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Is Chelsea Manning a Hero?

While doing the reading for chapter 3 and seeing that the authors were discussing the Espionage Act of 1917, it reminded me of an event that is fairly recent. Chelsea Manning was once an intelligence analyst for the United States army. When she was 22 and still serving in the military, Chelsea leaked about 750,000 classified documents to WikiLeaks, these documents were believed to be important for the American public to know according to Chelsea. In an interview with the Washington Post she said, "You're getting all this information and it's just death, destruction, and mayhem. And eventually, you just stop. I stopped seeing statistics and information, and I started seeing people(Seik).

The Espionage Act is associated with the sabotage and protecting of military secrets, along with making it illegal to promote resistance against the draft (Tedford & Herbeck, 45). The classified documents that Manning leaked showed a dark of the military that caused many to revolt, some were about military prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and the mocking of several deaths even those of American Journalists in Baghdad. These examples are just some of the few things kept a secret from the American public, Manning saw them to be horrible acts committed by people we consider heroes. Committing such behaviors as Manning did could result in being sentenced to 35 years in prison, but in her case the documents leaked were so important that she ALMOST got sentenced to death.

Luckily for her former President Obama, just days before he stepped down from office, cut her sentence from 35 years to just 7. His reasoning? He said, "Chelsea Manning has served a tough prison sentence. She took responsibility for her crime." (Seik) Chelsea's sentencing was very difficult like when they made her sleep naked several nights or when they took her rights as a trans women away, she tried to commit suicide twice. The severity of her crimes were high as we can see, but did her actions come from a place of bad intentions?

Citations:
Shubailat, Nadine "Chelsea Manning released, tells ABC News exclusively the past 'is only my starting point, not my destination'." ABC News, 17 May, 2017 http://abcnews.go.com/US/chelsea-manning-posts-photo-revealing-woman/story?id=47490580

Seik, Avi "Chelsea Manning denies betraying the U.S., feels as if she lives in a 'dystopian novel'." The Washington Post, 18 September, 2017 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/09/18/chelsea-manning-denies-betraying-the-u-s-feels-like-she-lives-in-a-dystopian-novel/?utm_term=.1a6b2d2b519c

Tedford, Thomas L.., and Dale A. Herbeck. Freedom of Speach in the United States. Starts Publishing, Inc, 2017.

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