XPost: soc.veterans, alt.military.retired, alt.military   
   From: logos@gnosistic.com   
      
   Bradley Manning: One Soldier Who Really Did ‘Defend Our Freedom’   
      
   by Kevin Carson, January 01, 2011   
      
      
   When I hear someone say that soldiers "defend our freedom," my   
   immediate response is to gag. I think the last time American soldiers   
   actually fought for the freedom of Americans was probably the   
   Revolutionary War — or maybe the War of 1812, if you want to be   
   generous. Every war since then has been for nothing but to uphold a   
   system of power, and to make the rich folks even richer.   
      
   But I can think of one exception.  If there’s a soldier anywhere in   
   the world who’s fought and suffered for my freedom, it’s Pfc. Bradley   
   Manning.   
      
   Manning is frequently portrayed, among the knuckle-draggers on   
   right-wing message boards, as some sort of spoiled brat or ingrate,   
   acting on an adolescent whim.  But that’s not quite what happened,   
   according to Johann Hari.   
      
   Manning, like many young soldiers, joined up in the naive belief that   
   he was defending the freedom of his fellow Americans. When he got to   
   Iraq, he found himself working under orders "to round up and hand over   
   Iraqi civilians to America’s new Iraqi allies, who he could see were   
   then torturing them with electrical drills and other implements." The   
   people he arrested, and handed over for torture, were guilty of such   
   "crimes" as writing "scholarly critiques" of the U.S. occupation   
   forces and its puppet government. When he expressed his moral   
   reservations to his supervisor, Manning "was told to shut up and get   
   back to herding up Iraqis."   
      
   The people Manning saw tortured, by the way, were frequently the very   
   same people who had been tortured by Saddam: Trade unionists, members   
   of the Iraqi Freedom Congress, and other freedom-loving people who had   
   no more use for Halliburton and Blackwater than they had for the Baath   
   Party.   
      
   For exposing his government’s crimes against humanity, Manning has   
   spent seven months in solitary confinement –  a torture deliberately   
   calculated to break the human mind.   
      
   We see a lot of "serious thinkers" on the op-ed pages and talking head   
   shows, people like David Gergen, Chris Matthews, and Michael Kinsley,   
   going on about all the stuff that Manning’s leaks have impaired the   
   ability of "our government" to do.   
      
   He’s impaired the ability of the U.S. government to conduct diplomacy   
   in pursuit of some fabled "national interest" that I supposedly have   
   in common with Microsoft, Wal-Mart, and Disney. He’s risked untold   
   numbers of innocent lives, according to the very same people who have   
   ordered the deaths of untold thousands of innocent people.  According   
   to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, Manning’s exposure of   
   secret U.S. collusion with authoritarian governments in the Middle   
   East, to promote policies that their peoples would find abhorrent,   
   undermines America’s ability to promote "democracy, open government,   
   and free and open societies."   
      
   But I’ll tell you what Manning’s really impaired government’s ability   
   to do.   
      
   He’s impaired the U.S. government’s ability to lie us into wars where   
   thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of foreigners are   
   murdered.   
      
   He’s impaired its ability to use such wars – under the guise of   
   promoting "democracy" — to install puppet governments like the   
   Coalition Provisional Authority, that will rubber stamp neoliberal   
   "free trade" agreements (including harsh "intellectual property"   
   provisions written by the proprietary content industries) and cut   
   special deals with American crony capitalists.   
      
   He’s impaired its ability to seize good, decent people who —  unlike   
   most soldiers —  really are fighting for freedom, and hand them over   
   to thuggish governments for torture with power tools.   
      
   Let’s get something straight. Bradley Manning may be a criminal by the   
   standards of the American state. But by all human standards of   
   morality, the government and its functionaries that Manning exposed to   
   the light of day are criminals. And Manning is a hero of freedom for   
   doing it.   
      
   So if you’re one of the authoritarian state-worshipers, one of the   
   groveling sycophants of power, who are cheering on Manning’s   
   punishment and calling for even harsher treatment, all I can say is   
   that you’d probably have been there at the crucifixion urging Pontius   
   Pilate to lay the lashes on a little harder. You’d have told the Nazis   
   where Anne Frank was hiding. You’re unworthy of the freedoms which so   
   many heroes and martyrs  throughout history — heroes like Bradley   
   Manning — have fought to give you.   
      
   Originally published by the Center for a Stateless Society.   
      
      
   http://original.antiwar.com/kevin-carson/2010/12/31/bradley-mann   
   ng-one-soldier-who-really-did-defend-our-freedom/   
      
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