Under Obama, Better to Commit a War Crime Than Expose One

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Under Obama, Better to Commit a War Crime Than Expose One
by Medea Benjamin and Charles Davis

Bradley Manning is accused of humiliating the political establishment by revealing the complicity of top U.S. officials in carrying out and covering up war crimes. In return for his act of conscience, the U.S. government is holding him in abusive solitary confinement, humiliating him and trying to keep him behind bars for life.

The lesson is clear, and soldiers take note: You're better off committing a war crime than exposing one.

An Army intelligence officer stationed in Kuwait, the 23-year-old Manning – outraged at what he saw – allegedly leaked tens of thousands of State Department cables to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks. These cables show U.S. officials covering up everything from U.S. tax dollars funding child rape in Afghanistan to illegal, unauthorized bombings in Yemen. Manning is also accused of leaking video evidence of U.S. pilots gunning down more than a dozen Iraqis in Baghdad, including two journalists for Reuters, and then killing a father of two who stopped to help them. The father's two young children were also severely wounded.

“Well, it's their fault for bringing kids into a battle,” a not-terribly-remorseful U.S. pilot can be heard remarking in the July 2007 “Collateral Murder” video.

None of the soldiers who carried out that war crime have been punished, nor have any of the high-ranking officials who authorized it. Indeed, committing war crimes is more likely to get a solider a medal than a prison term. And authorizing them? Well, that'll get you a book deal and a six-digit speaking fee. Just ask George W. Bush. Or Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld or Condoleezza Rice. Or the inexplicably “respectable” Colin Powell.

In fact, the record indicates Manning would be far better off today – possibly on the lecture circuit rather than in solitary confinement – if he'd killed those men in Baghdad himself.

Hyperbole? Consider what happened to the U.S. soldiers who, over a period of hours – not minutes – went house to house in the Iraqi town of Haditha and executed 24 men, women and children in retaliation for a roadside bombing.

“I watched them shoot my grandfather, first in the chest and then in the head,” said one of the two surviving eyewitnesses to the massacre, nine-year-old Eman Waleed. “Then they killed my granny." Almost five years later, not one of the men involved in the incident is behind bars. And despite an Army investigation revealing that statements made by the chain of command “suggest that Iraqi civilian lives are not as important as U.S. lives,” with the murder of brown-skinned innocents considered “just the cost of doing business,” none of their superiors are behind bars either.

Now consider the treatment of Bradley Manning. On March 1, the military charged Manning with 22 additional offenses – on top of the original charges of improperly leaking classified information, disobeying an order and general misconduct. One of the new charges, “aiding the enemy,” is punishable by death. That means Manning faces the prospect of being executed or spending his life in prison for exposing the ugly truth about the U.S. empire.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration has decided to make Manning's pre-trial existence as torturous as possible, holding him in solitary confinement 23 hours a day since his arrest 10 months ago – treatment that the group Psychologists for Social Responsibility notes is, “at the very least, a form of cruel, unusual and inhumane treatment in violation of U.S. law.”

In addition to the horror of long-term solitary confinement, Manning is barred from exercising in his cell and is denied bed sheets and a pillow. And every five minutes, he must respond in the affirmative when asked by a guard if he's “okay.”

Presumably he lies.

And it gets worse. On his blog, Manning's military lawyer, Lt. Col. David Coombs, reveals that his client is now being stripped of his clothing at night, left naked under careful surveillance for seven hours. When the 5:00 am wake-up call comes, he's then “forced to stand naked at the front of the cell.”

If you point out that the emperor has no clothes, it seems the empire will make sure you have none either.

Officials at the Quantico Marine Base where Manning is being held claim the move is “not punitive” but rather a “precautionary measure” intended to prevent him from harming himself. Do they really think Manning is going to strangle himself with his underwear – and that he could do so while under 24-hour surveillance?

“Is this Quantico or Abu Ghraib?” asked Rep. Dennis Kucinich in a press release. Good question, congressman. Like the men imprisoned in former President Bush's Iraqi torture chamber, Manning is being abused and humiliated despite having not so much as been tried in a military tribunal, much less convicted of an actual crime.

So much for the constitutional lawyer who ran as the candidate of hope and change.

Remember back when Obama campaigned against such Bush-league torture tactics? Recall when candidate Obama said “government whistleblowers are part of a healthy democracy and must be protected from reprisal”? It appears his opposition to torture and support for whistleblowers was only so much rhetoric. And then he took office.

Indeed, despite the grand promises and soaring rhetoric, Obama’s treatment of Manning is starkly reminiscent of none other than Richard Nixon. Like Obama – who has prosecuted more whistleblowers than any president in history – Nixon had no sympathy for “snitches,” and no interest in the American public learning the truth about their government. And he likewise argued that Daniel Ellsberg, the leaker of the Pentagon Papers, had given “aid and comfort to the enemy” for revealing the facts about the war in Vietnam.

But there's a difference: Richard Nixon never had the heroic whistleblower of his day thrown in solitary confinement and tortured. If only the same could be said for Barack Obama.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/07-1

Wow.

So much here.

First, Bradley Manning is in trouble for leaking classified documents...not merely whistle blowing, so let's divide that issue up-front.

There is a moral issue of if a soldier should report things that are to be classified...even reporting an issue up the chain of command might be prohibited. Classified means just that. If you want a security clearance with the military, it means you must agree to keep your mouth shut no matter what you see or hear.

This is why I cringe when I see some employers get excited over a candidate who held/holds a security clearance. It doesn't prove they are of good character...it means the government trusts them to keep their mouth shut. NOT the same thing.

Second, as far as whistle blowing is concerned, it's always been punished. Civilian or military, speaking out against something ultimately gets YOU burned, not anyone else. I could run a long list of cases I've seen where the guy/gal doing the morally (and often legally) correct thing gets harassed, demoted, disciplined, etc. while the offenders are rewarded.

Omerta

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I think we need to separate the offence from the state's response to the offence.

There is no question in my mind that the release of classified information is properly behaviour which the government may criminalize. As with any criminality, the state is free to prosecute and to punish, within the constitutional framework.

So what of the whistleblower? Well, there are routes for whistleblowing. The military, and every government agency has internal organizations for holding the agency to account. There are also government-wide structures with the mandate to review wrongdoing reported to them by public servants or forces members. Finally, there is the legislature, which has the capacity to inquire into the conduct of the government. All of these are options before one irresponsibly releases classified information to the public. Whistleblowing might go to mitigation, but I have a hard time seeing it as excuse in circumstances in which legitimate routes were open to an accused.

But having identified a suspect, the rules of natural justice suggest that the suspect is entitled to know the charges against him, to have a speedy and fair trial, and to confront his accusers. The military claims special privilege for courts martial, but I believe this privilege is entirely misplaced. At one time field justice might have been a necessary component of military discipline, but I believe those days are long past. I see no basis on which courts martial and the military justice system cannot be held to the same levels of constitutional scrutiny as civilian courts. (Although the matter of confidential evidence is a separate issue that would have to be dealt with in either a military or a civilian court, and is particularly troublesome).

The right to a speedy trial is a right on which the United States military has a lacklustre record. It is not merely Manning, but any number of others being held indefinitely in Guantanamo Bay that have a legitimate complaint, with no apparent opportunity to achieve redress.

Under the proper workings of the U.S. Code of Military Justice, Manning is in deep doo doo. But that is no excuse for torture or cruel and unusual punishment. For a member of the armed forces to reveal classify or restricted data is a very serious matter. Members of the military are expected to obey orders, conform to the operating rules of their service or get out. Being in the military voluntarily curtails one's rights to some extent. But torture is illegal, period.

ruveyn