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The Liberal Betrayal of Bradley Manning
More than three years into the presidency of Barack Obama, it’s almost a cliché now to ask: What if George W. Bush did it? From dramatically escalating the war in Afghanistan to institutionalizing the practice of indefinite imprisonment, Obama has dashed hopes he would offer a change from the Bush’s national security policies – but he hasn’t faced a whole lot of resistance from liberals who once decried those policies as an affront to American values.
Bradley Manning (Credit: Reuters/Jose Luis Magana)
Like those on the right who now crow about fascism but spent the Bush years gleefully declaring left-wing celebrities “enemies of the state,” many of those on the liberal-left treat issues of war and civil liberties as useful merely for partisan purposes. When a Democrat’s in power those issues become inconvenient. And usually ignored.
Former dean of the Yale Law School Harold Koh, for instance, used to rail against the imperial presidency, speaking of the horror of torture and “indefinite detention without trial.” Now a legal adviser for the Obama State Department, he recently declared that “justice” can be delivered with or with out a trial. Indeed, “Drones also deliver.” Don’t expect much more than a yawn from Democratic pundits, though, much less any calls for impeachment. It’s an election year, after all. And what, would you rather Mitt Romney be the guy drone-striking Pakistani tribesmen?
“Obama and the Democrats being in power in Washington defangs a lot of liberal criticism,” Chase Madar, a civil rights attorney in New York, told me in an interview. Indeed, but with a few exceptions – Michael Moore, Dennis Kucinich, The Nation – those who would be inclined to defend Manning were Bush still in office are the ones either condemning him or condoning his treatment, which has included spending the better part of a year in torturous solitary confinement, an all too common feature of American prisons. Even his progressive defenders, remaining loyal to the Democratic Party, tend to downplay Obama’s role in the Bradley Manning affair; his authorizing the abuse of an American hero is certainly no means not to vote for him again.
“The whole civil libertarian message only really seems to catch fire among liberals when there’s a Republican in the White House,” says Madar. When there’s not a bumbling Texan to inveigh against, all the sudden issues that were morally black and white become complex, and liberal media starts finding nuance where there wasn’t any before.
That much is clear in the case of Manning, the young soldier accused of leaking State Department cables and evidence of war atrocities to WikiLeaks. Under different conditions, he might be a liberal hero. After all, much – though certainly not all – of what he exposed, from the killing of Iraqi civilians to US complicity in torture by the Iraqi government, happened during the Bush years. But it is the Obama administration that is imprisoning him. It is Barack Obama who pronounced him guilty before he so much as had a trial (which he’s still waiting for after almost two years in captivity). And so justifications must be made.
Read the full article at Salon.com
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Show All"Former dean of the Yale Law School Harold Koh, for instance, used to rail against the imperial presidency"
Liberals are not leftists. They merely claim "rightful ownership" of the left end of the political spectrum. Of course the big news of today is that the people are RECLAIMING the left from the liberals. This is the BIG NEWS that the liberals are relentlessly fighting in the media, today, even in Common Dreams, particularly with the Robert Reich, Robert Scheer and Paul Krugman articles, and those from Das Nation.
"all the sudden issues that were morally black and white become complex, and liberal media starts finding nuance where there wasn’t any before."
Hear, hear. It is the liberal "nuance", hesitation, pretense, compromise, confusion, fog, that paralyzes the people, preventing the people from ratcheting up their immense power, and achieving their nirvana, through wholehearted embrace of the holistic sphere of good. Now the people turn to themselves, their very own personal spirits, for guidance, and through that they find themselves in full solidarity with the whole biosphere.
I long, long ago decided that I would not be voting again for Obama (yes I admit it I voted for him the first time; sorry I wasn't gonna chance having Sarah two-gun Palin near the helm...). If we're gonna go to Hell in a hand-basket, might as well do it without patronizing a right-wing neo-con disguised as a populist Democrat. I feel sad, having to feel this way, but to deny this reality about what Obama is just to seem "in step" with my fellow Democrats(who have drank the "Obama is better than the other choice") and not seem like a "sell out" to them. The Hell with them; I'd rather vote for someone who MIGHT give true progressives a voice and a chance. Now, let's see......
