Chelsea Manning is a patriot. She will go down in history as one of the great Americans of our time. If you have not already, please read her statement. No, not the statement she issued about her decision to transition from a lifetime as Bradley to a future as Chelsea. While that statement is also bold, powerful, and inspiring, it was Manning’s plea for a pardon from President Barack Obama that gave me chills. Chills because of the bravery of this young woman in the face of 35 years of incarceration. Chills because she so deftly puts words to everything that is wrong about how the war on terror has been waged. Chills because she invokes the mistakes of our past so that we may stop repeating them. Chills because she is so willing to give up her freedom so that we can live in a “country that is truly conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all women and men are created equal.”
Below is CommonDreams.org’s rush transcript of Manning’s statement, which was read by her attorney, David Coombs, after she was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
‘Sometimes You Have to Pay a Heavy Price to Live in a Free Society’
“The decisions that I made in 2010 were made out of a concern for my country and the world that we live in. Since the tragic events of 9/11, our country has been at war. We’ve been at war with an enemy that chooses not to meet us on any traditional battlefield, and due to this fact we’ve had to alter our methods of combating the risks posed to us and our way of life.
I initially agreed with these methods and chose to volunteer to help defend my country. It was not until I was in Iraq and reading secret military reports on a daily basis that I started to question the morality of what we were doing. It was at this time I realized in our efforts to meet this risk posed to us by the enemy, we have forgotten our humanity. We consciously elected to devalue human life both in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we engaged those that we perceived were the enemy, we sometimes killed innocent civilians. Whenever we killed innocent civilians, instead of accepting responsibility for our conduct, we elected to hide behind the veil of national security and classified information in order to avoid any public accountability.
In our zeal to kill the enemy, we internally debated the definition of torture. We held individuals at Guantanamo for years without due process. We inexplicably turned a blind eye to torture and executions by the Iraqi government. And we stomached countless other acts in the name of our war on terror.
Patriotism is often the cry extolled when morally questionable acts are advocated by those in power. When these cries of patriotism drown our any logically based intentions [unclear], it is usually an American soldier that is ordered to carry out some ill-conceived mission.
Our nation has had similar dark moments for the virtues of democracy—the Trail of Tears, the Dred Scott decision, McCarthyism, the Japanese-American internment camps—to name a few. I am confident that many of our actions since 9/11 will one day be viewed in a similar light.
As the late Howard Zinn once said, “There is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”
I understand that my actions violated the law, and I regret if my actions hurt anyone or harmed the United States. It was never my intention to hurt anyone. I only wanted to help people. When I chose to disclose classified information, I did so out of a love for my country and a sense of duty to others.
If you deny my request for a pardon, I will serve my time knowing that sometimes you have to pay a heavy price to live in a free society. I will gladly pay that price if it means we could have country that is truly conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all women and men are created equal.”
I found Manning’s case to be extremely troubling, not just for the unjust, harsh sentence imposed upon one who leaked classified documents with the purest of intentions, but also because of the implications the case has for free speech and freedom of press in our society. Like journalist Aura Bogado, I too, feel more than a pang of remorse for not paying enough attention to Chelsea’s case, for not speaking out against what I perceive as gross injustice, for not doing enough to support this brave fellow American. Godspeed, Chelsea. May the caged phase of your life be short, and may freedom come swiftly. I will write you.
For those interested in sending letters to Chelsea, the address is below:
Bradley E. Manning 89289 1300 N. Warehouse Road Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 66027-2304