The Case Against Manning:Contradictions and Breakdowns

More than three years after his arrest in Iraq, the American soldier Bradley Manning was found guilty of 20 of the 22 charges he faced in a military tribunal, the most notable being espionage and theft of information, for which he could spend up to 136 years in prison, should the judge responsible for the case impose the maximum sentence. Even though the American military judge dismissed the accusation that Manning aided the enemy, the most serious and disproportionate of the charges laid against him, the possibility that the 25-year-old marine may spend the rest of his days in prison is a sign of the enormous incongruity that plagues the U.S. justice system.

In fact, Manning’s conviction occurred in spite of judicial authorities recognizing that the information extracted from the Department of Defense was not given to any enemy of Washington but rather to the organization headed by Julian Assange. Furthermore, these revelations never represented a threat to U.S. security so much as to the superpower’s inhumane and criminal practices, which are documented in the information Manning gave to WikiLeaks. With all of this in mind, the insistence on prosecuting the American soldier for cooperating with the enemy shows how the case against him was never motivated by a need for justice; it was a government hitting back as hard as it could by manipulating the justice system through propaganda and ideology.

As for Manning’s conviction on the charge of espionage, his mistake pales in comparison to the revelations of the former military intelligence consultant, who operated a vast network of telephone and Internet surveillance that has affected millions of people and governments all over the world, as well as signaling a severe structural vulnerability to leaks. As Manning’s defense reminded us, the human element of the operation of the network leads to hundreds of thousands of people — between workers, government employees and contractors — having access to information considered confidential by the White House and the Pentagon.

The contradictions are even greater still, if we take into account that while the network was designed for the collection of information for the superpower’s geopolitical and economic interests, the motivation behind Manning’s actions was, as far as we know, unquestionably ethical and democratic.

Finally, it is embarrassing for a soldier to be convicted of sharing evidence of criminal and inhumane activities, when the majority of those who planned and carried them out continue to go unpunished. Indeed, considering the current situation, it is difficult to imagine a case being opened against George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and other former government employees, who used lies and secrecy to involve the U.S. in two unjustifiable colonialist wars that cost the lives of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans.

The same can be said of those responsible for the barbaric acts released by Manning, such as the murder of a Reuters reporter and 10 others by an Apache helicopter crew in July 2007; the torture of multiple prisoners in secret jails controlled by the Pentagon; the cover-up of thousands of deaths and the murder of civilians at the hands of invading troops; and other criminal acts, whose perpetrators not only have never set foot in prison but have also, in some cases, been decorated as war heroes.

The persecution carried out by the American government against those who have had the courage to expose the savagery and the abuses committed under U.S. protection is just another symptom of the state of moral, political and legal decay, in which the superpower finds itself.