[Note for TomDispatch Readers:
TD has an
offer for you that shouldn’t be missed. TomDispatch
regular Chase Madar, who has covered Private Bradley Manning’s
trials and tribulations for this site, has now produced a striking and
provocative new book on his case, The
Passion of Bradley Manning. It’s just out, definitely a must-read
for those of us who care about Manning’s fate and, for a limited period of time,
you can get a signed, personalized copy of the book in return for a contribution
of $75 or more to this website. It’s a great way to support us and always
deeply appreciated. To check out the offer go to our donation page by clicking
here. Tom] Of course, it
wasn’t Barack Obama’s fault. He didn’t nominate himself for the Nobel Peace
Prize back in 2009 when he was already on a distinct war trajectory in
Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Nobel committee did it in what, even then, was
visibly a vote for the idea that “peace” was anything but George W. Bush.
After all, the new president had run a campaign against a
“stupid”
war in Iraq, but for prosecuting “
the
right war,” and by the time he was
awarded
the prize in October 2009, as an incipient peace president he had already
escalated the war in Afghanistan and his administration was deep in a fierce
debate over just how many more troops to send there in what would, by
December
of that year, become a “surge.”
By the time the president accepted his
award in March 2010 in a speech entitled “
A
Just and Lasting Peace” -- which might more accurately have been titled “On
the Necessity of War” -- he had significantly increased
troop
levels in Afghanistan and
similarly
upped the levels of CIA personnel, private contractors, special operations
forces, State Department personnel, and so on. In addition, he was already
overseeing a spreading drone air campaign in the Pakistani borderlands.
Give him credit. He stood on the Nobel podium and gave a speech that,
read today, looks remarkably like a rousing defense of American-style war and
little short of an attack on the limited ability of nonviolence to make a real
difference in a violent world. Among other things, he made clear that he
wouldn’t be bound in any way by the examples of Gandhi or King, trumpeted his
willingness to act “unilaterally,” and plunked for the necessity of war. (“I
raise this point because in many countries there is a deep ambivalence about
military action today, no matter the cause. At times, this is joined by a
reflexive suspicion of America, the world's sole military superpower.”)
Honest (and predictive) as it may have been, he did not have to go to
Oslo at all. He had an honorable alternative, and there was even a precedent --
though one no American president would ever have cited -- for what he didn’t
do. In 1973, the Nobel Committee offered its peace prize to two men, American
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese diplomat Le Duc Tho for
negotiating the Paris Peace Accords. Kissinger accepted. Le Duc Tho
refused,
saying that “peace has not yet really been established... In these
circumstances, it is impossible for me to accept the prize.”
Obama did
not take that path, of course, and now, his Nobel Prize largely forgotten, he
will be campaigning for reelection as a successful war president, the man who
launched the attack that killed Osama bin Laden, and whose administration has
fed
the U.S. military machine in a manner similar to that of his predecessor. At
the same time, it has
fiercely
prosecuted and, in the case of Private First Class
Bradley
Manning among others, persecuted a
range
of American whistleblowers who have dared to reveal the real story of our
eternal state of war and the war state that goes with it.
Manning,
accused of passing secret U.S. military and State Department documents on to the
website WikiLeaks, is now in military prison awaiting a trial whose verdict is
essentially a foregone conclusion. Everyone knows that after military “justice”
is done under pressure from an administration led by a president who has already
publicly
stated -- at a $5,000 a head fundraiser in San Francisco, no less -- that
Manning “broke the law,” they will throw away the keys and leave him to rot in
prison till hell freezes over.
Manning is already in danger of being
forgotten (though not at this website) for an alleged act that was aimed at
stopping war, an act that -- as a matter of amends -- should bring him a
nomination for the Nobel Prize, if not the prize itself.
TomDispatch
regular and lawyer Chase Madar has, at least, done his best to make sure
Manning will not be America’s forgotten hero with his provocative, invaluable
new book,
The
Passion of Bradley Manning (OR Books), on the case and its many
ramifications. In a half-reasonable world, it would keep a spotlight on him.
(To catch Timothy MacBain's latest two-part Tomcast audio interview in which
Madar discusses the Manning case and his new book, click
here
for part 1 and
here
for part 2, or download it to your iPod
here.)
Tom
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