I'm not disputing that Manning broke the laws of the military. But calling his actions an incipient coup is laughable. In a world in which the worst offenders at Abu Ghraib got ten years (and were released much sooner), sentencing him to 35 years (as a deterrent!) is a disgrace. I don't see how you can defend the laws and regulations of an organization where it's much better to commit a crime against humanity than to publicize one and err on the side of too much info.
Does that mean that Manning doesn't deserve his sentence? If so, how?
> I don't see how you can defend the laws and regulations of an organization where it's much better to commit a crime against humanity than to publicize one and err on the side of too much info.
I hate this about Manning's supporters. He exposed a small amount of wrongdoing with his leaking. The majority of the stuff he leaked didn't show any kind of criminal behavior, and instead exposed internal communications by US govt officials for no legitimate purpose. These leaks damaged relationships with foreign governments and jeopardized the lives of people in foreign nations employed by or cooperating with the US.
Stop pretending that he was a selfless warrior for truth and justice.
Because it is immoral to remove a fellow human's freedom for lengthy periods of time unless absolutely necessary, when there is no other way to protect the public from their future actions. For example, in the case of unreformable violent criminals, who must be physically restrained lest they injure others if unrestrained, there may be no other option than multiyear or even (in rare cases) multi-decade imprisonment. But that does not happen often, and even most people who committed violent crimes pose much less risk once they grow older.
There is no way you would be sentenced to 35 years for a nonviolent crime here (Denmark), because the idea is preposterous. Not even if you leaked something that offended the fairly influential and US/NATO-loving military. Sentences longer than 2 years are rare, reserved only for extreme crimes (murder, rape, etc.), which seems quite correct.
Americans seems somewhat vengeful, even sadistic on the subject, rather than rational. Somehow absurdly long sentences like confining someone in a cage for 5 years or even 10 years is seen as a "short" sentence, I guess because compared to locking people in a cage for 30 or 50 years or outright killing them, it seems lenient in comparison. You even hear people joking gleefully about prison rape. Not sure how you could approach fixing that culture.
Abu Ghraib also damaged international relations and placed American lives at increased risk from terrorism. Plus, you know, it involved physically torturing people, not chatting online with Julian Assange.
Yet it is only Manning's crime that's judged worthy of deterrence (by a 3.5 times larger punishment). That's because his real fault is that of exposing the inner workings of a style of policy making that can only function effectively as long as the public is kept ignorant. Only this kind of a crime can "undermine the entire system", as the prosecutor very frankly put it.
Abu Ghraib may have embarrassed America, but the real no-no is exposing its government.
Abu Ghraib was horrific, but it was close enough to what was ordered to be done by Mi, by the CIA, by special forces (water boarding, walling, stress positions, sleep deprivation) that no one thinks the soldiers really disregarded the chain of command (aside from the standing orders against prisoner treatment which others were by direct order ignoring), they just got out of hand. So from the military's point of view, it's not a discipline problem.
Abu Ghraib, as a systemic thing, is deterred by simple never issuing orders to do that kind of thing again and making it explicitly clear that it's prohibited. After all, non of the soldiers involved thought they were explicitly disobeying their superiors, they thought they were doing what everyone else did. If ordered not to torture people, they would not torture people.
Manning, on the other head, disregarded lawful orders stemming from the civilian command authority to protect information. He didn't do it because what he leaked exposed crimes against humanity(he leaked far more than leak the "collateral murder" video), he did it because he thought he knew what was best.
Soldiers don't get to decide what they think is best with in the context of lawful orders. If they could, they might decide they know what is best for the country and stage a coup, or frag their commanding officer, or any number of other things.
That's what they needed to deter.
Didn't independent studies/orgs show that this wasn't true, and was just a phrase paraded around by the government to get the public against Manning?
And no offense, but what is the simplest explanation here? That a bunch of collaborator names were leaked and not a single person was put into harm's way as a result of that? Keep in mind that we're not talking about some random subdivision of the IRS, we're talking about the organization that gunned down Malala and detonated a bomb in the middle of a policeman's funeral.
If truth hurts it's not a good sign.
