"On Civil Disobedience" Redux: Manning and Snowden

Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden are two whistleblowers, accused by the United States government of conspiring to release classified information to the world that exposed the actions of the Armed Forces, and the extent of the US Government’s data collection policies.  The reaction to both has been a mixture of labeling them heroes, and labeling them traitors.  The truth is, Snowden had the more damning information, but Manning is the more honorable of the two.

Earlier this week, Bradley Manning was acquitted of the most serious charge facing him: Giving Aid to the Enemy.  Edward Snowden has been holed up in a Moscow airport, though his attorney says he is close to, if not already leaving the airport.  Both leaked classified intelligence about the United States government, ostensibly to provide a dusting of sunshine disinfectant for the United States populace, who were the victims of the government’s data collection efforts.

What is under debate now is whether or not they are “heroes.”  I think we are operating too much in the duality of hero or villain.  There are no heroes or villains in our society, just people who choose their own paths.  Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden did what they thought was correct.

What the people who call them heroes believe is that they did a service for the American people: they opened our eyes to wrongs they felt the American Government was perpetrating.  Manning identified actions he believed were unbecoming of the uniform he wore.  Snowden exposed the US Government’s domestic data collection practices.

The people who believe they are heroes say they have served the United States Constitution to prevent government overreaching – be it into our lives, or becoming an imperialist and despotic power that breeds terrorism, dissent, and anti-American hysteria abroad.  Perhaps that is an outdated and unsustainable pursuit, but it is still a wholly American pursuit to believe that we are private, and that we are exceptional.  We want others to leave us alone, to butt out, and to have a reason to need to know, especially the government.  For those who doubt that there is a strand of DNA that is American, it is the genetic memory of tyranny and the desire to avoid the totalitarianism of a government that takes without asking, and demands without authority, citing ipso facto logic that its means are justified by its ends which also justify its means.  That is what Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden purported to fight.

Those who believe they are more villainous believe they have weakened the United States in their fight against terrorism and the forces that seek to do harm to our citizens.  That’s a fair assertion.  With the knowledge that the government is collecting data, and not just the nebulous “data collection” charge, but the specifics about phone call duration, origin number, and receiver number, this gives those forces, which we do know exist, and are trying to harm us, a better understanding of how to subvert our attempts to gain information about their activities.

The problem I find with making Snowden and Manning out to be either heroes or villains is it loses the negative aspects of their leaks.  This does make it harder for the United States Government to track terrorist elements who would carry out another attack.  On the other hand, the United States Government is operating outside the bounds of the Constitution, and the judicial warrant process for data collection.  Inaction wasn’t holding the government to the proper standard, nor was acting by way of leaking classified data allowing for there to be Government oversight that protected the secrecy of the program. Additionally, their own reactions to the fallout their actions add another layer to consider when placing them on the “hero or villain” continuum.

There is something about Civil Disobedience that is more than just knowingly breaking a law.  If Civil Disobedience were breaking a law without consequences, I’m a regular Thoreau every time I go eighty on the freeway.  Our stories and examples of Civil Disobedience aren’t punctuated with the understanding that the disobedient citizens got away with their stand against the injustices they sought to change.  Had Rosa Parks sat in the front seat and never paid a price for it, her struggle and sacrifice wouldn’t have been as moving.  The same goes for Martin Luther King, Jr., and Gandhi.

Bradley Manning was brought to justice without a fight.  Edward Snowden is still somewhere in Russia.  Manning’s actions allow us to judge him and rule on his actions as a civilized society that can police itself, judge itself, and be its own arbiter of right and wrong, of treason and disobedience as a civic virtue.  Edward Snowden has run, and we haven’t been able to have a discussion involving him in the truest sense as a society, like we have with Bradley Manning.  That isn’t to say that our discussion has been civil or intelligent about Private Manning, but it’s been a discussion that has played itself out legally.

When instances of civil disobedience, such as these arise, we wind up the main character in a dramatic literary novel.  Even though the players are those tried and true “man vs. man/nature/himself,” the only real conflict in all of literature is man vs. himself.  These trials are about what we are comfortable with as a society – and where our priorities are – with safety, or with openness.