Merciless

Bradley Manning’s sentence shows that anyone seeking to expose governmental wrongdoing in the United States will be treated like a murderer. Likewise, the Obama administration also got the equally severe intended message of the military justice system.

The U.S. military could have sent a message with a double meaning in the Bradley Manning case: Yes, Manning committed crimes by releasing classified information to the public. No, that was not grounds to lock him away for most of the rest of his life. Such a double message would have been the appropriate one to send in the WikiLeaks case, as it would have considered that Manning was motivated by idealism, that he apologized for his misdeeds and that any damage done to national security remained contained and manageable.

But 35 years is a draconian sentence, even if Manning someday gets an early release. The punishment is brutal, even if it does not approach the 60 years the prosecution demanded. The government delivered the merciless message that it wanted to get out: Whoever reveals classified information is a traitor deserving a life sentence — that is to say, anyone who blows the whistle on a government embarking on the wrong path, even a highly dangerous one, will be treated like a murderer.

But it remains unclear whether such tactics of intimidation, as used by the Obama administration, will prove effective. Such harshness might easily convince future whistle-blowers that the only road to real public enlightenment has to be paved with crime.