What difference does it make who you vote for? Why is that the focus?
Too many "leftists: think they have done their bit when they refuse to vote (again) for Obama.But your vote or non-vote is immaterial. Most Americans don't even live in "battleground states' or districts that are "in play", so there is no chance whatsoever that their vote will be anything but an empty gesture.
The real action is not in the voting booth, although it may be worth while taking an hour to run over there in November if you feel like it. The real action is in organizing, joining with others to build a movement for real social change.
Leesasky-
You know what? At least I vote! I'm getting a little tired of people on this site and others who say "don't vote". I got news for you-I feel an obligation to do so. Why? For one, my father was an immigrant from Nazi Germany, and to honor him, if nothing else, I will go and vote since he and his family struggled to escape a Hell in which people couldn't even whisper, let alone vote. That's why I vote, for one. For the other, I still believe in the process, flawed though it may be, and without voting I believe it further empowers those on the extreme fringes to think they can even more easily worm their way into the "system" since people aren't voting anyway.
So if you think voting doesn't matter, don't vote. But don't complain when we get the dregs in office due to no one voting and things are going to Hell. I know Obama isn't the answer, but neither is Romney, for damn sure.
Who is out there you want me to vote for? Or, what other actions besides the one I take would you exhort us to take as I assume you are doing? But I'm tired of this 'Don't Vote" crap. Hell, move to Somalia, they don't vote there, either, ok?
Any single vote can be described as immaterial.An individual vote doesn't count for much;votes in the aggregate count mightily. "The real action is not in the voting booth...The real action is in organizing,joining with others to build a movement for real social change." REALLY?? Isn't the purpose of organizing to get people to...VOTE? "What difference does it make who you vote for? Why is that the focus?" I've made numerous comments about the corruption of the BO regime. One's vote for President has or should have huge personal importance. What's the point of organizing if you're going to vote for more of the same? What's the point of organizing if you're not going to vote at all? Are you going to vote for BO? "...never send to know for whom the bell tolls;it tolls for thee." -John Donne
Don't tread in coincidence theories such as the power elites sleep walked into power and keep it by simply sleep walking to keep same power. No, as Michael Parenti would aptly point out that isn't true. The Nazis sure as hell had a conspiracy and Henry Wallace among many recognized it.
As to JKF, he had nothing in common with the war mongers such as LBJ, Tricky Dick, the Gipper, and Slick Willy. He was an Irish Henry Wallace with an Ivy League degree.
Where did he get the term "New Frontier" from? Wallace! Read the book called The Century of the Common Man."
Vote for the Mitt for Peace. Put the fake Democrat out like we should have done in 1948. Even vote thrid party to keep this president from winning if that will work, but that might take away from the liberal Mitt's vote.
Progressives have always known that con servatives plotted origniallly to get power.
That was about 10 millennia ago in Europe. The struggle has been going on ever since.
AD: Thank you, especially for paragraphs 1 & 2. Leezasky is probably a disinformation specialist. His posts slither back and forth and reveal a lack of any central cohesion. I was going to let his little number attacking conspiracy theorists go... however, it's his way of silencing questions about the official narrative surrounding the true events of 911. He loves to conflate those of us who question its major logical and scientific fallacies, with what, NOT the Left? As if it's the right wing authoritarians not given to following what authority figures tell them? Oh, I just realized his true constituency, it's the idiocracy!
Organizing action for social change is much more effective than an individual vote in a Presidential election. You think the sole purpose of organizing is to get people to vote?!!
How hopelessly bourgeoisie! Have you ever participated in a union organizing campaign. Do you think the point of union organizing is voting!?
