Obama's Two-Track Strategy

Bradley Manning’s sentence shows that while Obama seeks to put a friendlier face on America, he is damaging the best traditions of democracy.

We should probably thank Col. Denise Lind. Sitting as judge in the trial of whistle-blower and alleged traitor Bradley Manning, she dismissed the most excessive and absurd charge against him: Namely, that in passing files to WikiLeaks, he had given aid and comfort to an enemy of the United States — in other words, he had committed high treason.

Had the military leadership been successful in sentencing Manning more stringently, every future report of questionable activity in the U.S. would have been viewed through the prism of high treason because any information revealed by whistle-blowers could conceivably help America’s enemies. Seen in this light, the judge’s decision was courageous because one can only imagine what tremendous pressures were brought to bear on this uniformed judge by the military chain of command.

Nonetheless, Manning had already been convicted of espionage in the minds of many Americans because his leaked information had appeared publicly; this turns the judge’s decision at Fort Meade into a catastrophe. It is a catastrophe for everyone who believes in freedom of information, as well as the duty of every citizen to inform the public of any violations of the law perpetrated by the government. That is to say, it is a catastrophe for anyone who believes in the U.S. Constitution.

Declaring War on Journalists

The whole business is a declaration of war on courageous whistle-blowers, who have dedicated themselves to that principle, as well as on investigative journalists, who refuse to cooperate with those who treat the Constitution so cavalierly. It is also a message to Edward Snowden in the Moscow airport transit zone: Do not expect any mercy if we ever get our hands on you!

It is difficult to understand that under the leadership of this U.S. president, of all people, America has become a country of incessant snooping that hounds investigative reporters on a scale unseen since the McCarthy era of the 1950s. The former civil rights attorney and constitutional scholar Barack Obama admits the government is currently charging seven journalists with treasonous activities. A New York Times reporter is threatened with imprisonment because he refuses to divulge his sources for a tell-all book he is writing about the CIA. Even the Associated Press news agency has had its telephones tapped by the U.S. Department of Justice.

In his so-called war on terror, Obama is pursuing a dangerous two-track strategy. While he ended some of the devastating and highly controversial imperialist policies of the Bush administration in Iraq and Afghanistan, he simultaneously ramped up the secret use of killer drones and increased surveillance of private communications and intimidation of key citizens.

Breaking with Democratic Traditions

This is a strategy reminiscent of the ugly image America was saddled with under George W. Bush and one that the U.S. would be better off abandoning. It breaks with the best traditions of American democracy — traditions for which those who revere democracy all over the world once praised this current president.

However, should we not prosecute and punish the betrayal of secrets? Not necessarily. It is the U.S. itself that has a long tradition in dealing with so-called whistle-blowers, whose actions are protected by statutes and upheld by Supreme Court decisions. Here in Germany, we do not even have a comparable term or accurate translation for these traitors with honorable intentions.

The revelations provided by Manning and Snowden are the best examples of the beneficial effects of whistle-blowing. Manning’s leak of the video showing the deadly helicopter attack, in which Iraqi civilians were pursued and gunned down like so many rabbits, precipitated a hefty debate about the ramifications of such military intervention and the state of morale in the U.S. Army. And Snowden’s reports about the heretofore unimaginable data snooping carried out by the National Security Agency have resulted in many critical questions on the subject of security versus liberty, a balance that seems to have become dangerously unstable.

However, is this all a purely American debate for us to merely observe and silently shake our heads? Certainly not. Thanks to Edward Snowden, we Germans now know that our data privacy laws are not worth a red cent, as long as the NSA can get into our data networks at will. German President Joachim Gauck has said Snowden deserves respect; that is exactly right, but the best way for Germany to show him respect would be to help this victim being persecuted by our American ally.

What does the German government intend to do? Avert its eyes?