The Passion of Bradley Manning by Chase Madar

Author:Chase Madar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Bisac Code 1: POL000000
ISBN: eBook ISBN: 9781935928546
Publisher: OR Books LLC
Published: 2012-11-03T16:00:00+00:00

4

WHISTLEBLOWERS AND THEIR PUBLIC

03:24:10 PM) bradass87: we’re human… and we’re killing ourselves… and no-one seems to see that… and it bothers me

(03:24:26 PM) bradass87: apathy

(03:25:28 PM) bradass87: apathy is far worse than the active participation

(05:54:42 PM) bradass87: apathy is its own 3rd dimension… i have special graph for that… =P

Pfc. Bradley Manning’s alleged leaks have fueled thousands of stories in the world’s major newspapers; they have stripped the spin and lies off the official versions of the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War; they have shined a light into the pseudo-legal prison camp of Guantánamo. The leaked diplomatic cables have provided a partial view of how the world’s greatest power conducts its affairs, and candid accounts of how many nations run themselves.

What impact have these leaks had? Have they rolled back the invasion of Iraq or the occupation of Afghanistan? Have they led to the “worldwide discussion, debates, reforms” that Bradley Manning hoped for? Have they changed foreign policy? What role, for that matter, do leaks of death squads and free-fire zones ever play in ending wars and shaping statecraft?

Though the WikiLeaks revelations are the largest such revelations yet, this is far from the first time state secrets have come to light. Leaks have done much to advance knowledge throughout history. The chapter on taxation in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations relies entirely on a survey of European fiscal practices that the French crown intended for elite administrative use only. Roger Casement’s exposés of King Leopold’s Congo, of the British-owned rubber plantations of the Amazon, made him a Victorian hero—until his gunrunning for Irish independence got him hanged. Rupert Murdoch’s grandfather made his name and began his press empire by leaking the Gallipoli cables. The exposure of the My Lai massacre came after a see-no-evil military investigation found nothing. (The whitewash, by the way, was led by a young Army major named Colin Powell.)

Many leaks, even of top-secret skullduggery, even of atrocity, have made only the slightest dent in whatever vast imperial project they were meant to expose. Even when the My Lai massacre came to light—over 500 Vietnamese villagers, including women, children, the elderly, methodically slaughtered by American troops—thanks to former helicopter door-gunner Ron Ridenhour and reporter Sy Hersh, failed utterly to halt the war, which lasted another seven years. It didn’t even hold the US soldiers to account, with the commanding officer suffering only a mild wrist-slap and a few weeks in the brig.

It turns out the impact of whistleblowing is often minimal. When Iranian students stormed the US embassy in 1979, they seized reams of secret files related to the CIA’s activities throughout the whole Middle East. After laboriously pasting together many shredded pages and translating the lot into Farsi, they began to release the multivolume edition of Documents from the US Espionage Den. Here at last were top-secret accounts of back room American fiddling with the internal affairs and foreign ministries of the entire Middle East region, not to mention CIA involvement in enormous petroleum deals and projects.

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