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Bradley Manning: Rich Man's War, Poor (Gay) Man's Fight
A poor, young gay man from the rural South joins the U.S. Army under pressure from his father, and because it's the only way left to pay for a college education. He is sent to Iraq, where he is tormented by fellow soldiers who entertain themselves watching "war porn" videos of drone and helicopter attacks on civilians. He is accused of leaking documents to Wikileaks and placed in solitary confinement, where he has been held for more than a year awaiting a military trial. The President of the United States, a former Constitutional law professor lately suffering amnesia about the presumption of innocence, declares publicly that "he broke the law." The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Amnesty International, and the American Civil Liberties Union express grave concern about the conditions of his imprisonment, and the spokesman for the U.S. State Department is forced to resign after calling it "ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid." A letter signed by 295 noted legal scholars charges that his imprisonment violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment and the Fifth Amendment guarantee against punishment without trial, and that procedures used on Manning "calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality" amount to torture.
The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the Human Rights Campaign, having invested millions lobbying for "gays in the military," have no comment. Of course not. Bradley Manning is not that butch patriotic homosexual, so central to the gays-in-the-military campaign, who Defends Democracy and Fights Terrorism with a virility indistinguishable from that of his straight buddies. He is not that pillar of social and economic stability, only incidentally homosexual, who returns home from the front to a respectable profession and a faithful spouse and children.
No, Bradley Manning is a poor, physically slight computer geek with an Oklahoma accent. He is, let us use the word, and not in a negative way, a sissy. Having grown up in a dysfunctional family in a small town in the South, he is that lonely, maladjusted outsider many gay people have been, or are, or recognize, whether we wish to admit it or not. He broke the law, the President says. And he did so--the liberal press implies, trying terribly hard to temper severity with compassion--because he wasn't man enough to deal with the pressure. He did so because he's a sissy and he couldn't put up with the manly rough-and-tumble that is so important to unit cohesion, like that time three of his buddies assaulted him and instead of taking it like a good soldier he peed in his pants. And then of course he was so embarrassed he threw a hissy fit and sent Wikileaks our nation's most closely guarded secrets, like some petulant teenage girl who gets her revenge by spreading gossip. This is, of course, the classic argument about gays and national security--they'll get beat up or blackmailed and reveal our secrets. And NGLTF, Lambda, and HRC, with their impeccably professional media and lobbying campaign, based on the best branding and polls and focus groups that money could buy, have effectively demolished that insidious stereotype.
They have demolished it by abandoning Bradley Manning.
Why was Bradley Manning in the U.S. Army in the first place? Why does anyone join the U.S. Army nowadays? Perhaps a few join out of a sincere if misguided idealism that they are truly going to defend freedom and democracy. But if that were commonly the case, one would expect to see a certain number of the more affluent classes, those who never stop preaching the need to defend democracy and freedom by military means, eager to enlist. There would be at least a few Bush and Cheney children fighting on the bloody ground of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Dick Cheney, of course, famously explained that he declined to fight in Vietnam--and invoked the privilege of the student deferment five times to avoid being drafted--because he "had better things to do." The draft is now a thing of the past, and the vast majority of those in the U.S. military are there precisely because they do not have better things to do. That is to say, there are few other opportunities available. The official national unemployment rate, now at 9.1 percent, masks a rate more than twice that figure for young people generally and more than three times that rate among young black men. Decent jobs are difficult to get, of course, without a college education. The U.S. manages, in the midst of an international economic crisis, to spend half a billion dollars every day on the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, but the federal and state governments have drastically cut funding for education, and public as well as private universities have reacted to funding cuts with astronomical increases in tuition and fees. Publicly-funded financial assistance to poor students is a thing of the past--except as part of a military recruitment package.
Bradley Manning wanted an education. He also wanted to get away from his family and out of his small town. Military recruiters do not spend much time in middle-class neighborhoods. They seek out those like Bradley Manning: poor, isolated teenagers dazzled by the slick brochures, the cool technology, the lofty rhetoric of duty and honor, and the generous promises--or who see right through the hype but know they have no other option. The military does not discriminate solely on the basis of sexual preference. In its recruitment it has always observed the time-honored and deeply discriminatory precept of "Rich man's war, poor man's fight."
