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Comment by duaneb | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure if either of them deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, but I believe Manning's sentence is reasonable. I'd like to shake his hand, buy him a beer, thank him personally, but it's a decision he made that has severe consequences for a reason. And while I don't like Snowden at all, I think his actions are much more justifiable from an ethical point of view. It's not like terrorists were unaware the NSA was spying before they had proof—the only people being blindfolded were citizens. Manning's actions were more complex and the ramifications were less straightforwardly positive.

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So by your standard, Martin Luther King Jr. should be getting out of prison just about now?

Manning was a whistlerblower, just like Snowden, with less power and ability for flight to defend themselves.

There was no personal gain ever intended or achieved, yet great personal loss even in the best outcome. They saw something very wrong happening and had little to no way to say "hey there are some incredibly powerful forces in this country doing some very evil things".

The problem is we only treat whistleblowers like traitors legally and Manning's "trial" was a complete scam, zero media coverage allowed on purpose by the government so they could be railroaded.

It's not even clear Manning is a whistleblower—what the hell did he blow a whistle on? It's not like any widespread scandal, corruption, or conspiracy was revealed.

I believe this was where it started http://www.collateralmurder.com

Yeah, I was under the impression that he leaked information on the slaughter of civilians in the Middle East by soldiers/mercenaries. My familiarity is clearly cursory.

Along with a ton of other stuff that wasn't germane to that incident. Manning's big issue was that they released a bunch of classified material without much regard for what it said. It was very broad in scope. Had it been a narrow subset of the data, Manning would have had a better chance of being considered a whistleblower.

OK, that is what I had heard.

I don't purport to be an expert on either of these cases, but my impression as a casual observer was that Mannings leak was just a massive dump of classified documents without any attempt to be selective about which information needed to come to light.

Any sizable dump of classified documents is likely to have some damning pieces in there but that doesn't necessarily justify blindly leaking massive amounts of documents. I think Manning would have gotten a more favorable response by more people if he had been just a bit selective in what he leaked.

Again, I don't have deep knowledge on either of these cases compared to some around here so I'll concede that maybe I'm wrong on some of my facts...?

Let's not compare Martin Luther King Jr. to Snowden and Manning.

"I'd like to shake his [sic] hand, buy him [sic] a beer, thank him [sic] personally", "but I believe Manning's sentence [of 35 years in prison] is reasonable". My jaw dropped to the floor. Assuming that you want to thank her for doing that thing that landed her in prison, there is nothing you can say that can reconcile those two statements for me.

Are they contradictory? There are plenty of criminals I like personally who deserve to serve time for breaking the law.

EDIT: I wouldn't conflate ignorance of her gender and disrespect, it's not anything I've ever heard.

You miss the point. Pfc. Manning now identifies as Chelsea Manning. She is transgendered, and since her military career is toast she has come out of the closet on the subject.

I'm going to be generous and assume that duaneb poster was not closely following the story and is unaware of the above.

Transpersons are always the subject of massive flamewars online, so some folks get really strong kneejerk reactions to misgendering.

I think efbee was responding to "I think what they did was right but also they deserve a 35 year sentence" as the two irreconcilable statements. Misgendering is an important point as well, but it's not what makes the statements contradictory.

I was not aware of Manning's being transgendered, and I don't mean any disrespect—consider it an editorial he given my assumption of gender from sex (I can't edit).

I doubt it was malicious. I read about it right when she made her choice public, and I still forget regularly. I'm just not used to people changing gender, so my mental constructs treat it as kind of a read-only value...

So you're saying you like Manning personally, but not for her 'criminal' actions? What about her makes you want to 'shake [her] hand' and 'buy [her] a beer' then?

Legal actions and actions I approve of are not mutually exclusive.

You approve of an action that happens to be illegal, and think people who take that action deserve prison time? I don't follow. If a person's actions are noble in my estimation, I wouldn't wish punishment upon them for their actions.

There are thousands of people in government and the military who broke the law and defended their actions because they believed them to be morally justifiable. Surely those people should have a similar sentence to Manning?

Yes.

It's going to be tough to buy (him) a beer.

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