The system is only effective at hiding information from citiziens, who are not able to access the very information that politicians use to guide their decisions. That is, of course, why they happily go on record with blatant lies, at no risk of being exposed. Contrast this with their complete non-statements in this current NSA situation; they would rather make no statement at all than be exposed as a liar, for no one knows what else Snowden/Greenwald will release that could make previous statements look like disinformation.
I love every single one of my friends dearly and would go to great lengths for them. But for any one I can point to a list of things that are flawed about them, and I'm sure every one of them could put together a long list of things flawed about me. I'd be pissed at someone who told one of my friends that, e.g. I thought they had unrealistic expectations about potential mates given their own looks, because the only reason someone would do that would be to either hurt my friend or to hurt me.
Human relationships are very often about delicacy, and part and parcel of delicacy is knowing what thoughts to share and what not to share. When someone takes away that discretion and makes that decision for you, you are entitled to get mad.
- I notice you! Here's some meaningless words acknowledging the fact. - I noticed you too. Please don't tell me anything about your life unless it's exciting but not making me envy you in any way. - Same to you, and please don't waste my time anymore now unless you are going to benefit me in some way. - I'm going to depart now, and I don't care how the rest of you day goes. - Neither do I for you.
I would submit a world like this would be perceived as utterly bizarre by most of us.
Well, I am sorry to say that in fact society is that brittle and you are being lied to in one fashion or another most of the time.
I do want to clarify what I mean by lying though because it would be easy to interpret what I am saying as conspiratorial. In fact what I mean is that your information diet is nearly completely full with selective information, weasel words, legalese and implied trust. The constructs between nations and even within our nation are the same and often worse than interpersonal relations. So the reason that you trust any entity is not because they are moral pillars, its because they don't show you the questionable things that people do on a day to day basis that make little difference. This is exactly the argument against the widespread intelligence gathering - everyone is doing something illegal at pretty much any time. Similarly everyone, whether they know it or not lies to others on a daily basis (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/homo-consumericus/201111...)
So yes, it really is that fragile and it is insanely magnified at the global politics level way beyond you would even imagine.
And you don't believe bit more honesty might be in order?
We used to like having slaves. All people used to hate gays and atheists. Women used to be perceived as incapable of having public lives.
At some point we might reach the conclusion that being lied to is not all that convenient because truth eventually comes out and if it's too far from perception it leads to shitstorms.
People can change. But they do not change by themselves. There is always some kind of technological advancement that forces people to change their ways. I sincerely hope that internet will lead us to more honest lives.
Indeed you are correct that the truth will come out and I am the first person to support full transparency. I do know however that in this example, if the Japanese said they don't know what they are doing, please help - the people in charge would lose their jobs immediately. So it's not just a one way street with people being honest, it is also the public and everyone who has a voice understanding that there is a difference between incompetence, hostile intent and accidents.
People at the basic level demand perfection from people in power - so those in power do everything that they can to make it look like they are either infallible, or are victims. In one way or another how we as a society respond to failure that will determine how truthful we can be. If we continue to have the zero fault mindset for those in power, they will continue to lie.
Or I forget how the quote goes, but anyways I thought we supported the concept of privacy in general on this site. Governments need privacy to serve the interests of their people for the same reason people need privacy to serve their own interest.
Government should operate in the open. I might understand need for military secrecy of government of a small country in unfriendly region, but not for a broad secrecy of the government that has has largest military force in the world at its disposal. Unless you think that all this NSA thing is all good because government needs to have its privacy when it's spying you.
From what I heard relationships with foreign governments were damaged by the fact that foreign governments found out that friendly diplomacy called them chumps behind their backs. When the truth about this talk and how american diplomats understand words "friend" or "ally" leaked out it did hurt. As I said, if revealing what you really think about others hurts you, that's not a good sign. It's a sign that you might be kind of an asshole.
If you ask me the real war crime is that the administration we had at the time went to war in Iraq in the first place, based on an apparent mixture of personal animus between Presidents Bush & Hussein and an alarmingly thin piece of social engineering by an Iraqi criminal/defector known as 'Curveball' who wanted to (at best) destabilize the Saddam Hussein regime or (at worst, but quite understandably) evade prison in Iraq. This entirely optional conflict led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, or by some counts >1 million, while (IMHO) significantly prolonging the war in Afghanistan by turning that theater into a sideshow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant)
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB234/index.htm
I don't think Manning's information releases revealed very much about the war in Iraq other than to shed light on this particular helicopter incident which I think falls rather short of being a war crime, although I do think it was worth bringing to public attention.