This is the club that NGLTF, Lambda, and HRC would have gay people join. Let us leave aside for the moment the question of whether the club is a defender of freedom and democracy or an imperialist killing machine. It is in either case an institution that sends the Bradley Mannings of the world, and not the Dick Cheneys, to be killed or maimed--killing or maiming the Bradley Mannings, and not the Dick Cheneys, on the other side. Whatever collective psychosexual hangups or perverse ideological interests have prevented it from openly accepting homosexuals (or, not so long ago, women, or African-Americans in integrated units), it is an institution whose fundamental design is to send poor people to die defending the interests of the affluent.
We did not need Bradley Manning to tell us that the military is an institution in defense of a class society. But his case does uniquely reveal a seldom-acknowledged disjuncture between modern LGBT politics, based as it is on the individualizing concepts of "gay identity" and "equal rights," and the way in which political power continues to be exercised through social relationships of class. It was a complex combination of factors--a lack of economic and educational opportunities, and the absence of a community and culture where he could be himself as a gay man--that led Bradley Manning to where he is now. These factors cannot be separated into the neat, discrete categories of single-issue politics. Organizations like NGLTF, Lambda Legal, and HRC would like to pretend that Bradley Manning's case is not a "gay issue," or worse, remain silent because they know that it is indeed a gay issue, one that threatens to undermine their carefully-crafted plea for admittance to the military. Addressing it as a gay issue would mean looking critically not only at the specific discriminatory policy of the military, but also at the very purpose of the military. It would mean taking a good close look at the patriotic rhetoric of "equal rights" to serve in an "all-volunteer" military, whose purpose is to defend "freedom" and "democracy," where LGBT people can be just as "virile" in carrying out organized killing as their heterosexual counterparts. It would mean considering how such rhetoric hides unpleasant truths about economic domination in our world, understanding how such domination relies on structures of power embedded in social relations of class, race, and gender, and recognizing that these structures cannot be addressed individually, but must be attacked simultaneously. Organizations like NGLTF, Lambda Legal, and HRC that define "LGBT rights" as a single issue divorced from such considerations abandon the Bradley Mannings of the world not just to psychological torture by Presidential edict, but at the entrances to universities barred to those without money, at the military recruiting stations that have replaced the financial aid offices, and at the bases where soldiers, when not engaged in killing the declared enemy, learn to entertain themselves by bullying each other and watching war porn.
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32 Comments so far
Show AllI didn't know Bradley Manning was gay, and I don't particularly care. I know that I will defend him to the end. He is being railroaded, denied due process, and tortured because he followed his conscience and did what needed to be done. In a better world, he would be honored.
I honor him.
Well-said!
I would like to add that Bradley Manning is the opposite of "sissy". He is BRAVE and COURAGEOUS with an amazing moral code. The others who point at him ridiculing him are the real "sissies". I'm tired of this world being the Bizarro World of opposites. Brave men of high moral fiber are in prison while the weak-willed cowards hold the keys. Sick sick sick. Yes, in a better world, Bradley Manning would be honored and the multitudes would be thankful for his courage.
Excellent commentary on Bradley Manning. It is the best well rounded look at him within a broad context that demonstrates just how such an independent, conscientious man ended up where he did, the way he did. Certainly a counterpoint to that awful Frontline and other media slants.And it is deeply disappointing to us PFLAG's that our organization and others have left him to twist in the wind.
Not much news about Bradley Manning since they moved him to perportedly less torturous prison accommodations where he's gotten less news coverage. I watched Naomi Wolf's 2008 DVD "The End of America," which I ran across in the library and hadn't known existed. Does the best job yet of laying out the case for the USA's slide into fascism, a word I have up till now avoided using. But she makes a great case that totally applies even though it was done before Bradley became part of the story.
But her ten rules for closing down an open society are worth considering. Here they are:
1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy.
2. Create secret prisons where torture takes place.
3. Develop a thug caste or paramilitary force not answerable to citizens.
4. Set up an internal surveillance system.
5. Harass citizens' groups.
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release.
7. Target key individuals.
8. Control the press.
9. Treat all political dissidents as traitors.
10. Suspend the rule of law.
The treatment of Bradley Manning definitely falls into both 7 and 9, and as Naomi Wolf points out in her impassioned illustrated lecture (why are so many of the good women activists named Naomi?), they are all happening here. The "We don't do torture" scene between George Tennant and Scott Pelley will tell you everything you need to know about the Powers That Be's attitude toward criticism. The Obama administration is smoother that the klutzy way-too-out Bushistas were, but that makes things easier for them, not us. He and his are the front men of their dreams.
Bradley Manning ought to be Amnesty International's top priority and never forgotten by any of us.
