[D66] Bradley Manning and the attack on democratic rights

[Antid Oto]

Bradley Manning and the attack on democratic rights
19 December 2011

The persecution of whistleblower Bradley Manning is a stark warning to the
entire working class. Now facing a military pretrial hearing on charges carrying
a maximum sentence of death, the 24-year-old Army private is accused of leaking
hundreds of thousands of government and military documents. The vindictive
treatment of this courageous young man is aimed at intimidating all opposition
to American imperialism.

In February 2010, whistleblower organization WikiLeaks began publishing material
that Manning is accused of providing. The documents revealed the criminality of
the American government and the Obama administration, along with other
governments worldwide. Revelations of corruption and brutality of Middle Eastern
regimes helped fuel the revolutionary upsurge across the region, beginning with
the Tunisian uprising one year ago.

Many files documented US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the most
explosive releases was a video, published under the title “Collateral Murder,”
showing a US helicopter gunship mowing down Iraqi civilians, including children
and two Reuters journalists, in a Baghdad neighborhood. In an era of highly
censored coverage of US military operations, the exposure of the American public
to such an atrocity had a significant impact in intensifying popular opposition
to the occupation of Iraq. (See, “Leaked video shows US military killing of two
Iraqi journalists”)

If Manning is, in fact, responsible for releasing this material, he has done
humanity a great service. The only “crime” he has committed is that of exposing
the real crimes of US imperialism. While he stands before the military court,
those government and military officials responsible for launching illegal wars,
carrying out torture and violating basic democratic rights remain at large.

Held for over a year and a half by the military, Manning has been subjected to
solitary confinement, forced nakedness, sleep deprivation and other cruelties.
He has been denied due process and private meetings with his legal counsel and
human rights investigators.

His plight has drawn denunciations from international rights organizations as
well as from masses of ordinary people all over the world. The Obama
administration—along with the entire political establishment and corporate
media—has met these appeals with indifference and contempt.

The state’s treatment of Manning has been aimed at breaking his will, in the
same manner that detainees at Guantanamo Bay have been compelled to confess to
charges fabricated by the US government.

The Obama administration intends to use Manning in its effort to take down
WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, who is currently appealing extradition
to Sweden on trumped-up sex charges. If he loses his appeal, Assange faces the
possibility of extradition to the United States to be tried as a terrorist by
the Justice Department or seized and imprisoned for life without trial by the US
military.

As the Article 32 hearing against him enters its fourth day, Manning’s defense
team must present its arguments without the testimony of 46 of the 48 witnesses
it had requested. The Justice Department has a direct influence on the
proceedings, in the form of Lieutenant Colonel Paul Almanza, the investigating
officer and Department of Justice prosecutor who is presiding as judge in the
case. Dismissing protestations of the defense that his employment constitutes a
conflict of interest, Almanza and the Army have rejected calls that he recuse
himself.

The methods of the Obama administration—indefinite detention, torture,
suppression of information, military drumhead trials—speak volumes about its
attitude toward democratic rights. Propelled into office in no small part by
hatred of the militarist policies of the Bush administration, Obama has
substantially expanded the military-intelligence apparatus, launched new wars,
and established a policy of extrajudicial state assassination, including of US
citizens.

Significantly, after pledging to create “the most transparent administration in
history,” the president has classified record amounts of data and prosecuted
more government whistleblowers for “espionage” than all prior administrations
combined.

The president is presently poised to sign into law the legal framework for a
police state. The National Defense Authorization Act contains provisions that
will allow citizens who are detained on US soil to be held indefinitely, without
charge or trial, in military prisons. The bill effectively legalizes policies
established by the Bush administration and expands their use onto American soil,
shredding the Bill of Rights. (See “Obama, Congress back legalization of a
police state”)

The prosecution of Manning is of a piece with this assault on democratic rights,
supported by the entire US political establishment. The state is effectively
saying that not only must it be free to commit crimes all over the world, but
that anyone who seeks to expose these crimes will face the harshest punishment.

The decay of democracy in the United States is not accidental. It is deeply
rooted in the breakdown of American and world capitalism. The ruling class has
responded to the crisis, which has created a social catastrophe for millions of
people, with increasingly vicious austerity measures. The national wealth has
been funneled to an ever smaller and richer financial plutocracy.

As a result, masses of people are being pushed into class struggle. For this
reason above all, Washington is laying the foundations for a police state.

Hanging over the head of Bradley Manning is a sentence of life in military
prison, if not death. Working people who are concerned for his life and opposed
to the war policies of US imperialism must recognize that the vendetta against
Manning and other whistleblowers is inherently linked to the attack by the
ruling class on the rights and living conditions of the working class as a whole.

A mass movement against war and the attack on democratic rights must be
developed on the basis of an independent, revolutionary socialist strategy.
Private Manning can be defended only as part of a struggle by the working class
against the Obama administration, both parties of big business, and the
capitalist system they serve.

Naomi Spencer

http://wsws.org/articles/2011/dec2011/pers-d19.shtml