On the other hand, I see no public benefit whatsoever in teh release of all the State Department cables, and as far as I can make out Manning took them and Assange released them just because they were classified by default. When their full contents became available because of carelessness with the crypto key outcome was some diplomatic red faces but there sure wasn't any big reveal of criminal activity.
Abu Ghraib was a war crime, not a crime against humanity.
The difference however is Abu Ghraib didn't put intelligence sources at risk, it didn't endanger the lives of people. How many people died in Abu Ghraib from being photographed with underwear on their head? How many innocent lives were put at risk because of Abu Ghraib? I am certainly not defending the soldiers involved in that situation but to try and draw some moral relativism between the two cases is absurd. You likely have no idea how Americans are treated by the Taliban and Al Q when they're captured.
Ask Daniel Pearl: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Pearl
By the way, the guys in Abu were fighting on the same side as the guys that beheaded Daniel Pearl. They were combatants. They weren't innocent little girls walking to school. The irony is if the US soldiers at Abu had shot those prisoners on the battlefield, nobody would have complained, but they put underwear on their heads and the world freaks the hell out, yet quietly forgetting about cases like Daniel Pearl. We could argue Geneva convention all day long, but until the Taliban is a signatory to that convention or wears uniforms declaring themselves as part of a legitimate military force, the Geneva Conventions never applied, though of course we (meaning the US military) still follow those rules. And those that didn't -- were punished.
While we're so busy being outraged, let's get outraged about the Taliban stoning women to death. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-15688354 Bradley Manning helped the Taliban find informants. http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/taliban-study-wi...
One specific and direct result of Manning is the case of Shakil Afridi, the doctor in Pakistan that helped find Bin Laden. He's in a Pakistan prison for 30 years after ostensibly being tortured.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18175964
Since Mr. Manning directly made his discovery possible, what punishment should Manning receive? There are dozens and dozens of intelligence sources and relationships that were significantly harmed because of Manning.
If you have ever spent any time with a security clearance, you'd know that there are countless unintended consequences that result from revealing a source or a collection method. Being morally outraged over Bradley Manning puts you in the same shoes as a Taliban sympathizer because not only was Manning a soldier, sworn to uphold the Constitution, the lives of his fellow soldiers, allies and others were in his hands. He was given a position of public trust and the responsibility that goes with it. Yet because he had emotional and personal problems he chose to do what he did.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/psychologist-wikile...
A raw information dump isn't "blowing the whistle," it's an intent to inflict harm on the United States and allies. If you wanted to expose a security hole in Gmail, for example, you wouldn't expose every single gmail user's information. You'd expose the amount necessary to reveal the problem. The simple truth is that Manning is a kid, he's intelligent to some degree, but he certainly isn't an Edward Snowden. Manning had no idea what he was doing. By his own words he said he didn't intend to harm the United States. Either he's a liar or a complete fool.
There are countless intelligence and diplomatic relationships that have been harmed, in addition to people who have been directly killed, captured or targeted as a result of Manning.
Snowden on the other hand, released information about illegal activities against US citizens that were in direct violation of the law. The Snowden releases, while potentially compromising national security from a strategic standpoint, didn't put any lives at direct risk. Manning's releases however put dozens of people directly in the line of fire. I am not going to defend Snowden, however a better case could be made for him than Manning and certainly no comparison could be made to Abu Ghraib. That's just tomfoolery.
Your obsession with terrorists' lack of scruples is causing you to become what you hate. You think it's OK to humiliate and torture them because they're terrorists, they think it's OK to behead us because of religion and nationality. How about a little show of strength and dealing with them without lowering to their level?
Did it? Did he already cut off people's heads, blow up markets and issued fatwas calling for murdering infidels? Or did he just express an opinion that maybe war prisoner abuse, while being undeniably bad, is not the same as murdering innocent people or perpetrating genocide? If in your eyes that makes one the same as terrorist, your priorities are seriously messed up.
Manadel al-Jamadi is a pretty compelling witness to the falsity of this claim.
The hell it didn't. (I stopped reading there, so maybe you made some good points later on.)
By discarding any pretense of adherence to the Geneva Convention, Abu Ghraib put every US soldier at risk.