Obama is dangerous. George was a bumbling, ignorant fool. I can't listen to Obama without finding myself falling for his lies again.
The devil is a gentleman.
Shut your TV off.
Excellent advice, for sure.
His (oblahblah's) voice has the opposite affect on me. When I hear him speak, all I hear are lies. I experience a sensation of pure evil eminating from the voice that reads the teleprompter and pretends to exude a surreal calm and righteousness but is now more irritating and infuriating than even the stooge bush was. oblahblah seems more like cheney, to me.
Paranoid Pessimist said "Bradley Manning ought to be Amnesty International's top priority and never forgotten by any of us."
One way of not forgetting Bradley is to make his photo your desktop. I did. I see his picture everyday and every time I turn on the computer and I haven't and won't (be able to) forget him. Also if you send a donation for his defense either through Courage to Resist or directly to his defense fund, they'll send you regular reminders in your e-mail. Sounds like some us haven't done that yet.
Thanks for this article. Reveals the ugly betrayals of the mainstream liberal lobbies and how they've traded access for abandoning the most vulnerable amongst them. In a sane world, Bradley Manning would be the person of the year, a young man with more more conscience than the entire political and military class that sent him to Iraq.
One needs only to regard the current "Weinergate" affair to understand the power of the sexual slur as black propaganda in our nation of suckers and nincompoops. The tactic is used so regularly and blatently that one might think people would catch on. All American citizens (perhaps we should now say subjects) are subject to multifarious security agencies that are capable of surveilling without restraint everything we transmit, bills, personal mail, reservations, etc. Time has shown that all of this is subject to anonymous leaking. Regard the Spitzer case. It seems Weiner, one of the few congressmen who challenged the insurance companies and supported single-payer healthcare, can be brought down by posting a jerky e-mail to an adult woman! We have truly gone through the looking glass. The Guardian article about Bradley Manning was transparent character assassination and gay-bashing and then it was uncritically republished by lefty sites such a CD and Truithdig. The Army recruiters clearly had to know that he had a feminine side but they dearly needed his professional skills. He was accepted for reenlistment. He must have fulfilled his obligations, he was promoted to E-4. Did he begin to weary of the atmosphere that he had to live with in Iraq? So would I. Folks, don't fall for the corporate slime machine's slander of an American hero. SUPPORT BRADLEY MANNING!
Tony Vodvarka
abvodvarka -
"The Guardian article about Bradley Manning was transparent character assassination and gay-bashing, and then it was uncritically republished by lefty sites such as CD and Truthdig."
That was my recollection, too. I thought the Guardian article alluding to Manning's alleged sexual orientation was a psy-ops smear tactic that the New York Times and some other mainstream publications on this side of the Atlantic uncritically republished, while engaging in their own character assassination slant (implying that Bradley Manning did what he did because of mental health issues or a desire for fame, for instance).
So what do you make of this current CD post, leveling a broadside at the Lambda, HRC and GLBT advocacy organizations for their silence about Manning's plight?
The not so vaguely implied assumption is that Private Manning is, in fact, openly gay. Is this author consciously or inadvertantly a part of "the corporate slime machine's slander of an American hero" as you term it? In order to lambast gay rights groups for hypocritically abandoning one of their own, don't we first have to uncrtiically buy into the factual accuracy of the underlying innuendo?
I love your post's reference to "the power of the sexual slur as black propaganda in our nation", by the way. Weiner and Spitzer are indeed interesting example targets. Regard also Bill Clinton's cigar, Rudy Guiliani as a closet drag queen, Wikileaks' Julian Assange accused of sex deviant behavior in Sweden of all places, and former Senator.... uh,..... Senator Whatzisname - the Republican fundamentalist family value guy brought down a couple of years ago for playing footsie with an undercover narc in the airport mens' room.
Some (Spitzer and Guiliani, notably) fell from grace for awhile but rehabilitated themselves in the public eye quite successfully. Other victims of a successful black propaganda campaign pretty much vanish. Maybe it mostly depends on who, or what forces behind the curtain, are working to orchestrate the tune.
Bill from Saginaw
Bill, I thought the aritcle was right on target. It's not that special interest groups don't have have a place in the political world or that they havn't made a great contribution,it's just that some percentage of the members of these groups put their particular goals entirely before all other considerations. Sometimes, that mentality takes over the organization entirely, I'm naming no names. Concerning alleged gayness, that's not supposed a be a liability and I wouldn't blame the assumption of such. As you say, many are dropping all around us because of the sexual smear. Even after bin Laden was allegedly murdered, they felt compelled to float the story that a porno film had been found in his flat. Thanks for reminding me of the Giuliani drag photos, I needed a laugh.
