Bradley Manning conviction will inspire others to follow
Sreeram Chaulia says the conviction of US military whistle-blower Bradley Manning on spying charges for telling the truth makes a mockery of justice
The conviction of Private Bradley Manning on charges of espionage by a US military court is a huge setback to the honourable practices of whistle-blowing and political dissent. Manning, who leveraged his position as an intelligence analyst in the US army in Iraq to let out thousands of classified reports and diplomatic cables to the WikiLeaks organisation, spoke truth to power but suffered persecution dressed up as military justice.
The establishment had decided a priori that he was a "traitor" for exposing its egregious crimes in Iraq and elsewhere. To brand conscientious whistle-blowers as spies is a miscarriage of justice. What axe was Manning grinding? He saw himself doing a service to humanity by blowing the cover on illegal impunity of the US military which was violating the Geneva Conventions.
The chilling video of the American helicopter assault in Baghdad which wantonly killed innocent civilians in 2007 was one of several episodes contained in the WikiLeaks dossier that put the lie to the liberation rhetoric used as a pretext to justify the illegitimate war in Iraq.
Manning has been crucified to drive fear into insiders within the American security apparatus not to contemplate future leaks. In the murky underworld of the Pentagon, "leakers" have become a menace to the arbitrary power that has accumulated in the hands of a vast and privatised military intelligence complex.
The soldier had to be severely punished because he upset the logic of raison d'etat for the hawks in the US government and their private contractors to make merry under the cloak of "national security".
But the fire Manning lit is not easily extinguishable due to popular disillusionment in America with foreign military misadventures. The former National Security Agency contractor and whistle-blower Edward Snowden is absconding from American kangaroo courts. Like Manning, who was moved to act by the indignities of war, Snowden opened our eyes by revealing the control mindset that permeates the US security mandarins and their allied private military firms.