It Will Take a New Antiwar Movement to Free Bradley Manning

By Bill Simpich, Reader Supported News

22 August 13

radley Manning was sentenced today to 35 years. Now his case enters the political arena. His supporters all wore matching shirts for the cameras, emblazoned with a call for Obama to pardon Manning. What will it take to make that a realistic possibility?

It will take a new antiwar movement. A movement that has changed American policy and the lives of millions of its participants has fallen on hard times. Unless the movement is able to redefine itself, Manning will stay in prison. The horrors that he risked his life to halt will continue. The national security state will remain unchanged.

The passion is certainly there. As recently as 2008, it was Obama's consistent rejection of the war in Iraq that set him apart from Hillary Clinton and got him elected president. Hundreds of thousands of young and not-so-young people hurled themselves into a campaign that succeeded where the McCarthy and McGovern insurgencies failed a generation ago. That passion remains a force in American life.

However, the lack of an organized antiwar political force is the enduring tragedy of our times. It means that there is no effective entity that can hold Obama accountable for the trillion dollar defense budget that decimates human needs and any hope for economic, environmental, and spiritual renewal. This behemoth funds the garrison state of fourteen hundred US bases around the world, the continuing war in Afghanistan, and the drone attacks throughout the world.

The lack of an organized movement is caused by an old split in political forces that haunts us right up to the present day. During the Vietnam War, the strategic disagreement was between the single-issue call of "out now" versus the multi-issue call for addressing racial and economic issues as well as war. My analysis is that although the multi-issue approach won out, the vision of what it takes to build a successful social movement was lost in the scuffle. To spare the reader a litany of outrages, let it just be said that the battle has steadily devolved around far less important issues.

Meanwhile, the antiwar troops despaired of any end to the squabbling and stopped attending anyone's events. There is no longer even the annual "march against all bad things" that we used to joke about as our various formations moved together toward the local symbol of power. After all these years of organized challenge to the war machine, there is silence in the streets.

Although I am personally convinced that this splintering was caused and exacerbated by our opponents in the intelligence agencies, I can't prove it. More importantly, it doesn't matter in the short run. What matters is that we need to begin again.

Someone needs to call a meeting. With no prompting, I nominate the Bradley Manning Support Network. As they begin their work to obtain a presidential pardon, I hope they keep in mind that they can play an important role in rejuvenating an antiwar movement that can be a game-changer in human events.

This organization has raised 1.4 million dollars for the Manning defense. These individuals have been in the trenches for years and know what it takes to change the world. While they can turn out people for their actions, they also know what it takes to talk to their fellow Americans. Polls vary, but support for Manning is somewhere between 30 and 50% among Americans, and higher overseas. That's amazing for a criminal case involving an alleged "traitor" that the mainstream media has gone to great lengths to ignore.

If we can't build a powerful antiwar movement at this moment, in the midst of war fatigue and favorable social conditions, it's hard to see a way out. The importance of freeing Bradley Manning is a unifying force. With careful nurturing, it could also become a powerful guiding force.