I'm as guilty as anyone for pushing Manning to the back of my mind but assuming he is gay I would have thought some of the advocacy groups would have helped the rest of us keep the spotlight on his plight. Straight, gay or non subscribing Hottentot no body should be treated the way he has, just wrong in fact. He should not be held without trial, if he has committed a crime (and telling the truth to power does NOT count) let him be charged and hold the trial in open court. We have been told numerous times there was nothing 'new' in the leaks and I find it very hard to believe anyone has lost their lives as a result of his actions....fewer one assumes that those who have lost their lives, taken their own lives as a result of the perpetual lie machine that has passed for government these past 50 odd years. Manning has more courage in his little finger than many in the 'support the troops brigade'. Well I prefer to lend MY own support to a soldier like Mr Manning.
It takes courage to expose the crimes of the empire. Manning is no Caspar Milquetoast.
It takes courage to criticise the government here on CD. If you don't know the risk you are taking or are not sure you are willing to accept the consequences you should stop.
The courage displayed by Manning is several orders of magnitude higher than it takes to post comments on a website.
Manning may have thought he was doing the thing which his superiors would approve of. How could he have known to what extremes power would go?
Having said that, you are right of course.
Finally someone highlights the important contradictions of LGBTQ "identity politics" and the larger structures of domination (class/gender) at work between supposed LGBTQ advocates and their policies put forward "in service" to our group.
Very much so, and it especially points out the frailty of all identity politics, left or right, including a few of the feminists who have a share in the responsibility for the effectiveness of the sexual slur as a political weapon.
At last, a clear, direct and articulate defense of Bradley Manning along with a direct challenge to the glib politics of the gay establishment of HRC, NGLTF, Lambda Legal as they closed their eyes and ears to the horrors of endless murder and torture and sold a morally blind bill of goods that GLBT "freedom, equality, and liberation" would be furthered by being open parts of the US empire's global military machinery of oppression, occupation and slaughter. Ever willing to lick the boots of power in hopes of some crumbs of recognition, the national groups have sold their souls to the ruling elites of empire, even as the empire crumbles and totters amid criminal corruption, outright theft of trillions, and an ever expanding police state. One would hope that when an openly gay man is publicly tortured they would have mustered the courage to finally speak up. Well, there's still time and space for them to finally find their moral compass. They could start by reading today's CD essay "History is Knocking".
The post that this comment replies to just disappeared. I wonder why.
May I please inform you that Manning's position is that exposing war crimes is in accord with the oath that he swore upon enlistment to uphold our Constitution. He did not swear an oath to the Commander-in-Chief as they did in Nazi Germany. There is an orgainization of peace officers called OATHKEEPERS that have come together to swear that they will never execute an unconstitional order. This is much the same principle from what I presume is the perspective of the right.
Tony Vodvarka
Bradley Manning showed guts others didn't show. Bending to conform doesn't show any courage at all. Any jack ass can be conformist. Robert Frost once famously said "Whosoever would be a man must be a non conformist."
Thse organizations have abandoned this brave man, becuase they're damn weasels.
They can take their worthless presdient and shove him up their booties.
This article thoughtfully relates the individual tragedy of Bradley Manning's travails and the larger tragedy of bankrupt or shortsighted social activism corrupted by misguided identity politics.
It's particularly trenchant in its discussion of the "seldom-acknowledged disjuncture between modern LGBT politics, based as it is on the individualizing concepts of 'gay identity' and 'equal rights,' and the way in which political power continues to be exercised through social relationships of class."
All movements for social emancipation and civil rights are fraught with tension between moderate and radical elements. The former tend to fixate on "incremental change", and tout and publicize small victories to the exclusion of deeper and more complex issues; thus, they're often prone to busily rearrange deck chairs while ignoring or denying evidence that the ship is sinking, or at least listing badly-- and that people are going overboard.
I don't know how well-known it is, but I've watched a weekly digest of gay-issue news and advocacy called "Gay USA" for a long time. I enjoy and recommend it. However, it illustrates the dilemma discussed in the article in a way that is sometimes frustrating and agonizing.
I'll use the examples of Bradley Manning and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", although there are others. The program does report sympathetically on Manning's situation, at least when something "newsworthy" occurs.
