It is for all these reasons that it is necessary that if found guilty, PFC Bradley Manning must pay in full for the crimes he committed; not only for justice for those he endangered, but also as an object lesson to everyone else within the intelligence community. A lesson that teaches that, even when one sees injustice, for the good of all, there are lines one must not cross.
"A sinister cabal of superior writers."
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Nick
You are out of your mind and should be fired instantly for the content of this article. Such a shame that unconscious, foul-minded individuals like you are even given the chance for your atrocious words to be heard or read on this planet. You are a disgrace to humanity, and to the truth. I hope that one day you recieve the karma that is due to you for writing this blasphemous piece of beguiled trash. So very sad.
2 - edward c. stengel
If found guilty, he deserves the Congressional Medal of Honor for exposing the terrorist acts of his own government. It's the people running our country who should be on trial for treason, not PFC Bradley Manning.
3 - Glenn Contrarian
Nick and Ed -
Do both of you think it's okay to endanger our intelligence agents and their informants? Do either of you have any clue how crucial our intelligence agencies are, and what role they've played in our history, in world history? Apparently not.
And Ed -
It's the people running our country who should be on trial for treason, not PFC Bradley Manning.
I would strongly agree that Dick Cheney and everyone else involved in the Plame case be put on trial for precisely that, for that's what they committed. Same thing goes for everyone involved in Iran-Contra, for that matter. And George W. Bush should be standing in front of the World Court at The Hague on war crimes trials, to boot.
But if either of you can show me how what Manning did made it okay to endanger our intel agents risking their lives in the field, then please, go ahead!
Oh, and welcome to Blogcritics!
4 - troll
while it would seem that Glenn's reasoning is sound if the intention is to maintain the status quo in international relations and the perception of law's legitimacy can we conceive of a realpolitik based on our 'better natures'?
maybe the re-emerging meme 'reciprocity' holds a clue
5 - Glenn Contrarian
troll -
I'd love to see the day that we don't need spies anymore, that wars are no longer deemed necessary. Indeed, even given the Rwandan genocide and our wars in the Middle East, the past twenty years is - relatively speaking - the most peaceful two decades in human history. We may very well have reached a point where the most powerful nations have realized that wars against other major powers simply isn't worth the cost. But as long as there are people who are destitute, downtrodden, discriminated against, and don't know where their next meal is coming from, there will be terrorism, tragic attacks where many people die, and, yes, wars...and there will always be those who will take advantage of such people and use them for their own political, power-driven ends.
And because of that, we will always need spies and informants and a robust intelligence community to support them, and we will need to give them them the protection they need.
Not only that, even among the major 'peaceful' powers, industrial espionage is much more prevalent than ever before...and witness the number of cyber-attacks most governments and major corporations undergo every single day. This is called 'progress'.
As I said, we'll always need a robust intelligence community. As long as some people desire power over others, we'll need that intelligence community.
troll, you know I'm quite liberal. I pity Manning - I believe he did not do what he did out of malice towards anyone. BUT he almost certainly put at great risk many who live in the shadows who put their lives on the line for the rest of us. He's got to pay the price, not least for the sake of serving as an object lesson to the rest of the intelligence community.
6 - troll
Glenn - always and forever sounds like a long long time
...you point out elsewhere that what you call 'human drives' are subject to change - perhaps this holds for domination
'be the change' - right?
(as you know already I take little comfort in the notion of 'relative peacefulness' which seems absurd and regressive in the face of modern hunger and our degraded environment)
7 - Glenn Contrarian
troll -
Feel free to point out any twenty-year period in human history where some major war or genocide or great persecution of some kind wasn't going on. I can't think of one - you might well be able to prove me wrong...but when you do, remember that I used the word 'relatively'. We have to discuss this in relative terms.
And do you really believe that there will come a time when there will not be humans with desire for power and domination? Do you really? Come now, troll, I think you know the human animal better than that. You're too intelligent to think that the drive for power isn't at least to some extent a crucial part of our psychological makeup.
In the comment on another thread to which you refer, I gave concrete examples that seem to share a distinctly common thread, and I gave the best explanation I could think of since I don't think the examples fall afoul of the correlation/causation fallacy. Feel free to refute it if you can.
8 - troll
Glenn - (good morning)
1 it's your terms that I object to
2 I know human animals well enough to recognize that errors can attend regarding drives as completed rather than as things in the process of becoming - constructively developing delimited by social context
3 this awarness of process underlies your explanation as it would any satisfactory alternative
9 - Glenn Contrarian
troll -
Good morning to you, too.
(1) - So what terms would you prefer that would still serve to address the observations presented? I try to be open-minded - I won't quibble over words as long as the words others prefer work just as well.
(2) - Are you saying, then, that people are choosing not to be a part of social/fraternal/religious/political organizations because they have a 'completed drive'? Please clarify.
(3) - Again, please clarify...and I may have already addressed that in a small way when I stated: I suspect the reason lay in a 'perfect storm', if you will, of lack of free time, societal pressures, increase in overall prosperity, the mass media (for the early days of the decline), and particularly the internet (for today). Might that "increase in overall prosperity" be the 'completed drive' that you referred to? If so, then the same 'uncompleted drive' could be identified in poorer nations, don't you think?
10 - troll
1 in this case - measures of peacefulness - I would accept terms that don't subsume individuals as quantifiable data but rather incorporate the criterion of 'if it works at all it works for all'
thus one 'appropriate' measure of peacefulness would be %/gdp invested in weapons
2 no - rather that their choices reflect changing drives
3 I would agree that prosperity and poverty impact drives...psychologically speaking that is
11 - roger nowosielski
Glenn, you seem to have an odd idea that "underdeveloped" nations want to become "developed" nations or that ancient wisdom somehow lacks when compared to modern wisdom, that a human being continues to remain unformed. While there may be some truth to this, paying homage here, I suppose, to the popular idea that man continues to evolve, you err in the opposite direction. And it surely suits the propaganda on the part of "developed" nations.
