shadows. Challenging the classification of each tightly guarded document is impossible. No organization has the resources to fight this fight, nor would they be likely to win right now. Absent a radical change in our government’s diplomatic and military bureaucracies, massive over-classification will only continue.
If we hope to know what our government is so busily doing all over the world, massive leaks from insider whistleblowers are, like it or not, the only recourse. Our whistleblower protection laws urgently need to catch up to this state of affairs, and though we are hardly there yet, Bradley Manning helped take us part of the way. He did what Barack Obama swore he would do on coming into office. For striking a blow against our government’s fanatical and counterproductive habit of secrecy, Bradley Manning deserves not punishment but the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
3. For Doing More Than Any American Alive to Advance the Cause of Freedom Abroad
Wasn’t it official policy to spread democracy around the world—especially to the Middle East—and to extend our freedom to others, as all recent American presidents have soaringly proclaimed?
Things haven’t exactly turned out that way. On the one hand, plans to remake the Middle East have swirled into violent chaos at great cost in human life. On the other, America has lavished financial and military support on autocrats in Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Yemen—and on ethnic cleansing in occupied Palestine. Both sets of policies, both backed by broad bipartisan consensus, have made a joke of Washington’s “Freedom Agenda.”
Against this backdrop stands the glowing contribution of Bradley Manning to freedom and justice around the world. Thanks to his alleged leaks, the people of Libya know about Muammar Qaddaffi’s cozy evening with Senator John McCain, and the latter’s eagerness to supply the dictator with American-made armaments.9 The people of Bahrain know about their vicious ruler’s praise for the Pentagon’s military training center in Manama, not to mention his fond memories of his tutelage at the Army Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, where Manning was for months imprisoned.10 And the people of Tunisia had confirmed by a classified State Department cable what most already suspected: the thuggish and thoroughgoing corruption of the ruling Ben-Ali family.11
Did Wikileaks “cause” the Arab Spring, as some have implied? Of course not. From Tunisia to Egypt to Yemen to Bahrain to Syria and beyond, these societies were smoldering with long-held grievances against stifling authoritarian rule, often backed by Washington. The contributions of Wikileaks are small, but they are not insignificant. “You cannot get away from Wikileaks in any account of the Tunisian uprising,” says Larbi Sadiki, a Tunisian-born political scientist. “You need to see the clear record of injustice and corruption inflicted by a cabal of powerful men.”12
Even if US policy has often been on the wrong side of things, we should be proud that at least one American—Bradley Manning—was on the right side and made his own modest but significant contribution to the freedom of foreign nations. For this he deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
4. For Performing His Duties in Exemplary Fashion
What are a soldier’s duties when faced with torture? In 2005, General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters: “It is absolutely the responsibility of every US service member [in Iraq], if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to try to stop it.”13 This, according to the highest-ranking soldier in the land, was the obligation of every US service member in Operation Iraqi Freedom. It is a duty that Pfc. Manning has fulfilled.
Bradley Manning enlisted in the US Army to make a difference. He enlisted in 2007, in part out of family tradition (his father was a Naval intelligence officer), in part out of hopes of a military-funded university education after his deployment, and in large part out of patriotic service. “He was basically really into America,” says a hometown friend. “He was proud of our successes as a country. He valued our freedom, but probably our economic freedom the most. I think he saw the US as a force for good in the world.”14
When Bradley Manning deployed to Iraq in October 2009, he thought that he’d be helping the Iraqi people build a free society after the long nightmare of Saddam Hussein. He thought Operation Iraqi Freedom was supposed to have something to do with Iraqi Freedom, especially freedom from state torture.
He soon found himself helping the Iraqi authorities detain civilians for distributing “anti-Iraqi literature”—which turned out to be an investigative report into financial corruption in their own government entitled “Where Does The Money Go?” The penalty for this “crime” in Iraq was not a slap on the wrist. Imprisonment and torture, as well as systematic abuse of prisoners, are widespread in the new Iraq. From the military’s own Sigacts (Significant Actions) reports, we have a multitude of credible accounts of Iraqi police and soldiers shooting prisoners, beating them to death, pulling out fingernails or teeth, cutting off fingers, burning with acid, torturing with electric shocks or the use of suffocation, and various kinds of sexual abuse including sodomy with gun barrels and forcing prisoners to perform sexual acts on guards and each other.
Manning had more than adequate reason to be concerned about handing over Iraqi citizens for likely torture simply for producing pamphlets about corruption. Like any good soldier, Manning immediately took these concerns up the chain of command. And how did his superiors respond? According to Manning, his commanding officer told him to “shut up” and get back to rounding up more prisoners for the Iraqi Federal Police to treat however they cared to.15 And this is no surprise: in the course of its eight-year occupation, the American military handed over thousands of prisoners to the Iraqi authorities, knowing full well what would happen to many of them.
It is unclear—and contested—whether the US military had a legal obligation to carry out General Pace’s public exhortation to prevent torture by local authorities. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld certainly disagreed with his top general’s exhortation, and secretly issued Fragmentary Order 242, which made noninterference with Iraqi torture official US policy.16 The laws of armed conflict generally impose a light burden on occupying armies, though they do impose ample restrictions on the people being occupied, especially insurgents and “unprivileged non-uniformed combatants”—formerly referred to as “savages” in the common discourse of international law. Though it may seem outrageous, most interpreters of the Geneva Conventions would agree, however reluctantly, that it was strictly lawful for occupying US military to hand over local citizens, even nonviolent citizen activists, to the Iraqi authorities where they faced a decent likelihood torture.
Refusing to interfere with torture was probably lawful. But was it honorable?
Bradley Manning may not have always been a model soldier, but if we are to believe the accusations, his bravery was remarkable and he was a true believer in his mission. He believed Operation Iraqi Freedom had something to do with planting and nurturing Iraqi freedom, especially that most fundamental liberty, freedom from torture and arbitrary detention.
Pfc. Manning acted in accordance with his belief in the mission to spread freedom in Iraq. By blowing the whistle on programmatic institutional complicity with torture, Bradley Manning made a moral choice that honored his uniform and his country. For the example he has set, he fully deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
5. For Upholding an American Tradition of Transparency in Statecraft
Bradley Manning is only the latest in a long line of whistleblowers in and out of uniform who have risked everything to put our country back on the right path.
Take Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of the Pentagon Papers, a Pentagon-commissioned secret history of the Vietnam War and the official lies and distortions that the government used to sell it. Many of the documents it included were classed at a much higher security
