What to Do About Bradley Manning

A few weeks ago I was asked to do a panel at the Left Forum-which turned out OK, despite the very white audience (no shock) and the person who’d contacted me about serving on the panel didn’t show up nor alert us to the fact he had no intention to. But I digress. At this panel, which I had been told would be a conversation about queer people and anti-militarism and was described as something totally different in the program guide, the question of Bradley Manning came up from the audience. In fact, in a conversation about queers and anti-militarism, he was called a “hero,” and someone that we should be putting a lot of energy and resources into organizing for his release.

My argument was that I was reserving judgment for whether we should be organizing around Bradley Manning. While I am certainly not advocating for the kind of inhumane treatment he is subjected to-and what most all prisoners are subjected to, and it is no less harrowing-I just have a couple thoughts about where to situate this situation politically.

Bradley Manning: Radical or not?

While I agree that the documents Bradley Manning is accused of releasing, if he in fact released them, was an act of bravery, and may be politically useful for different anti-war/militarization work, I am not sure that that makes him on our side, per se. I am unclear of the intent. It has been suggested that he may have released them in protest of the military’s (almost defunct) Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. If that is the case, Manning is no radical. If this is the reason for his leaking info it would support an argument that sometimes “whistleblowers” can actually be invested in the institution they’re exposing, and their actions, by them, are seen as a way to reform the institution, rather than simply to cause it embarrassment or other problems. Anyone who wants to “improve” the military is not really where I think we need to place a lot of energy.

Manning’s Reason for Enlisting Emerges

Frontline, the investigative news show for PBS has released some video online about Manning from its upcoming May episode on WikiLeaks. In it, they interview Manning’s father, and the reasons for Manning’s military service begin to emerge.

Basically, Manning had been openly gay since his early teenage years, and had a very tmultuous relationship with his father, and a friend interviewed in the piece suggests there was some abuse there. Whatever the case, Manning was seen by his father as directionless, aimless, and in need of discipline. He basically made Bradley join. So this does suggest that Manning may have had an antagonistic posture toward his enlistment and service, and may have had political reasons for not wanting to join in the first place-I just don’t know yet.

In 2006 I published an article about the Anti-War Movement and it’s ignoring the ways in which Black folks were shwoing their dissent by not enlisting, and named the homophobic ways in which queers may be coerced to join the military, which flies against the LGBT and borader progressive movement’s narrative about the “willing” gay or lesbian soldier. Though I was talking about Black women in the following passage the same could be said about any queer or gender nonconforming person, who is coerced into the military as a means of gender, sexual or reproductive regulation by family members:

Oftentimes, young Black women who are perceived as promiscuous or who rebel against prescribed gender norms are encouraged to enter the military as a means of “straightening them out.”

What is in fact interesting is that Manning has not been trumpeted by the LGBT organizations that are most excited by the end of the DADT policy. In fact, Matthew Tsein, a self described gay retired Air Force Captain and member of the Log Cabin Republicans repudiated Manning in an oped:

For many Gays, this behavior was exhilarating; but some would argue that there are hundreds of thousands of Gay people who have served in our Armed Forces since the days of Valley Forge, and would never - ever - resort to betraying their country or put at risk other American lives, no matter how uncomfortable they felt being emotionally locked up in the proverbial closet.

Wait, here’s the clincher!

Gay people are entitled to disagree with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; after all, half of the people in the original 13 colonies did not support General George Washington, who faced endless defections and many who hoped the British would kill him to end the American Revolution. But, many Gays will quietly acquiesce that no one, regardless of sexual orientation, is entitled betray our country and allies, however imperfect.

Today, Private Manning sits in isolation behind bars — no longer able to wear head phones listening to his precious Lady Gaga CDs. He awaits his court-martial, which will probably lead to life-long imprisonment. Let us hope that he and his GLBT cheer-leaders understand that not all open Gays stand with them.

So my feelings about Manning are mixed at best, I don’t support the clear mistreatment and abuse he’s being subjected to, nor am I interested if he did all of this just so he could “serve openly” in the military. I do think there is something to be said for the fact that he ended up there originally not due to some weird patriotism or desire to kill and maim others, but due to to pressures of “getting his act together” by his father and stepmother. But I am not sure I am willing to expend a lot of political energy here, without a deeper questioning of militarism or the ubiquity of violence against people in prison as a whole.