If voting is indeed the most powerful way to effect change than we are doomed. We only get Dem & Rep candidates pre-approved by the 1%. The media ignores 3rd parties and they are nearly always excluded from televise debates. Finally with electronic voting, it's not clear that the votes are actually counted.
I stil vote in local elections and usually vote 3rd party, but I'm under no illusion that my vote matters for much in our curent electoral system.
Your illogical obsession with voting as the ultimate act of social change is pure delusion.
Whether or not Harold Koh was the Dean of the Yale Law School (an institution with innumerable skeletons, skulls and bones, and loyalties shown as much to its own club members as to the nation) is now the legal advisor to the President (e.g., on issues such as indefinite detention of U.S. citizens), it is revealing that none of the legal memoranda in support of this President's positions on detention, rendition, targeted assassinations, or drone attacks, etc., have yet been made public. If nothing else, that indicates a disdain for the citizenry ("Imperial Presidency" again?) and/or lawyerly cowardice in avoiding having to defend the legally indefensible (is that what former law school deans really do?) or just plain political opportunism and cynicism in putting off facing the music in an election year (why get people more riled up about fundamental issues than they were in 1968 and already are now?) ). Yet, it is as much a problem caused by Congress as by the Administration, since for too long our legislators have been rushing to pass anti-civil libertarian legislation (often conceived and drafted in private by no more than a few Senators- such as Lieberman, McCain, Levin and Graham) and been invoking the phony and never-ending "cold (and hot) war on terror" as cover for tightening the noose and gradually incarcerating U.S. citizens in an "open prison" (please, it's a metaphor- but an apt one), until the right moment arises when they can be stripped of whatever is left, shut up and put away to play solitaire (this is not a metaphor- its something patriots like Bradley Manning are already facing). Every one of these legislator miscreants should be identified, exposed and held accountable. Paying someone else's legislative or executive salary to steal one's (and one's neighbor's) precious constitutional (and inalienable) rights, and otherwise sucking off the teat of the U.S. Fisc while they are doing it- just doesn't seem like a square deal.
Yale along with Princeton, produced the vast majority of pro-slavery theologians prior to the Civil War.
Proslavery, 1701-1840, by Larry Tise.
http://www.amazon.com/Proslavery-History-Defense-Slavery-1701-1840/dp/0820323969/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334207063&sr=1-1
I recall one thing that always bothered me about the activism in the Bush era is a lot of it did not identify systemic roots for our social and political malaise but rather cast Bush and his cabinet members as a gang of evil henchmen responsible for it all. Take a look at some of the old common dreams archives and you can get an idea of what I mean. I think part of this is the fact that the way history and social studies are taught below the university level tend to focus on the 'great man' theory of history that focuses on individual leaders in history rather than on social forces which have been a traditionally Marxist approach and how history and political science are taught at many universities. The discourse that takes place in the mainstream media also is usually framed in the perspective of the Great man theory.
The problem with this is that removing the individual or individuals for which society has ascribed all blame for social ills does not really fix the problem at all. I think we've seen that with Obama. I'm not saying Obama didn't have the free will to make different decisions, but the point of the matter is, merely replacing the great man is not going to alter social and political systems which have entrenched themselves to produce the same result. So long as the wealthy and powerful control the seat of power and so long as the masses are deluded into thinking that they can make a difference through the kinds of expression granted to them by magnanimous benevolence of the state, then nothing will change. Really changing anything requires dismantling the social and political systems that are engineered to produce the result that society and government favors the wealthy capital owning-class over the best interests of the masses.
New century, same distinction between liberal supporters of status quo w/ a coupe of tweaks, vs. us who would like some change we could believe in. Phil Ochs from the mid 1960s (just update some of the personages and events to fit our time):
"Love Me, I'm a Liberal"
I cried when they shot Medgar Evers
Tears ran down my spine
I cried when they shot Mr. Kennedy
As though I'd lost a father of mine
But Malcolm X got what was coming
He got what he asked for this time
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
I go to civil rights rallies
And I put down the old D.A.R.