At risk of what? What was already happening to both soldiers and civilians? You can't mean torture, death, or imprisonment. Hell, the Taliban and the like were doing far, far worse already.
So, I'm honestly curious, what was the increased risk?
> so maybe you made some good points later on.
The OP made mention of how Manning's leak directly led to intelligence sources imprisonment and death.
I wonder if there is anything other than suspicious backing up your claims here?
For one thing, not all of the US's potential adversaries are radical Islamists. In future conventional wars, we will need the moral authority to demand that our prisoners be treated in accordance with international laws and treaty obligations. Debacles like Abu Ghraib -- to say nothing of the Iraq war in general -- rob us of that moral authority, in much the same way that the Roman Catholic Church loses some of its moral authority every time another child sex abuse case comes to light. To occupy the high ground, you must first take it.
The OP made mention of how Manning's leak directly led to intelligence sources imprisonment and death.
No, orchestrating a bogus public health campaign led to Afridi's imprisonment. As far as I'm concerned, Afridi can take his place next to Mengele in medical infamy.
Manning did an unalloyed good thing in bringing the CIA's tactic to light [1]. I want foreign operatives to tell the Agency to fuck off when they come up with ideas like, "Hey, let's start a vaccination program so we can subvert the local populace and find our bad guy."
You seem to think that the ends justify the means. That's great, as long as you have perfect knowledge of future consequences. In that sense, both the US government and Bradley Manning made the same logical error. The difference is, his actions had some positive consequences as well as negative ones.
[1]: If, in fact, he did. There seems to be some disagreement with briandear's (lack of a) citation on this.
A little wrinkle here is that most US adversaries in recent wars didn't give a flying duck about US moral authority. And there's no reason why that would change - it's not like US is going to war with Sweden or Canada. Not that supposedly civilized countries aren't capable of mass atrocities - look at what Germans did in 20th century. Did they care for the moral authority of the Jews they mass-murdered? I highly doubt so.
Moral authority is important only for US and only because winning the war while destroying one's society may not be worth it.
>>>> The difference is, his actions had some positive consequences as well as negative ones.
You mean, actions of US government don't have positive consequences? I think you're getting way ahead of the facts here.
(Shrug) Unless you owned a lot of HAL or another big contractor, the Iraq war didn't have a lot of upside.
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/feb/04/iraq.unitednati...
When Abu Ghraib was publicised, a lot of moderate taliban would have become radicalised. That seems rather logical to me.
In the specific case of soldiers in Iraq, at risk of radicalisation of that part of the population which, prior to the events at Abu Ghraib and them becoming known in Iraq (which occurred before they were leaked in the West), had been supportive (or at least tolerant) of the occupation.
For the rest of the military, a greater risk of hostile populations and bigger psyops advantages for adversaries in foreign operations.
just because someone mentions something, does not make it true.
up is down.
Depends on how you define such, your examples meet old UN definition, Abu Ghraib meets newer ICC definition.
> How many people died in Abu Ghraib..
at least one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisone... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Jamadi
> How many innocent lives were put at risk because of Abu Ghraib?
Depends on how you define innocent, but given WMD was a false pretence, and regime change the moral justification retreat position, torture and prisoner abuse at the same site as the former regime is pretty damning. I would say a lot of lives were put at risk by this change in 'optics'.
> let's get outraged about the Taliban..
No problem.
> By the way, the guys in Abu were fighting..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Jamadi was a suspect, not a combatant.
> One specific and direct result of Manning is the case of Shakil Afridi
There's absolutely nothing specific or direct about Manning and this, the link you provide makes no such suggestion.
> There are dozens and dozens of intelligence sources and relationships that were significantly harmed because of Manning.
This was not to the case according to military testimony: http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/07/31/59869.htm http://www.thenation.com/blog/174622/seven-myths-about-bradl... (see number five.)
EDIT: I misread, thinking you meant injured or killed. It just hurt relationships, I think that point is fairly hard to argue. Sure, it hurt relationships. I'd say Abu Ghraib looms larger in their consciousness than the leaks that took place though.
