The Cases of Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning and the Erosion of Democracy

Every now and then someone says something about America that succinctly characterizes what has happened to our country and where we are headed. Recently that someone was Daniel Ellsberg. He commented that "All Nixon's crimes against me are now legal".

As most of you will recall Daniel Ellsberg was the gentleman who gave the Pentagon Papers to the Washington Post and New York Times for publication during the Vietnam War. "The Pentagon Papers, officially titled United States – Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense, is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political-military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967." the Pentagon Papers "demonstrated, among other things, that the Johnson Administration had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress, about a subject of transcendent national interest and significance"

To keep a very long story (relatively) short "Ellsberg surrendered to authorities in Boston and admitted that he had given the papers to the press. He was later indicted on charges of stealing and holding secret documents by a grand jury in Los Angeles. Federal District Judge Byrne declared a mistrial and dismissed all charges against Ellsberg [and Russo] on May 11, 1973, after several irregularities appeared in the government's case, including its claim that it had lost records of illegal wiretapping against Ellsberg conducted by the White House Plumbers in the contemporaneous Watergate scandal. Byrne ruled: "The totality of the circumstances of this case which I have only briefly sketched offend a sense of justice. The bizarre events have incurably infected the prosecution of this case."

Now consider, if this case had been tried under current laws, what would the outcome have been? Simple, like Ellsberg said, "All Nixon's crimes against me are now legal". That simple comment is astounding if you think about it. Ellsberg would have been found guilty of treason and probably imprisoned for the rest of his life.

Now, for comparison purposes consider the status of Bradley Manning to what happened to Ellsberg. Manning is being held incommunicado in solitary confinement without trial for releasing information that DIDN'T compromised US strategy (because there is none) nor did it compromise the safety of US troops overseas. When you break it down the ONLY thing he did was embarrass the military.

The obvious difference between Ellsburg and Manning was that Ellesburg was a civilian and Manning is a soldier. But when you compare the political impact of the Pentagon Papers to the information Manning released there is no comparison. Yet Manning remains in prison. Why? The answer is simple, because they CAN; and the reason they can is because despite EVERYTHING that has happened from 2000 on, the American public remains largely uninterested in the real crimes of the US Government (and for all my conservative critics, I'm also including the Obama Administration of breaking the law).

I could forever analyze why most don't care but I think it boils down to the perception of not having any "skin in the game". During Vietnam one big reason so many people hated the war was because any young male between 18 and 25 could be drafted to fight it. Cases like Ellsberg's provided the damning evidence that was needed to stop the draft and get us out of there. Consequently the public watched what happened to him with critical interest. However, since there is no large scale perceived gain (like not getting drafted) to getting Manning out of prison, he ends up rotting there. Sure there is concern, but not the personal kind of concern that make people pick up protest signs and placards by the millions. The Bush/Cheney neocon reptiles were clever enough to recognize this peculiarity in our national character and made sure they never started a draft. Hence all the "stop loss" orders to keep our "volunteer" military in Iraq and Afghanistan for years.

So what has this got to do with democracy? Everything. We appear to have lost the belief that we have skin in the game when if fact we do. During the Vietnam era, no one would have tolerated keeping a man locked up for no good reason ESPECIALLY by the military. Nowadays, few seem to care. Is it so hard to envision then, in a couple of of decades all the laws and rights that currently protect us from our government being swept away because people choose to believe it won't affect them?

http://www.juancole.com/2011/06/ellsberg-all-nixons-crimes-against-me-now-legal....