Troll, as I see it, was giving you a long rope when he admitted the notion of "uncompleted drives" into the discussion. The recent lack of participation in religious, political and social organizations, to which you alluded to in a comment to my own article, is an example of what I have in mind. Instead of seeing it as an instance of the modern man becoming whole and complete, I suggest is more reflective of a return to the old (because of our disenchantment with the corrupt forms of the new).
12 - C.A.S.
You Hippies are not getting the point here. He broke the law and needs to be punished. Should we let anyone just walk, when they steal classified info? It doesnt matter what it exposes, or the fact that hes gay,etc. He is a grown man who knowingly broke the law! I dont even agree with the wars,supporting Israel, or foreign Aid, until our country is on its feet. Aslong as we have 1 homeless person, not a dollar should be given in foreign aid,let alone giving money to Syrian rebels or arms to Israel. We help rebuild Haiti, Indonesia, etc, while most of New Orleans is still a dump. Eventhough im againt big govt, I am for punishing law breakers. And the law he broke is several hundred yrs old, not some new BS secruity law! The only ppl who think he did nothing wrong, are the same ppl who do NOT have the capacity to process a complete situation and act solely on biased, uncontrolled emotion. Just remember, no matter how hard you bitch, this criminal is going away for a very long time....So go back to your legalization of pot ptotests or move to Canada. We wont miss ya :)
13 - troll
.....not to worry CAS - he is well and truly fucked
I suspect that a jail break will be the only way to FREE BRADLY MANNING
14 - troll
...and Bradley too
15 - religion=HATE
troll- Why are you on here rambling about psycology, trying to sound intelligent, when any educated person can see you are just out talking yourself? Its quite funny and a common practice by ppl whom are not born with the intelligent capacity they believe they are, but are well read. Thus just repeating things they have read, instead of self produced theory. They type of human development you speak of, is 1000s of yrs in the future of the natural order of man. What you speak of is a pipedream. Your greed is as big as any mans.....unless you own nothing, live 100% off the grid, with no need for currency
16 - C.A.S.
Troll- I highly doubt a jail break will be possible where he ends up. Ive been to our County Jail here, and that was built like an impenitrible fortress! I do feel bad he ruined his life so young.
17 - troll
well HATE while we disagree on timelines at least we agree that the type of development I'm talking about is possible in the long run
and I certainly agree that minimalism is something of a positive meditation
18 - Christopher Rose
troll, just thought you might like to know that "religion=HATE2 and "C.A.S." share an IP address...
It's always quite funny when people criticise others as lacking education when their comments are littered with spelling and grammatical errors!
19 - troll
I wonder if they're dating
20 - Glenn Contrarian
To those who want to free Bradley Manning -
If that's what you really think, first tell me why you feel why he shouldn't pay the price for doing something which almost certainly endangered some (or many) of our intel agents and informants all across the world. Tell me why you think that's not a big deal.
And I'll agree that people like CAS and his or her alter ego above should be ignored.
21 - troll
Glenn - assuming Manning's demonstrated guilt - do you see any judicial road that leads to his release or a light sentence?
the question in my mind is how did this kid get a ts/sci clearance...snafu
22 - Glenn Contrarian
troll -
1. The government can't give him too light a sentence for the reasons I listed in my article. OTOH, they can't give him too harsh a sentence because of all those who IMO don't grasp the magnitude of his alleged crimes. So I figure he'll get a moderate sentence, say, 10-15 years. Again, don't get me wrong - I don't think he had an ounce of malice in him (which normally counts a great deal IMO)...but what he allegedly did is inexcusable.
2. Anyone who has a spotless record both prior to and during their military service and has demonstrated reliability and competence can get a TS clearance. John Walker had a spotless record and a TS clearance, too - and he became a spy working for the Soviets. His case has been described as the most damaging espionage against the U.S. military in history. I don't think I need to tell you what the rest of us in the Navy - including me, at the time - would have liked to do to him.
23 - Christopher Rose
Glenn, some reality bites - you're not left wing; you're not liberal; it wasn't "our victory" in WWII unless you mean the Allied forces of which the USA was just a (mostly mercenary) part; the winning side in most Arab Spring revolutions is more hostile to the USA than the regimes they replaced; the Syrian rebels are also not pro-American, so you are probably aiding your enemies; as far as we know nothing Bradley Manning did endangered the USA's intelligence capabilities; breaking an oath of service for moral or ethical reasons is acceptable behaviour; "but by his actions he may very well have enabled far greater injustice" is simply speculation on your part; so is your assertion that he "very likely endangered lives" as there is no evidence of that; there is no such thing as "lines one must not cross"; there is more than one recent US president that has done more to harm the USA and nobody is proposing they be charged with anything.
As far as we know Bradley Manning embarrassed the United States, nothing more, and the country is scapegoating him as part of its oppressive control of its population and allies.
24 - troll
Glenn - the story I've read is that the kid generally viewed as quirky washed out of basic and was recycled through due to his IT skills
his superiors showed exceptionally poor judgment putting sensitive info in his hands - story goes that they had even questioned whether sending him to Iraq was a good idea
25 - Glenn Contrarian
troll -
Either way, the kid slipped through the cracks. If he did what he did, he has to pay the price and serve as an example.