in the civil justice system there are laws. if you break them, you get punished. some of them have special rules around them. take murder. kill someone, go to jail. but if it was self defence, you might walk. easy, right?
in the military justice system, leaking classified docs is a punishable offence. there is no way around this. there is no self defence, etc alternate way. you break the rule, you get court martialed. morals, ethics do not come into play here.
as a soldier, your interpretation of your oath does not apply here. it would when refusing orders like "kill those civilians over there", but only maybe and not in the way you'd like. again, military justice is not following the same framwork of rules and ethics you're used to as a civilian.
the armed forces in itself are not a democracy. they are a special area of society that exist to provide the ability to kill other humans. in order to do so anything civilian quickly goes out the window. the rules exist to enforce the most optimal sytem to maintain a killing force, not the well being of the individual within the organization.
if you don't like that, you should campaign for complete disarmament and the complete disassemblement of the armed forces. there is no half-way, grey area. once you have an army, it exists to kill humans, with all the consequences. the hero whorship present in the US around any soldier seems to imply that the US society has forgotten this (and then is surprised once something like the sentencing of Manning happens).
Nuremberg does not apply at all here. German officers were tried by the Allied Forces, not their own Army. This was the victors cleaning up. The US has not joined the International Criminal Court for similar reasons, to prevent other nations prosecuting its officers and soldiers (for war crimes, etc.). If you want to do so, you'll need to invade the US and be the victor. Note that Saddam was tried and sentenced by an Iraqi court, not an international tribunal even though US soldiers caught him.
It's not like the us military has had some unchanging set of rules. Throughout the last 50 years public ethics policy has vastly changed how the military functions and will continue to do so.
The armed forces may not be a democracy but they exist by the grace of our democracy.
The rules against releasing classified information are in no way arbitrary and have been long-standing parts of military and foreign affairs since their inception. There has been no time when releasing an indiscriminate cache of State Department cables would have ever been considered a legal gray area. (Indeed, the confidentiality of diplomatic communication has been a norm that has existed for thousands of years: http://isanet.ccit.arizona.edu/noarchive/jonsson.htm). Manning very clearly broke the law and could not have failed to know that he was breaking the law.
policy has changed in regards to gays and females in the military, yes. but where exactly has there been policy impact when it comes to the ones of the receiving end of the military force? the US bombs people all over the world, all the time, women, children, no problemo. not a US citizen, no rights at all.
hypocrisy. "the grace of your democracy guides the US Armed Forces". HORSESHIT.
Although uncivil, it was not entirely unwarranted.
It must be possible to understand that what Manning did was both the right thing to do and a clear violation of the armed forces code he agreed to uphold. Unlike civilian law, the armed forces must place a premium on obedience. People volunteer for and agree to these rules, so the outrage isn't as warranted.
Nobody here, as far as I can understand, is actually questioning that the UCMJ had jurisdiction so while your understanding there is appreciated, it was never really in question...
The issue is a conflation of legality and morality. Conflating the two, then asserting that civilians may not understand and are unequipped to discuss the two separately, is toxic to discussion and society as a whole. It is an attempt to remove civilians from the discussion, a discussion that they absolutely must be apart of.
As much as some people may wish it, this ain't Starship Troopers.
It's a little obnoxious to be accused of conflating things one has explicitly separated, but I suppose on this topic those that are outraged are mainly here to vent rather than discuss, and there's nothing wrong with that, so I think I'll bow out here.
In an immoral legal system, justice is fleeting. He is accusing them of, not 'not existing', nor being incorrect, but rather of rendering a verdict that deserves no respect.
That's how I read it anyway.
Edit: His (much later) comment here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6251625) indicates to me that he understands this situation just fine. "I'm not disputing that Manning broke the laws of the military.... ...I don't see how you can defend the laws and regulations of an organization...."
The function of civil authority, say a moral President, something I hope to live to see, would be to pardon Manning, overruling the military justice sentence in the context of a greater good.
Clearly, this will not happen. Obama will simply wash his hands - not explicitly, though. The media will never even ask the question.
..but the more extreme "It TAKES a civilian mind to understand the difference between right and wrong" is also true? If the military is unable to consider morality itself, then we must rely on civilians to call them out. Accusing civilians of being incapable of doing that then puts the military above any sense of morality. Disturbing, to say the least.
That is what he was doing (see for clarification: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6251625(, and that is why a reply of "civilians may not understand" got a strongly negative response.
While I'm at it, we need to drop this tired tactic of insinuating that strong disagreement is censorship. I have never suggested that anyone shouldn't be allowed to disagree with me, so, no, it's not ironic in the slightest.
but perfectly fine with strong language in internet forum posts, it is a consequence free area.
“The Whistleblower Protection Act does not apply to the intelligence community. They’re exempt from it. And most people in the intelligence community don’t realize that. So, you can’t even go to the Office of Special Counsel because they’re exempt from that, too, and the merit system protection board. So even if you use the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act, the only thing that gives you is the right to go to Congress. It doesn’t–it doesn’t have any teeth there to protect you against retribution from the agency that you’re reporting abuse on.”
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/52174294/t/whistleblower-protectio...
What these people have been exposing isn't wrong according to the internal rules of the NSA/military/State Department/etc., therefore, there's no possibility of achieving change through internal whistleblowing.
After all, give me the toughest of the toughest, 3 years sleeping naked and being woken up every 2 hours to a loud music and put me behind closed door, and I will make him swear and admit he went back in time and killed Jesus Christ himself.
However, there is something my grandfather, an Air Force crypto guy, used to say: "... Have a fair trial and then hang the guilty SOB." To me, this always came off as blind obedience and "kangaroo court" justice.
It should not be what society wants though. I think that has been made painfully clear in the past, but some people still just don't seem to get it.
I find it hard to believe than anyone except for a small minority actually believes that to be the case. If it were, vast partisanship wouldn't exist, since whoever was in power would be considered to "share their best interests".