‘I Don’t Really Care What You Or Anybody Else’ Thinks About Chelsea Manning
A person cannot reply to a comment and then seriously claim they do not care what others think. You wrote a response instead of ignoring me. You obviously care.
Thank you for providing your “assessment.” You are an example of why there is support across the political spectrum for President Donald Trump’s investigation into a media organization—a clear attack on the First Amendment.
Chelsea did not indiscriminately disclose documents. She had access to way more databases, including human intelligence databases, but she selected specific sets of documents to release to the public. Her statement to the court-martial in February 2013 made that abundantly clear.
The claim that Chelsea exposed the names of informants to danger largely functioned as propaganda to undermine what she revealed—and what WikiLeaks published. This stemmed from primarily from the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs. Yet, these were largely historical documents. Her defense heavily disputed whether there were any specific people who were injured or harmed or who would be injured or harmed because they were not documents reflecting active intelligence operations. That would have been what was in the human intelligence databases.
As to whether it would have been “better for U.S. interests had they been held secret,” I applaud your honesty. Because what you are really saying is Chelsea made it more difficult for the U.S. to commit war crimes, wage open-ended conflicts, engage in deceit and manipulation through diplomacy, advance corporate interests globally, defend regimes that engage in torture and abuse of their own people, etc.
On your statement that WikiLeaks “acts in coordination” with an authoritarian regime, as in Russia, what evidence do you have? And what evidence do you have that it did so in 2010? Because that is what is relevant to Chelsea’s case.
“Endangered intelligence informants of occupied countries, making them fear retaliation”—It’s hard for me to tell if you are repeating part of your first claim in your “assessment.” But I also don’t know to what you’re referring.
This is terribly vague, and by the way, why don’t you direct your statement toward the United States government, which launched an invasion in Iraq that resulted in hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi, thousands of dead U.S. soldiers, and millions of wounded and displaced people? What about those lives that were killed and destroyed?
None of the lives of informants in occupied countries would have ever been at risk if the U.S. never engaged in a war. In retrospect, we can say this regime change effort destabilized a country and created a hub for both al Qaida and then Islamic State to train its forces and grow its strength and terrorize people throughout the region.
At least you acknowledge that the harm was never publicly substantiated.
Let’s address this notion:
Just because she followed her conscience doesn’t mean that she didn’t break the law. It’s a moral decision to do that, but it also means understanding the punishment that comes in its train, i.e. Patrick Henry.
Please help me to understand how you can concede she may have followed her conscience but still treat her like a traitor through your comments.
Why does someone have to martyr themselves and go to jail or prison for a long time to create change? Civil disobedience risks a person’s freedom, body, and livelihood. Yet, to disobey a law, one should not have to martyr their self in order to complete their act of courage.
Finally, I think you do care about what I have to say. I doubt you’ll be able to bite your tongue and stop yourself from responding.
