Politics Is Not a Sandbox for Kids

We are surrounded by people who either sympathize with Bradley Manning or see the 35-year sentence he received as gross injustice.

I can fully understand that sentiment, especially since Manning gave stolen documents to Julian Assange, who started the worldwide Internet action exposing the U.S. government’s not-very-praiseworthy policies. Nowadays, the U.S. is not liked around the world, which is not surprising. We hardly ever like the strongest boy in a backyard. Assange earned applause from a crowd of idealists; when his fame waned, Edward Snowden — another informant pointing to potentially threatening government activity — ran to China and then Russia.

I can, thus, understand the sympathy toward Manning, but his case consists of two completely different chapters. He is the one to thank for the news media receiving a short recording from a military action in the suburbs of Baghdad, which shows how a helicopter crew shot at a group of unarmed people, killing some of them. The press agency, whose staff members got injured, tried without success to get the recording in a legal way, invoking the right to access to public information. Beyond a doubt, Manning acted in the public interest. He reported a probable military crime — as the circumstances suggest — and even if the video didn’t reveal the real image and sense of what happened, the bloody incident should be impartially examined before the court. For his good deed I would greatly reduce the severe sentence.

But Manning didn’t confine himself only to actions that could be described in a similar way. He revealed hundreds of thousands of documents, which mostly weren’t confidential diplomatic dispatches. However, he couldn’t take it for granted that the documents didn’t include any state secrets, at least because he wasn’t able to read them himself. Up to now, WikiLeaks are the object of analyses; it is not true that all of them are harmless. The other day we wrote about one of the documents: minutes of a meeting between U.S. and Russian experts assessing dangers to world safety. Exposing such opinions certainly threatens defense interests. There are many more such documents. Manning would have shown great courage if he had revealed such diplomatic correspondence of China or Russia, and not of his own country, for which he served as a soldier.

The world is not a sandbox for kids. You cannot assume that everybody fraternizes with everybody else. Damage caused by disclosing one side’s secrets is much more threatening than destroying someone else’s mud pies.

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