I love Harry and Sidney and Sammy
I hope every colored boy becomes a star
But don't talk about revolution
That's going a little bit too far
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
I cheered when Humphrey was chosen
My faith in the system restored
I'm glad the commies were thrown out
of the A.F.L. C.I.O. board
I love Puerto Ricans and Negros
as long as they don't move next door
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
The people of old Mississippi
Should all hang their heads in shame
I can't understand how their minds work
What's the matter don't they watch Les Crain?
But if you ask me to bus my children
I hope the cops take down your name
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
I read New republic and Nation
I've learned to take every view
You know, I've memorized Lerner and Golden
I feel like I'm almost a Jew
But when it comes to times like Korea
There's no one more red, white and blue
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
I vote for the democratic party
They want the U.N. to be strong
I go to all the Pete Seeger concerts
He sure gets me singing those songs
I'll send all the money you ask for
But don't ask me to come on along
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
Once I was young and impulsive
I wore every conceivable pin
Even went to the socialist meetings
Learned all the old union hymns
But I've grown older and wiser
And that's why I'm turning you in
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
Thanks for posting that, marimbadearco. A poetic version of Ward Churchill's Pacifism as Pathology.
tomcarberry...Thanks for mentioning Ward Churchill. He is a real hero, who was abandoned by the liberals, progressives, leftists, and 99% of the people who should be supporting him.
His statement which begins with: "...What I want is for civilizations to stop killing my people's children...." is the best poetry I have ever read. I have read it hundreds of times, and it still makes my heart sing.
As usual, this thread brushed aside the actual subject of the article -- the liberals' attitude to Bradly Manning, and became a gabfest about how evil Obama is.
OK, let's pass a motion " 1. We all hate Obama even more than any god damn reactionary Republican. 2. We will never, ever, ever vote for him again, even if Romney picks Sarah Palin as his running mate because of her "experience in that role". Moved,Seconded, Passed.
Can we now move on to something more constructive and interesting? Like what we should be doing INSTEAD of bothering with the presidential election. Like, maybe, joining with others who are working for peace, social justice, an end to racism, equality, and an environment that is liveable for us and out fellow creatures? And join with the people who are working to build support for Bradley Manning?
Or is it more fun, and a lot less work, to spew abuse on Obama?
"Like, maybe, joining with others who are working for peace, social justice, an end to racism, equality, and an environment that is liveable for us and out fellow creatures?"
So, an end to the presently Corporate-exploited psychosis called 'Civilization'? Bring it on. Now, how ya gonna do it? Short of completely tearing down the entire corrupt structure with your bare hands and forbidding anyone from ever trying anything like it ever again?
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see: http://www.commondreams.org/comment-policy
Disgusting.
If we are looking for a place to start our resistance, let's try this for starters!
Preamble to the IWW Constitution
The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.
Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.
We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.
These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.
Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system."
It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.
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Right On! An injury to one is an injury to all.
FW from Detroit.
All this and Lamo gets away scot-free, something that would never be allowed in a just world.
And don't forget the subject of this article, Bradley Manning. Help in any way you can for his legal defense fund, etc. (See www.bradleymanning.org)
Democracy Now is a false front. Beneath it's surface you will find the modern version of the colonial missionary.
Observe its coverage of the Ipredatory coloniall adventure in Libya, Ivory Coast, Syria, Hoduras(Obama coup against Zalaya) and Haiti. It will cover congo essentally to the extent that it discuss rape, starvation, gender issues etc. but no real context regarding the funders of the war and pillage in that in that region. The program present a false altenative through its coverage of what appears to be easy progressive slants on issues. The program is has become just another NGO type tool and the imperialist, white supremacist chest of lies and simple tricks. The supreme fight is against imperialism and its constables. All else take a far back seat.
http://globalresearch.org/index.php?context=va&aid=30320