{"id":1716,"date":"2019-08-01T09:31:32","date_gmt":"2019-08-01T09:31:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/?page_id=1716"},"modified":"2019-08-01T09:31:32","modified_gmt":"2019-08-01T09:31:32","slug":"chelsea-manning-petitions-for-a-pardon-2013","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/30-the-recent-past\/chelsea-manning-petitions-for-a-pardon-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Chelsea Manning Petitions for a Pardon (2013)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Chelsea Manning, a U.S. Army intelligence analyst, was\nconvicted in 2013 for violating the Espionage Act by leaking classified\ndocuments revealing the killing of civilians, the torture of prisoners, and\nother nefarious actions committed by the United States in the War on Terror. After\nbeing sentenced to thirty-five years in federal prison, she delivered a statement,\nthrough her attorney, explaining her actions and requesting a pardon from President\nBarack Obama. Manning\u2019s sentence was commuted in 2017.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\ndecisions that I made in 2010 were made out of a concern for my country and the\nworld that we live in. Since the tragic events of 9\/11, our country has been at\nwar. We\u2019ve been at war with an enemy that chooses not to meet us on any\ntraditional battlefield, and due to this fact we\u2019ve had to alter our methods of\ncombating the risks posed to us and our way of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I initially\nagreed with these methods and chose to volunteer to help defend my country. It\nwas not until I was in Iraq and reading secret military reports on a daily\nbasis that I started to question the morality of what we were doing. It was at\nthis time I realized in our efforts to meet this risk posed to us by the enemy,\nwe have forgotten our humanity. We consciously elected to devalue human life\nboth in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we engaged those that we perceived were the\nenemy, we sometimes killed innocent civilians. Whenever we killed innocent\ncivilians, instead of accepting responsibility for our conduct, we elected to\nhide behind the veil of national security and classified information in order\nto avoid any public accountability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In our zeal\nto kill the enemy, we internally debated the definition of torture. We held\nindividuals at Guantanamo for years without due process. We inexplicably turned\na blind eye to torture and executions by the Iraqi government. And we stomached\ncountless other acts in the name of our war on terror.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patriotism\nis often the cry extolled when morally questionable acts are advocated by those\nin power. When these cries of patriotism drown out any logically based dissension,\nit is usually an American soldier that is ordered to carry out some\nill-conceived mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our nation\nhas had similar dark moments for the virtues of democracy\u2014the Trail of Tears,\nthe Dred Scott decision, McCarthyism, the Japanese-American internment camps\u2014to\nname a few. I am confident that many of our actions since 9\/11 will one day be\nviewed in a similar light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the late\nHoward Zinn once said, \u201cThere is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of\nkilling innocent people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I understand\nthat my actions violated the law, and I regret if my actions hurt anyone or\nharmed the United States. It was never my intention to hurt anyone. I only\nwanted to help people. When I chose to disclose classified information, I did\nso out of a love for my country and a sense of duty to others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you deny\nmy request for a pardon, I will serve my time knowing that sometimes you have\nto pay a heavy price to live in a free society. I will gladly pay that price if\nit means we could have country that is truly conceived in liberty and dedicated\nto the proposition that all women and men are created equal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: Statement\nof Chelsea Manning, as Read by his Attorney, David Coombs, on August 21, 2013. Available\nvia Democracy Now! (https:\/\/www.democracynow.org\/2013\/8\/21\/bradley_manning_sometimes_you_have_to_pay_a_heavy_price_to_live_in_a_free_society<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chelsea Manning, a U.S. Army intelligence analyst, was convicted in 2013 for violating the Espionage Act by leaking classified documents revealing the killing of civilians, the torture of prisoners, and other nefarious actions committed by the United States in the War on Terror. After being sentenced to thirty-five years in federal prison, she delivered a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":820,"menu_order":6,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1716","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1716"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1717,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1716\/revisions\/1717"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}