While fleeing from the law in Hong Kong, Edward Snowden encouraged a return to "the rule of law rather than men." In spite of his politically incorrect usage of "men" instead of "men and women," he's right. Generally speaking, individual citizens shouldn't be held above the law -- least of all a soldier named Pfc. Bradley Manning who stole 720,000 classified documents and handed them over to be be indiscriminately posted for public consumption by Julian Assange's Wikileaks.
Whatever we might think about the motives and repercussions of Bradley Manning's actions, one thing we know for sure is that he broke the law. He was apprehended, arrested and, as a soldier, he was given a fair court-martial without a jury of his peers per his own request. He was able to hire a defense team and was backed up by public advocacy around the world. From there, he plead guilty to breaking ten laws in the face of having pledged an Oath of Enlistment. And on Tuesday, a military judge found him guilty on an additional ten charges.
Knowing this, I'm not exactly sure why there was such violent garment rending yesterday over the fact that Manning will go to prison per the mandates of the law. He was given due process, he was presumed innocent and he was tried in the plain view of journalists. So, why the angst?
I'm not clear as to how Manning has been able to attain such a small but vocal following of supporters given his recklessness and naivete in leaking so many documents, many of which revealed information damaging to American diplomatic endeavors. As with Snowden, there's a vindictiveness in Manning's actions -- a destructive blurting of information in order to seemingly exact punishment upon his government and the people from which it's derived. Had he released fewer documents with a more precise goal in mind and done so through more respectable channels, it's likely he wouldn't be facing 136 years in prison. Better yet, he probably wouldn't have as many critics.
This brings us to the issue of transparency and the so-called "war on whistleblowers."
It's bizarre that we've reached a place and time in which we have to justify the need for state secrets, but here we are. [READ MORE]