> Being morally outraged over Bradley Manning puts you in the same shoes as a Taliban sympathizer because not only was Manning a soldier
Echoes of GWB: you are either with us or against us. Most people have the maturity to rise above this simplistic level of thinking.
further to what I wrote above:
On April 20, 2004 insurgents fired forty (40) mortar rounds into the prison. Twenty-two detainees were killed and 92 wounded. Commentators thought the attack was either as an attempt to incite a riot or retribution for detainees' cooperating with the United States.[6]
reasonable to surmise shelling was to stop or prevent information being given up under torture.
If the police have a duty of care to witnesses, and the Mafia kill them, then the police should take some blame. Not as much as the mafia. Think of a witness protection program, if they fail at their task then they are partially to blame.
So no, I am not trying to paint it all as being US' fault, you can tell that because I wrote "insurgents fired".
> How many innocent lives were put at risk because of Abu Ghraib?
Depends on how you define innocent
Right, then, so you're fine with me murdering you as long as I don't torture you first? Better than the worst is not good enough.
"Manning's releases however put dozens of people directly in the line of fire."
Everyone keeps saying this. Can you explain how it is that the Army and the Obama administration, who have unparalleled interest in seeing Manning discredited and have gone to great lengths to do so, have so far failed to uncover a single instance of Manning's releases actually harming a human being?
I cannot find such a link.
update: fixed typo.
Manning joined the Army in late 2007/early 2008, by which time the US had been involved in what a lot of people (including myself) consider to have been an illegal war in Iraq for 4-5 years; one in which the existence of appalling human rights abuses such as torture and extraordinary rendition were well documented, and which by then was well understood by the public to have been predicated on faulty intelligence.
It seems to me that if you have a negative view of war and militarism, then you should probably not join the organization involved in fighting that war in the first place. You could serve your country perfectly well and without taking part in military aggression by, say, joining the Coast Guard.
Frankly, I think the only reason Manning has hero status on HN is because he was a computer nerd, and so other computer nerds are willing to suspend their critical faculties because they can identify with him. I can identify with him up to a point, but not to the point of wanting to join the army 5 years into a clusterfuck like the Iraq war run by an administration that had tossed things like the Geneva convention out the window.
Information about Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was revealed in 2004 by the Department of Defense itself pursuant to its own investigation. Information about waterboarding (which as far as I am concerned is illegal torture) was widely available and the subject of intense public discussion in 2007, before Manning even joined the army.
So if they witness a crime, they should speak out. Manning did release evidence of several crimes leading up to and during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:
The cheerful murder of Reuters journalists and later innocents who came to help by that helicopter crew
The purchase of child prostitutes for entertainment by Dyncorp
The illegal collection of DNA from UN officials and representatives (straight from Dr. Strangelove!)
etc.
Now as you say he also released a lot of other material, which wasn't directly related to any crime, so he should expect to be punished for that indiscriminate release, and it weakens his case, but I'd also expect some clemency given that the release was clearly in the public interest and revealed many unlawful orders and coverups.
I don't think he deserves 35 years for that, compared to the 6 months sentence of Sgt. Sabrina Harman who tortured and abused detainees, it seems disproportionate.
In the first "crime"... No crime was committed nor was anyone ever convicted. It was a tragic result, but not one that the reporters could have mitigated the risk.
At the very least Reuters should have been provided with this footage (instead it was covered up), and an independent investigation held.
The chain of command issuing the unlawful orders and participating in the coverups is unlikely to agree that revealing those things is in the "public interest".
Which is kind of the fundamental problems that whistleblowers always face (whether or not formal protections are in place) -- the people deciding whether or not to punish them (or whether or not the protections apply) are often the people on whom they are "blowing the whistle", or at least people with shared interest with the targets of the whistleblowing.
This is mitigated when there is involvement of an independent actor in the process, but in the case of military trials that are completely within the military chain of command within the executive branch, that kind of independence is hard to find.
In the actual military the untoward influence (real or perceived) of the convening officer on the outcome of the case is a B.F.D., just witness all the sexual assault/harassment cases that were being upended by Obama's condemnation of servicemembers who engage in them. In fact SECDEF himself had to issue a memo saying, in effect, that the POTUS expects trial members/judges to use their own independent judgment when considering the facts of a case, just as specified in the M.C.M.
You're right that an independent actor is what is needed in general, but Col. Lind does not report to the President on this, she reports to the Commanding General of the Military District of Washington, which is a completely separate chain of command from the one that was issuing orders relating actions in Iraq of Afghanistan.