And it follows the DADT controversy as any civil rights movement reporting would-- sensibly and pragmatically regarding DADT as a grotesque reactionary policy that promotes intolerable prejudice and homophobic bigotry, and monitoring the progress toward its abolition. Naturally, the anchors praise events that seemingly hasten its demise, and deplore obstacles that preserve it.
But it won't delve into a critical analysis of the problematic relationship between progressive gay rights and military service, i.e. whether the choice of military service can truly be considered socially "liberated".
Similarly, when Congress conducts their scurrilous and abominable legislative sausage-making by tucking an LGBT-equality law into a Defense Appropriations Bill, the anchors will applaud the "progress" in gay rights.
One of the anchors, Andy Humm, may point out that it's indeed a travesty for gay persons who are anti-war to go along with gay rights advances being co-opted by hawks. But his co-anchor will quickly agree that of course "the (progressive) movement" is anti-war and needs to address such conflicts by and by-- but in the meantime, it's a victory of sorts.
Over and over, one sees these well-informed, well-meaning anchors reflexively tolerate or diminish larger or greater "wrongs" in order to accentuate lesser specific "rights". This is exactly the habit of exclusion endemic to identity-politics thought and perception, and it's a fatal flaw.
It seems to me that, as Goldsmith suggests, the moderates and so-called pragmatists are always going to dominate relatively mainstream organizations. Perhaps that is better stated the other way around-- so-called grassroots organizations acquire Establishment status and clout, and become mainstream organizations, by maximizing cooperation with the power elite, and minimizing adversarial confrontation.
The seeming common-sense approach of "catching more flies with honey" means that, like modern national union organizations, mainstream rights groups tend to be gradually co-opted and increasingly inclined to concentrate resources on superficial, cosmetic issues and results.
Incidentally, the Human Rights Campaign, led by quintessential Beltway-insider Joe Solmonese, has already endorsed Obama in 2012! Solmonese is the poster child for the brittle, pernicious logic of short-sighted identity politics.
Another thoughtful post, O.S.
Your perceptive take on the "so-called grassroots organizations [that eventually] acquire Establishment status and clout" reminds me of the Eric Hoffer quote: "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket."
I just posted this on my gay friend's Facebook page.
He always falls for the gays-in-the-military-is-progress line, even though he is anti-war, and anti-military.
How is it progress to have gays, as well as straights, killing brides and goatherders?
The "all-volunteer" military is also one of the main reasons the US will never have universal health care. Think about it; if everyone had access to the same health care, what incentives would there be for many people to join? Let the rightwing people who believe in "my country right or wrong" and "God/ family/ duty" enlist out of patriotic reasons and let the rest of us have access to health care (not health INSURANCE) without having to be willing to kill people or risk being killed to get it.
Today I got into a discussion with a military officer who insists that if I move I'll have better employment opportunities (I'm too old to enlist, or I'm sure that would've been his advice) or that I should at least look for a job at the military installation. I tried to explain that I enjoy the work I currently do; I just got a job working online from home, and it's only part-time for now but possibly full-time in the near future. But he insisted, "it's all about the bennies," meaning that a job on base would be so much better because I'd have benefits. I asked him why ALL Americans can't have the same "bennies," allowing us to remain in jobs we actually enjoy doing, and he said, "that's the system and that's the game." I am so disgusted with this attitude in America.
When l was stationed in Korea (1966-67) we helped defend the South Koreans from the "Godless Commies" of the North, we also got to use their men as House"Boys" and their women as prostitutes. Maybe Chris Chistoferson had it right "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose."
Fine piece of writing
Like a boy named, SUE, Bradley Manning had to get tough our die. He has been no sissy; after all, he got into detention several times because of fights against his tormentors. And by the way, this ability to defend himself while being terribly isolated was naturally the chemistry necessary for someone to act in support of a truly right policy, against an evil one. There was little "bonding" with a group of apparently detestable goons who picked on him, shot news reporters and...(the list is long). It is really sad that the revelations and subsequent treatment of Manning have been so self incriminating for the military and for our foreign policy in general. It is great that we are having this discussion. Thank you Bradley.
Thank you Bradley
A beautiful, righteous essay. And I'm still casting a write-in vote for Bradley Manning for President in 2012.
This is an excellent piece of analysis and I've really been waiting and hoping for somone to write it. In SF, we are pulling together a Brad Manning support contingent to march in pride, but I think it is really important to highlight the issues around intersectional politics, the neoliberalization and narrowing of LGBT politics, and increasing militarization that you highlight.