The Manning Affair as an Isolated Case of 'Vietnam Syndrome'

The trial of U.S. Army Private First Class Bradley Manning, a military intelligence analyst who passed on secret documents to the notorious website WikiLeaks, is an affair that concerns more than just the United States.

First of all, not everyone, neither in the United States itself nor in other countries, considers Bradley Manning a traitor. Second of all, he has company: Lately the mass media have been no less transfixed by Edward Snowden, who also divulged American intelligence secrets. And it’s possible that yet another American with access to government secrets is mulling over the idea of releasing them to the public. What drives them: a temporary clouding of consciousness, malicious intent or a determination on the part of people who are sick of government hypocrisy to uncover the truth?

He Won’t Go Unpunished

On Tuesday, July 30, military judge Col. Denise Lind, presiding over the trial at Fort Meade in Maryland, found Manning guilty on 19 counts, including espionage, theft of government property, computer fraud and other military infractions. He was acquitted of the most serious charge against him — “aiding the enemy” — which would have carried a life sentence without the possibility of parole. However, legal experts have determined that Manning has in store [for him] an estimated 136-year prison sentence — so he could well be behind bars for the rest of his life. It is expected that the judge will announce the terms of the 25-year-old ex-soldier’s prison sentence today [July 31].

Regardless of how many years Manning gets in prison, his trial has, to a certain extent, polarized American society. Some see him as a traitor and others, a hero.

Yes, the young Army private handed over a trove of classified documents to whistle-blowers at WikiLeaks. But there’s no proof that he intended to bring harm to his country in doing so. Manning himself says that his actions were motivated by a determination to put a spotlight on the United States’ “dishonest foreign policy” and the unlawful conduct of American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, which led to the deaths of innocent civilians.

Rude Awakenings

What compelled a military intelligence analyst to commit such an unpatriotic act as divulging his own country’s secrets?

It’s a well-known fact that Americans are extremely patriotic. They overwhelmingly believe in the idea that America’s democratic values are the only valid ones and that spreading them all over the world is absolutely right and necessary. It’s with those convictions that U.S. soldiers invaded Afghanistan and then Iraq.

However, it soon became obvious that neither Afghans nor Iraqis were keen to take on American-style democracy. The U.S. soldiers, having found themselves in a foreign land and having been met with a less-than-warm welcome, eventually began to understand the reasons underlying the natives’ indignation. As it turns out, Afghans and Iraqis have their own values, customs and traditions, and they don’t want imported democracy, much less democracy imposed upon them “by fire and sword.” This was a rude awakening for the U.S. soldiers: Like knights in shining armor, they landed in a faraway country to rescue the people from a tyrant, but instead of being greeted with flowers and gratitude, the aggressive locals met them with bullets, roadside bombs, and dead and wounded comrades.

After their service in these “hot spots,” the soldiers returned to their homeland as completely different people. Not too long ago, this phenomenon was called “Vietnam Syndrome.” According to psychologists, the number of suicides among military personnel rose sharply during the Afghan and Iraq wars — and many of these soldiers, in their suicide notes, accused the government of having manipulated them by misrepresenting the goals that they were allegedly pursuing during their overseas military campaigns.

For some, this disappointment gave way to action. Manning, for example, decided to blow the whistle on his deceptive government. From his words, it’s clear that he didn’t intend to betray his countrymen or his country, and he didn’t do it for glory — he only wanted to tell the truth. And for that, it’s possible that he will sit in prison for a few dozen years, only to come out on the other side a dim old man.

Would Snowden’s Return Make Sense?

The next person to unveil government secrets after Manning was Edward Snowden, an analyst in the U.S. National Security Agency. He is also quite young and also disappointed, to say the least, with the gulf between Washington’s words and its actions. His government wasn’t supposed to spy on its citizens — that was what they did in other countries — and the U.S. would catch them red-handed and expose them to the world. That’s how it was supposed to be.

Now Washington is doing everything it can to get its hands on its prodigal son Snowden — his father was even asked to fly to Russia to retrieve his offspring. It’s doubtful, however, that the Bradley Manning case will convince Snowden to return to his native land.

Everyone struggles with injustice (or with that which is perceived as unjust) in his or her own special way. Manning and Snowden found one way of doing so, the dozens of soldiers that committed suicide found another way of doing so, and even those who humiliated imprisoned Iraqis and Afghans were unconsciously voicing their indignation over having wound up in an incomprehensible, unjustifiable war.

“I don’t know why I was there or why I was killing people that didn’t do anything to me or any of the other Americans. It seems like I lived my whole life in vain,” one of my friends, a 32-year-old soldier in the U.S. Army who lived through two long tours in Iraq, wrote in his suicide note. It’s safe to say that any government, in the interest of national security, would prefer that its citizens shot themselves rather than giving out government secrets, much less such unflattering ones. But that preference is far from democratic.