Passing the laws is not being part of the process of applying them (its also inaccurate to say that the UCMJ is "set out by Congress, not the President", since the current version of the UCMJ wasn't adopted over a Presidential veto.)
> Likewise the trials are overseen in the end by the civilian Supreme Court.
Which, given the length (both procedurally and temporally) of the appeal chain is a far more distant involvement of a non-executive actor than is the case in civilian trials.
> You're right that an independent actor is what is needed in general, but Col. Lind does not report to the President on this, she reports to the Commanding General of the Military District of Washington
The existence of intervening steps on the chain of command does not make a military officer independent of the Commander-in-Chief.
That's first. Obeying lawful orders is second.
It's debatable how this oath applies in Manning's case, but I think it's rather telling what order the things you are swearing to uphold come in.
When I was in the military my interpretation was that anything I was ordered to do that was contrary to the Constitution was an unlawful order. If I were taking the oath seriously, that would have required active dissent, not just ignoring the order.
http://usmilitary.about.com/od/joiningthemilitary/a/oathofen...
Did Manning reveal anything that was prima facie unconstitutional?
If not for things like PRISM the military and other branches of the Government wouldn't need to worry about soldiers/their employees reporting unconstitutional actions of the Government. Because it seems they break the law all the time, yes, that's a problem. The Governments problem not whistleblowers.
Manning probably assumed that there must be some illegal stuff in the cables/documentation he revealed. And some documents show he was right.
So, the USG, similarly to Adam from my example has worked long and hard for its reputation. Don't blame some teachers/whistleblowers for suspecting usual suspects.
You are confusing wrongdoers here. All the wars are unconstitutional to begin with because Congress didn't declare them.
From their site (http://oathkeepers.org):
Oath Keepers is a non-partisan association of current and formerly serving military, reserves, National Guard, veterans, Peace Officers, and Fire Fighters who will fulfill the Oath we swore, with the support of like minded citizens who take an Oath to stand with us, to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, so help us God. Our Oath is to the Constitution.
Manning broke the law to reveal an indiscriminate collection of State Department cables.
However they are trained that the presumption is that a given order is lawful unless it's clearly contrary to the Constitution, law, regulation or policy.
As we phrase it in the Navy, no sailor has ever been court-martialed for following a legitimate order, but the same cannot be said regarding mutiny.
In short if you want to challenge an order go right ahead, but realize that your ass is going to be put on the line and even the Supreme Court will be biased on the military's side regarding it, if previous experience is any judge.
What you should say is,
"They will be prosecuted if they unilaterally decide to violate a lawful order, even if they think it is better for humanity at large."
And I would add, "And sometimes duty to humanity will compel them to accept that they will be prosecuted, and they have to unilaterally decide what is right."
Adrian Lamo
No, we call it a mutiny.
A coup is specifically when the action they take involves displacing the lawful government, not merely disobeying its orders.
There's a pretty giant difference.
But much like a court of law, the presumption is that the order is lawful if given by proper authority, and the servicemember must then prove beyond any reasonable doubt that the order is unlawful, and be willing to take the risk of court-martial if they are wrong.
It also somewhat depends on the community you're in. Enlisted nuclear technicians on submarines probably disobey an order every other day at least, to keep an EOOW (or ENG) from doing something stupid to their nuclear propulsion plant.
They do not have the right to unilaterally decide to violate a lawful order because they think it is better for humanity at large. They do not have the right to expose classified information because they think it shouldn't be classified. They do not have the right to violate orders because they are stupid, or because they're bad policy.
They do not have the right to make those decisions because, in the US, the military is supposed to be entirely subordinate to the laws enacted by our elected officials. Not "subordinate as long as it's for the best overall." This is a good thing--when enough members of the military decide to do what's better for the country against the lawful orders of the elected government that they serve, we call it a coup.
Obviously there are grey areas. After all, the Nuremburg trials punished people for violating laws that didn't exist during the commission of the crimes. If Manning had, say, only released extremely strong evidence of war crimes, I might agree that hiding that evidence was itself unlawful. But he didn't--he released a giant trove of classified diplomatic cables and military logs. These may have been unnecessarily classified, but were not unlawfully classified. Releasing them put Manning firmly in the "violating lawful orders" camp.