Bradley Manning: Heroic whistleblower or American traitor?

Bradley Manning began the next chapter of his legal ordeal Monday under the watchful eye of a U.S. government taking unprecedented aim at those who leak state secrets.

Manning listened to his attorney argue Tuesday that he was young and naive and only wanted to enlighten the public about the bitter reality of America’s wars when he gave a massive amount of classified material to anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.

The material WikiLeaks began publishing in 2010 documented complaints of abuses against Iraqi detainees, a U.S. tally of civilian deaths in Iraq, and America’s weak support for the government of Tunisia – a disclosure that Manning supporters said helped trigger the Middle Eastern pro-democracy uprisings known as the Arab Spring.

The Obama administration has said the release of the material threatened to expose valuable military and diplomatic sources and strained America’s relations with other governments.

Manning has admitted to turning over hundreds of thousands of documents and pleaded guilty earlier this year to charges that could bring 20 years behind bars. But the military pressed ahead with a court-martial on more serious charges, including aiding the enemy, which carries a potential life sentence.

The case is the most high-profile prosecution for the Obama administration, which has been criticized for its crackdown on those who leak information. It’s also by far the most voluminous release of classified material in U.S. history, and certainly the most sensational since the 1971 publication of the Pentagon Papers, a secret Defence Department history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

“I think what Bradley Manning did was pretty heroic and selfless, and I want to do everything I can to support someone who is willing to sacrifice everything so we can all know the truth about U.S. foreign policy and what this government is doing,” said Michael Thurman, a former member of the Air Force in front of the courtroom on Monday.

VIDEO: Demonstrators show support for U.S. solider Bradley Manning (June 3)

Thurman told The Daily Beast that said he saw firsthand the level of power the military has and that he believes it doesn’t always act in the best interest of U.S. citizens.

The Guardian’s Glen Greenwald agrees.

In a February 2013 Op-Ed, Greenwald said “Manning’s heroism has long been established” and that “heroism is a slippery and ambiguous concept.”

“He knew exactly what he was risking, what he was likely subjecting himself to,” Greenwald wrote. “But he made the choice to do it anyway because of the good he believed he could achieve, because of the evil that he believed needed urgently to be exposed and combated, and because of his conviction that only leaks enable the public to learn the truth about the bad acts their governments are doing in secret.”

Journalist Alexa O’Brien said Manning’s choice to leak the documents was an informed choice and that it was “thoughtful, rational, and deliberate.”

“The more I read, the more I was fascinated with the way that we dealt with other nations and organizations,” said O’Brien. I also began to think the documented backdoor deals and seemingly criminal activity that didn’t seem characteristic of the de facto leader of the free world. . . .The more I read the cables, the more I came to the conclusion that this was the type of information that should become public.”

Kevin Zeese at Huffington Post wrote in 2011 that Manning “shows the true meaning of patriotism,” and is being “punished for seeking a more perfect union.”

The Nation’s Chase Madar claims that Manning has “brought these wrongdoings to light out of a profound sense of duty to his country, as a citizen and a soldier, and his patriotism has cost him dearly.”

In March 2013, New York Times’ David Carr said Manning’s public trial is itself becoming a state secret in plain sight.

In the article, Carr said that response to numerous Freedom of Information requests from news media organizations, the court agreed to release 84 of the roughly 400 documents filed in the case. The released documents, however, contained redactions and were “mystifying at best and at times almost comic,” according to Carr.

“The secrecy, redactions and delays in release of information mean that the public does not have contemporaneous access to the proceedings, a fundamental component of a public trial,” wrote Carr.

In a blog posting on the Wikileaks website, the site’s founder Julian Assange said Manning’s conviction is already written into the script.

“The commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces, Barack Obama, spoiled the plot for all of us when he pronounced Bradley Manning guilty two years ago,” wrote Assange. “…In a civilized society, such a prejudicial statement alone would have resulted in a mistrial.”

Assange wrote that the trial is a show of wasteful vengeance; a theatrical warning to people of conscience.

“In the end it is not Bradley Manning who is on trial. His trial ended long ago. The defendant now, and for the next 12 weeks, is the United States. A runaway military, whose misdeeds have been laid bare, and a secretive government at war with the public. They sit in the docks. We are called to serve as jurists. We must not turn away,” wrote Assange.

In 2012, Manning’s name was sent to the Nobel Committee as a candidate for the Peace Prize by the Movement of Icelandic Parliament. Filmmaker Oliver Stone took the campaign to award Manning a Peace Prize to social media.

“Whistleblower Bradley Manning has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize,” Stone tweeted back in April. “Let’s make sure he receives it.”

While some have hailed the Army private as a heroic whistleblower and a political prisoner, others call Manning a traitor to the United States and someone who endangered lives and national security.

In February 2012, Rick Moran of FrontPage Magazine asked “how can such an objectively wretched person as Private Bradley Manning be raised up to theses heights and end up being nominated for one of the most coveted awards in the world?”

Moran wrote that Manning deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison.

“He indiscriminately put on the Internet the names of hundreds of people, risking their lives for co-operating with the U.S.,” said Gabriel Schoenfeld, author of Necessary Secrets and a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute to The Associated Press.

“I think he behaved recklessly,” he said. “I think it’s strange for people here that many in Europe are treating him as a hero.”

In 2011, a diplomat in the Bush administration and combat veteran of the Iraqi campaign R. Clarke Cooper wrote that “Manning not only violated security protocol and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, he violated the trust of his colleagues, the Army and his countrymen.”

And then there are some critics do not see Manning as either a traitor or a hero.

“Bradley Manning is a very polarizing figure. People either think that he is a hero or they think he’s a traitor,” said Elizabeth Goitein, who co-directs the liberty and national security program at the Brennan Center for Justice to NPR.

“I actually think that he’s somewhere in between.”