I’m excited about Chelsea Manning’s Senate campaign. Manning, a former soldier who leaked information about U.S. military attacks on civilians and top-secret diplomatic cables, among other information, to Wikileaks, was released from prison last May. To enter politics less than a year later is courageous. Manning was convicted of violating the Espionage Act for the leaks and sentenced to 35 years in prison. Her imprisonment was condemned by human rights groups such as Amnesty International, which noted in a 2014 statement that “[b]y disseminating classified information via Wikileaks she revealed to the world abuses perpetrated by the US army, military contractors and Iraqi and Afghan troops operating alongside US forces… [n]otable amongst the information revealed by Private Manning was previously unseen footage of journalists and other civilians being killed in US helicopter attacks.” On January 17 of last year, Manning’s sentence was commuted by president Obama.
Manning’s bravery in blowing the whistle on human rights abuses and enduring subsequent imprisonment, including “three years in pre-trial detention, including 11 months in conditions which the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture described as cruel and inhumane,” according to the statement by Amnesty International, is quite sufficient. But Manning also exhibited bravery by coming out as a transgender woman in a 2013 public statement immediately following her conviction in court. Since her release, Manning has become a symbol of pride for the LGBTQ community.
In a column for The Guardian published last January, Manning argued that the key lesson from the Obama presidency was that progressives should never “start off with a compromise.” Citing conservative resistance to all elements of Obama’s progressive program, Manning concluded, “[o]ur opponents will not support us nor will they stop thwarting the march toward a just system that gives people a fighting chance to live.” She also added that it was time “to actually take the reins of government and fix our institutions.” Now Manning is setting out to do just that.
On January 14, Manning published a video on YouTube declaring her candidacy for U.S. Senate as a Democrat, challenging incumbent Ben Cardin in the Maryland Democratic primary on June 26. In the video, Manning maintains a no compromise stance:
We need to stop asking them to give us our rights.
They won’t support us.
They won’t compromise.
We need to stop expecting that our systems will somehow fix themselves.
We need to actually take the reins of power from them.(as transcribed in the YouTube video description)
One reason I’m excited for Manning’s Senate run is because we badly need more elected representatives who care about protecting civilians and supporting human rights. A senator Chelsea Manning would be a powerful advocate for the principles of justice and human rights in Trump’s retrograde America. But theoretical and political traps lie in waiting. Manning’s commitment to take on the U.S. military is necessary, but what will her position be on human rights abuses and civilian killings committed by other countries?
What Manning’s approach to Syria will be is a key question. I focus on Syria in part because of the magnitude of the crisis. From March 2011 to March 2017, over 200,000 civilians were killed in the country, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights. The Syrian government is responsible for 94% of civilian deaths during that time, utilizing barrel bombs, chemical attacks, and starvation sieges, among other weapons and methods of killing. Syrian civil society and medical relief organizations have repeatedly called for action from the international community, including military action if necessary, to stop the bloodshed (sources: 1, 2, 3). There has been no global response even remotely sufficient. Since 2013, 400,000 people in the Eastern Ghouta area outside of Damascus, which is rebel-controlled, have been under siege by the Syrian government’s military. Both Eastern Ghouta and the province of Idlib were declared “de-escalation zones” in a deal between Russia, Iran, and Turkey, and agreed to by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. But on January 14, the White Helmets, a medical rescue group, reported that 177 civilians had been killed in Eastern Ghouta since December 29, when Syrian and Russian military forces began a campaign to retake the area. The Syrian regime has also begun an offensive to retake the province of Idlib, where 2.6 million people live. Mustafa al-Haj Youssef, of the White Helmets in Idlib, said “[t]he bombing is constant. It’s not daily but hourly, on the whole region, and it seems to be completely random.”
I also focus on Syria because I have little doubt that Manning will take the right stance on crises in places like Palestine and Yemen, where the U.S. is directly complicit in perpetrating human rights abuses through support for Israel and Saudi Arabia. However, with the U.S. at the center of analysis, others on the left have come up short in demonstrating solidarity with Syrian revolutionaries and civilians under attack. Academic and journalist Danny Postel argues that
[t]he Left’s responses fall into three main categories:
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explicit support for the Assad regime
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monochrome opposition to Western intervention, end of discussion (with either implicit or explicit neutrality on the conflict itself)
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general silence caused by deep confusion
It’s likely that many of Manning’s supporters in the U.S. fall into one of these three categories. Postel writes that the second position listed “represents an (ironically) Eurocentric/US-centric stance (it’s all about the West, not the Syrian people) — a total abandonment of internationalism.”
Manning can avoid falling into the same trap by putting solidarity first and echoing the demands of Syrian activists. One imperative is stopping Syrian and Russian government attacks on civilians from the air. By taking up this issue, Manning could help stop atrocities like Collateral Murder (committed by the U.S. in Iraq) from continuing to happen in Syria (committed by the Assad government and Russia). As a whistleblower, Manning brought to light civilian casualties and other abuses of human rights. As a candidate for office, she can call for measures to prevent these atrocities from happening.
Chelsea Manning’s Twitter bio reads, in part,
Network Security Expert. Fmr. Intel Analyst. Former Prisoner. Trans Woman. Make powerful people angry.
She should add Assad and Putin to that long list of powerful people who she makes angry.
A few resources on Syria:
The Politics Column 