire or IEDs but suicide.) It must be pharmacological. (According to the
Washington Post
, Dr. David Charney, a psychiatrist who has consulted on espionage cases, pointed out that Manning's reported tendencies to zone out might be related to “petit mal epilepsy.”) So much concern, such eagerness to diagnose.
The irony is that Manning himself in his IM chats with Lamo already dismissed the pathologization of every last personality trait.
(01:51:59
AM
) bradass87:
im probably suffering from depression
(01:51:59
AM
) bradass87:
={
(01:52:03
AM
) bradass87:
={
(01:52:06
AM
) bradass87:
=P
(01:52:15
AM
) [email protected]:
Who isn't :(
(01:52:20
AM
) bradass87:
goddamn, i missed the “P” key twice
(01:52:27
AM
) [email protected]:
I'm supposedly bipolar.
(01:52:38
AM
) bradass87:
oh well, still not medicated
(01:53:00
AM
) bradass87:
i dont believe a third of the DSM-IV-TR
(01:53:58
AM
) bradass87:
so many Disorders that so many people fall into⦠it just seems like a method to categorize a person, medicate them, and make money from prescription medications
[â¦]
(01:54:31
AM
) bradass87:
i'd like to meet a single person that wouldn't fall into a Disorder in the DSM-IV-TR
And yet, most media accounts of Manning and his alleged deeds have made a meal of the private's personal life and do not even go near his plainly stated motive. Commentator Joy Reid, a Harvard-educated blogger, commentator and Obama loyalist is typical in this regard, seeing Manning as “a guy seeking anarchy as a salve for his own personal, psychological torment.” Reid also says Manning's “gender identity disorder” “kind of puts his subsequent terms of incarceration in context.” Meaning that it's okay to lock transgender people in solitary for as long as you want? The comment is certainly open to interpretation.
Is the political angle too obvious for clever journalists? One man with no patience for the media's lurid fixation on Manning's personal life is Ethan McCordâthe US infantryman who retrieved the two wounded children from the shot-up van on July 12, 2007, all filmed between the cross-hairs in the “Collateral Murder” video. He responded to a
New York Magazine
article on Manning that dwelled at length on the soldier's gender identity counseling, but barely mentioned his crisis of conscience after helping to round up Iraqi civilian activists for likely torture. McCord's cogent letter to
New York
is worth quoting in full, even if the magazine printed only a snippet.
Serving with my unit 2nd battalion 16th infantry in New Baghdad Iraq, I vividly remember the moment in 2007, when our Battalion Commander walked into the room and announced our new rules of engagement:
“Listen up, new battalion SOP (standing operating procedure) from now on: Anytime your convoy gets hit by an IED, I want 360 degree rotational fire. You kill every [expletive] in the street!”
We weren't trained extensively to recognize an unlawful order, or how to report one. But many of us could not believe what we had just been told to do. Those of us who knew it was morally wrong struggled to figure out a way to avoid shooting innocent civilians, while also dodging repercussions from the non-commissioned officers who enforced the policy. In such situations, we determined to fire our weapons, but into rooftops or abandoned vehicles, giving the impression that we were following procedure.
On April 5, 2010 American citizens and people around the world got a taste of the fruits of this standing operating procedure when WikiLeaks [1] released the now-famous Collateral Murder [2] video. This video showed the horrific and wholly unnecessary killing of unarmed Iraqi civilians and Reuters journalists.
I was part of the unit that was responsible for this atrocity. In the video, I can be seen attempting to carry wounded children to safety in the aftermath.
The video released by WikiLeaks belongs in the public record. Covering up this incident is a matter deserving of criminal inquiry. Whoever revealed it is an American hero in my book.
Private First Class Bradley Manning has been confined for over a year on the government's accusation that he released this video and volumes of other classified documents to WikiLeaksâan organization that has been selectively publishing portions of this information in collaboration with other news outlets.
If PFC Bradley Manning did what he is accused of doing, then it is clearâfrom chat logs [3] that have been attributed to himâthat his decision was motivated by conscience and political agency. These chat logs allegedly describe how PFC Manning hopes these revelations will result in “worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms.”
Unfortunately, Steve Fishman's article Bradley Manning's Army of One [4] in
New York Magazine
(July 3, 2011) erases Manning's political agency. By focusing so heavily on Manning's personal life, Fishman removes politics from a story that has everything to do with politics. The important public issues wrapped up with PFC Manning's case include: transparency in government; the Obama Administration's unprecedented pursuit of whistle-blowers; accountability of government and military in shaping and carrying out foreign policy; war crimes revealed in the WikiLeaks documents; the catalyzing role these revelations played in democratic movements across the Middle East; and more.
The contents of the WikiLeaks revelations have pulled back the curtain on the degradation of our democratic system. It has become completely normal for decision-makers to promulgate foreign policies, diplomatic strategies, and military operating procedures that are hostile to the democratic ideals our country was founded upon. The incident I was part ofâshown in the Collateral Murder videoâbecomes even more horrific when we grasp that it was not exceptional. PFC Manning himself is alleged to describe (in the chat logs) an incident where he was ordered to turn over innocent Iraqi academics to notorious police interrogators, for the offense of publishing a political critique of government corruption titled, “Where did the money go? [5]” These issues deserve “discussion, debates, and reforms”âand attention from journalists.
Fishman's article was also ignorant of the realities of military service. Those of us who serve in the military are often lauded as heroes. Civilians need to understand that we may be heroes, but we are not saints. We are young people under a tremendous amount of stress. We face moral dilemmas that many civilians have never even contemplated hypothetically.
Civil society honors military service partly because of the sacrifice it entails. Lengthy and repeated deployments stress our closest relationships with family and friends. The realities, traumas, and stresses of military life take an emotional toll. This emotional battle is part of the sacrifice that we honor. That any young soldier might wrestle with his or her experiences in the military, or with his or her identity beyond military life, should never be wielded as a weapon against them.
If PFC Bradley Manning did what he is accused of, he is a hero of mine; not because he's perfect or because he never struggled with personal or family relationshipsâmost of us doâbut because in the midst of it all he had the courage to act on his conscience.
