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Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Bradley Manning is No Nathan Hale

So this article comes as no surprise to anyone that's ever heard of Berkeley: home to a school that kicks military recruiters off its campus, is the cesspool of all liberal activity in this country, and overall is a downright detestable city that prides itself on the furthering ignorance throughout the world.  Bradley Manning, dejected lover that he is, is a hero (note, I hate all Mannings, so I will freely admit my bias immediately).

Now my purpose in writing this isn't even to talk about Wikileaks all that extensively. I believe my co-writer here has already shown what an assbag Julian Assange is.   Frankly I'm just not sure how hurtful the leaked documents have really been to our national security.  Most certainly it's strained ties with some foreign nations (Lebanese aiding the US against Hezbollah, the Chinese being a-ok with a unified Korea), but a direct impact on US troops overseas?  I just don't see it. Yet.

But none of the matters.  This punk stole US classified documents and leaked them to non-US personnel with the specific intent of it being leaked.  It's treason, and there is absolutely no gray area here. Should the guy be executed? No, probably not (irony: his sexual orientation alone would get him executed in Iran).  But let's break this down a bit.  His very act would likely result in his execution by most of the nations who have been exposed through the leak. Russia? Check. Iran? Check. North Korea? Check. The list goes on.  

Here, we want to give Manning a frigid medal.  Admittedly that's a part of what makes our nation awesome.  Not the treason part. No action will forgive what Manning did. But rather, the right for cities like Berkeley to support this treasonous activity by awarding him.  Sure it makes our nation awesome, but I don't have to like it.  Unlike those on the left, while I may have an opinion on what Berkeley's doing, I don't for a second question whether they could, or should.

The peace and justice commissioner, Bob Meola was quoted saying "If he did what he's accused of doing, he's a patriot and should get a medal,"  But I simply don't see it that way.  We award a lot of pioneers that have helped paved the way to equality in this country.  But make no mistake, this isn't about bullying, DADT, or any other crap liberals will use to justify treasonous activity.  He sold classified documents with the intent of the information being leaked.  To my recollection, there isn't a single patriot I can think of that was "brave" enough to do something like this.  As usual, calling people like this a patriot desensitizes us to actual heroes.

So of course the story isn't about treason though. It's a poor dejected boy, bullied at his school, accused of being gay, and a prisoner trapped in a military he only joined to prove to his father that he was a man.  Let's not forget that he was suffering due to DADT.  the issue here is that DADT is in place not to avoid homosexuals in the military, it's for their protection.  Without pinning our military as a bunch of homophobes, truth is DADT was put in place to avoid hostile activity towards open homosexuals serving.  While one can argue whether that is still the case today is irrelevant. As Congressman elect Col Allen West said, while people are dying overseas, domestically we're worrying about who is sleeping with who.   Seems like we need to put things into perspective.

But anyway, why do we always need to look at the why? Motive is for proving criminal intent in court.  More importantly, even why the why is obvious (i.e. Fort Hood, Christmas Day bomber, etc), we still pretend the motive must be vague and deeper. 

Intent detracts from the point.  Rather than focus on the fact that treason was committed (and the administration was a decade behind in damage control), we're worried about whether his dad played catch with him enough as a kid, and whether Natalie Furstenberg and Phil McElroy were too mean to him as a kid.

1 comment:

  1. Yeah, screw that freedom of speech thing. Our founding fathers risked their lives so we could punish people for telling the truth.

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