Bradley Manning and Barack Obama - a struggle for the soul of America

In the Cairo Speech that he made shortly after coming into office President Obama said:

And finally, just as America can never tolerate violence by extremists, we must never alter our principles. 9/11 was an enormous trauma to our country. The fear and anger that it provoked was understandable, but in some cases, it led us to act contrary to our ideals. We are taking concrete actions to change course. I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States, and I have ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by early next year.


So America will defend itself respectful of the sovereignty of nations and the rule of law. And we will do so in partnership with Muslim communities which are also threatened. The sooner the extremists are isolated and unwelcome in Muslim communities, the sooner we will all be safer.

Barack Obama is a President who was elected on the back of a campaign that drew heavily on the ideals and principles that he refers to, principles that form the cornerstone of much of what is good in the world, and principles that are embedded in the American Constitution and Declaration of Independence. But the ongoing conduct of the Obama Presidency shows that they are ideals that are difficult to sustain and defend. This has particularly been the case with regard to his conduct and behaviour in the pursuit of the war on Terror and in the wars in Iraq and Aghanistan, where he has failed to live up to the standards that were set out by his nations founding fathers and the aspirations of his Cairo speech.

For example the extra-judicial killing of Osama bin Laden and of numerous other leading Al Queda figures, might appear justiiable   if  Al Queda is viewed as enemy combatants rather than terrorists. But if that is the case it is likely that the killing of the unarmed and surrendered Bin Laden was an act that failed to live up to the rule of law that Obama refers to in his Cairo Speech, never mind the treatment of prisoners required Geneva Convention and the International Court in The Hague.

But perhaps Obama's greatest betrayal of the principles and values that constitute the idea of America has been his willingness to tolerate the killing of innocents. The undeclared war on parts of Pakistan and the people who live there has taken little account of the lives of the families who live in Waziristan. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism between 391 and 780 Civilians have been killed in what they describe as the Drone Wars, a total that includes 175 children. The CIA's response and justification of these killings is that they are far fewer in number and an unavoidable consequence of the need to prosecute the war on terror. Whilst the Brookings Institute put the ratio between civilians killed to combatants killed was as high as 10 to 1 and the probable total, far in excess of that suggested by either.

Irrespective of the truth, the conduct of the war in this way, is dependent upon a conception of the lives of the people of Waziristan that see's them as less entitled to human rights than US citizens and to the notion that the killing of a terrorist may need to be bought with the blood of innocents. It is an approach to justice that has paralells in history to which no nation should aspire.


The consequence is that rather than making the US and her allies safer, the way in which the war on Terror has been conducted has succeeded,as Byman predicted, in making an enemy of Pakistan and in recruiting another generation of young men to violent extremism.  For all the billions of dollars that have been spent and for all of the lives that have been lost. The way in which the war against Terror has been conducted has meant that the US has failed to be 'respectful of sovereignty and  the rule of law' and has failed to live up to the standards and morals that define it as a nation .

It is in this light that the actions of Bradley Manning and Wikileaks need to be viewed. The disclosure of the actions of the state has laid bare some things of significance and some that are not. It has brought down on them the full might of the US State and its more partisan media, which now portrays both as traitors to the nation. But Bradley Manning and Julian Assange should not be seen as enemies of America but rather as champions of the ideas and principles that are central to its identity. It is equally the case that in acting as they have done they have not betrayed the American People but committed themselves to a struggle for the soul of the nation because America is not a government or even an army - it is an idea.