Free Bradley Manning

WikiLeaks immediately upended journalism as we knew it, filling newspapers with more revelations than editors knew what to do with, more scoops in a year than most journalists get in a lifetime, and more source documents than American journalists had ever had access to before. 

 
WikiLeaks blew holes in the wall of U.S. secrecy, and the world is better for it. As Julian Assange turns 41 in political limbo in Europe, and as Bradley Manning nears 800 days in jail without a court martial, we remember how much good WikiLeaks’ releases have done.

It’s important to note, as we review the many benefits WikiLeaks provided us, that this type of positive change, if we’re to believe the chat logs, is what Bradley Manning desperately hoped for. He said he witnessed “crazy, almost criminal political backdealings” by “a plethora of states acting in self interest.” He hoped exposing them would compel “debate, discussion, and reforms,” and he was right.

The release of these documents has demonstrably improved the world, in the short term by inspiring these democratic uprisings and in the long run with a new perspective on massive secrecy and covert diplomacy. And yet, as it works to send him to life in jail, the military is attempting to paint Bradley as a traitor who didn’t care for his country. But it’s clear that the opposite is true:

Bradley cared deeply enough for his fellow Americans that he believed they deserved to know what their government was doing in secret. Bradley said, “Information should be free…It belongs in the public domain.” If Bradley did what he’s accused of, he put this invaluable information in the public domain for the world to see. We continue to feel the positive effects to this day.