Organize in the U.S. and Abroad to
Free PFC Bradley Manning NOW!
Bradley Manning, a Private First Class (PFC) in the U.S. military, faces a possible 52 years in federal prison for deeply embarrassing the State Department publicly and exposing the indifference of the U.S. high command to U.S. war crimes. Civilian Defense Department experts have stated and reiterated that national security was not compromised in any way by the leaked diplomatic cables and war crime footage PFC Manning is alleged to have disclosed. However, Manning seems doomed to serve this time for what is alleged to be a crime: damaging national security from the specific political perspective of Secretary of Defense Gates and the praetorian guards of Capital.
To begin with, if Bradley Manning is charged by the “Article 32” hearing (of the Unified Code of Military Justice), he will most likely be totally doomed by the “trick bag” he faces in a Court Martial. Here, regulations will have more weight than laws, and hierarchical considerations will outweigh what would be rules of evidence in a civilian case. Gates has spoken and he is the boss. Manning is doomed by the quest for fame of a publicity-seeking hacker, Adrian Lamo, who reportedly claimed he was a Christian minister (Reverend) and would respect Manning’s anonymity in accordance with the privilege of Sacramental Confession. Lamo reportedly went on to claim that he was a journalist and told Manning his identity would be protected under the California Shield Law. Apparently, according to Lamo, it was his “conscience” that told him to set the 22-year-old Bradley up for an F.B.I trap. Sure it was.
Bradley Manning’s situation is by no means hopeless if a movement in his defense is built on an objectively necessary basis. A movement that is not limited to the capitalist borders of the United States, but is internationalist in scope and linked to world events, such as the present inter-imperialist collisions with China. In other words, a campaign that challenges the both U.S. capitalist rule at home, and its predatory imperialist ambitions abroad. But instead, a dead-ended, reformist fundraising effort for a purely legalistic defense of PFC Manning has been organized by pro-Obama ineffectuals. Dead-ended, because their overriding allegiance is to liberal constitutionalist bourgeois rule, following the example of Daniel Ellsberg. The name recognition of these big shot ineffectuals derives from the “the Great Society” era, when they went “Part of the way with LBJ.”
Humanist Workers for Revolutionary Socialism is a Marxist workers’ organization. From our perspective, Obama will not lift a finger for Bradley Manning or any other antiwar G.I. We must repeat again and again the truth that Obama has never been an antiwar candidate. He is a “war president” as much as Johnson, or Nixon or Bush Sr./Jr., even as he pretends to wind up the two active fronts in the “war on terror.” Iraq and Afghanistan will now the locations for new puppet state bases that can provide logistical support, and direct U.S. forces in future proxy wars – including all-out war with rapidly expanding Chinese imperialism! At some point, Obama will simply make a deal with some of the leaders of the forces now opposing U.S. troops in the field for what they believe to be their own reasons. Then he will declare the Taliban defeated, “Al Qaeda” defeated, and so forth, just as Bush declared “mission accomplished.” The mission will be Chinese containment and/or containment of China’s allies.
We fight all imperialisms, the spawn of the capitalist system, which is now in its death throes, even as China, a former deformed workers’ state, now heads for its number one place in the imperialist sun. We see our main enemy, the declining U.S. capitalist class, taking increasingly desperate diplomatic and military steps to contain Chinese commercial and military ambitions, such as the “string of pearls,” China’s overseas naval/military bases. Obama and his entire spectrum of supporters either hope that you ignore the true facts behind the increasingly sharp inter-imperialist collisions, or that you begin to fall into line with the patriotic war-mongering American chauvinism which is beginning to rear its ugly head.
We repeat once again the words of Karl Marx, that the working class has no fatherland. We see another program, other tasks, for the draftees of the U.S. military, for ourselves, and for the whole labor movement, made aware of the revolutionary role history has reserved for us! Freeing Bradley Manning and defeating the imperialists’ drive for wider and larger wars require militant, mass labor actions. Resolutions of Labor Councils are clearly not enough, and neither will pacifist demonstrations compel the military beast to drop all charges, exonerate and free antiwar G.I.s. We call for explicit walkouts and strikes!
- For military and diplomatic defeat of U.S. imperialist war aims, overt and covert! Free Bradley Manning! Demand his exoneration and honorable discharge! For Teamster, Longshore, Transportation (rail), Machinist (airline) and military walkouts and strikes for freedom for Bradley Manning and all class war prisoners!
- For an Enlisted Servicepersons Union, such as the Armed Forces Union-COSATU of South Africa. For mass G.I. meetings to discuss legal and illegal orders and war crimes!
- For a “Troops Out!” movement, with full AFL-CIO endorsement and support. For a fighting Labor Party, based on renewed militant unions, controlled by the rank and file, and linked to the organizations of the oppressed.
- For the survival of humanity and all life from the avoidable environmental disasters capitalism has in store for us in its death agony! Nature cries out to us: hear its pleas! For a mighty Fourth International, World Party of Socialist Revolution, refounded and rededicated to its original programme, principles and statutes!
- Let’s outlive this murderous system. Make a start by freeing PFC Bradley Manning!