Author: Norman Solomon

The British Parliament’s rejection of an attack on Syria is a direct contrast – and implicit challenge – to the political war system of the United States.

"It is clear to me that the British Parliament, reflecting the views of the British people, does not want to see British military action. I get that, and the government will act accordingly," Prime Minister David Cameron said Thursday night. At least for now, Uncle Sam’s poodle is off the leash.

Now all eyes turn to Congress, where the bar has suddenly been raised. Can the House of Representatives measure up to the House of Commons?

It’s a crucial question – but President Obama intends to render it moot with unwavering contempt for the war authority of Congress. Like his predecessors.

Even with war votes on Capitol Hill, the charade quotient has been high. The Gulf War began in early 1991 after the Senate vote for war was close: 52 to 47. But, as the PBS "Frontline" program reported years later, President George H.W. Bush had a plan in place: if Congress voted against going to war, he’d ignore Congress.

Continue reading “While Cameron Defers to Parliament, Obama Locks into Warfare State of Mind”

Without whistleblowers, the mainline media outlets are more transfixed than ever with telling the official story. And at a time like this, the official story is all about spinning for war on Syria.

Every president who wants to launch another war can’t abide whistleblowers. They might interfere with the careful omissions, distortions and outright lies of war propaganda, which requires that truth be held in a kind of preventative detention.

By mid-week, media adrenalin was at fever pitch as news reports cited high-level sources explaining when the U.S. missile attacks on Syria were likely to begin, how long they might last, what their goals would be. But what about other (potential) sources who have documents and other information that contradict the official story?

It’s never easy for whistleblowers to take the risk of exposing secret realities. At times like these, it’s especially difficult – and especially vital – for whistleblowers to take the chance.

When independent journalist I.F. Stone said "All governments lie and nothing they say should be believed," he was warning against the automatic acceptance of any government claim. That warning becomes most crucial when a launch of war is imminent. That’s when, more than ever, we need whistleblowers who can leak information that refutes the official line.

There has been a pernicious method to the madness of the Obama administration’s double-barreled assault on whistleblowers and journalism. Committed to a state of ongoing war, Obama has overseen more prosecutions of whistleblowers than all other presidents combined – while also subjecting journalists to ramped-up surveillance and threats, whether grabbing the call records of 20 telephone lines of The Associated Press or pushing to imprisonNew York Times reporter James Risen for not revealing a source.

The vengeful treatment of Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning, the all-out effort to grab Edward Snowden and less-publicized prosecutions such as the vendetta against NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake are all part of a government strategy that aims to shut down unauthorized pipelines of information to journalists – and therefore to the public. When secret information is blocked, what’s left is the official story, pulling out all the stops for war.

From the false Tonkin Gulf narrative in 1964 that boosted the Vietnam War to the fabricated baby-incubators-in-Kuwait tale in 1990 that helped launch the Gulf War to the reports of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction early in this century, countless deaths and unfathomable suffering have resulted from the failure of potential whistleblowers to step forward in a timely and forthright way – and the failure of journalists to challenge falsehoods in high government places.

There are no "good old days" to point to, no eras when an abundance of whistleblowers and gutsy reporters thoroughly alerted the public and subdued the power of Washington’s war-makers. But we’re now living in a notably – and tragically – fearful era. Potential whistleblowers have more reason to be frightened than ever, and mainline journalists rarely seem willing to challenge addiction to war.

Every time a president has decided to go to war against yet another country, the momentum has been unstoppable. Today, the craven foreshadow the dead. The key problems, as usual, revolve around undue deference to authority – obedience in the interests of expediency – resulting in a huge loss of lives and a tremendous waste of resources that should be going to sustain human life instead of destroying it.

With war at the top of Washington’s agenda, this is a time to make our voices heard. (To email your senators and representative, expressing opposition to an attack on Syria, click here.) A loud and sustained outcry against the war momentum is essential – and so is support for whistleblowers.

As a practical matter, real journalism can’t function without whistleblowers. Democracy can’t function without real journalism. And we can’t stop the warfare state without democracy. In the long run, the struggles for peace and democracy are one and the same.

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books includeWar Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.

As commander in chief, you’ve been responsible for the treatment of the most
high-profile whistleblower in the history of the U.S. armed forces. Under your
command, the United States military tried – and failed – to crush the spirit
of Bradley Manning.

Your failure became evident after the sentencing on Wednesday, when a statement
from Bradley Manning was read aloud to the world. The statement began: "The
decisions that I made in 2010 were made out of a concern for my country and
the world that we live in. Since the tragic events of 9/11, our country has
been at war. We’ve been at war with an enemy that chooses not to meet us on
any traditional battlefield, and due to this fact we’ve had to alter our methods
of combating the risks posed to us and our way of life. I initially agreed with
these methods and chose to volunteer to help defend my country."

From the outset, your administration set out to destroy Bradley Manning. As
his biographer Chase Madar wrote
in The Nation, "Upon his arrest in May 2010, he was locked up in
punitive isolation for two months in Iraq and Kuwait, then nine more months
at the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Virginia. Prohibited from lying down during
the day or exercising, he was forced to respond every five of his waking minutes
to a guard’s question: ‘Are you OK?’ In his final weeks of isolation, Manning
was deprived of all clothing beyond a tear-proof smock and forced to stand at
attention every night in the nude."

More than nine months after Manning’s arrest, at a news conference you defended
this treatment – which the State Department’s chief spokesman, P.J. Crowley,
had just lambasted as "ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid."
(Crowley swiftly lost his job.) Later, the UN special rapporteur on torture
issued a report on the treatment of Manning: "at a minimum cruel, inhuman
and degrading."

At a fundraiser on April 21, 2011, when asked about Manning, you flatly said:
"He broke the law." His trial would not begin for two more years.

Bradley Manning’s statement after sentencing on Wednesday said: "It
was not until I was in Iraq and reading secret military reports on a daily basis
that I started to question the morality of what we were doing. It was at this
time I realized that (in) our efforts to meet the risk posed to us by the enemy,
we have forgotten our humanity. We consciously elected to devalue human life
both in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we engaged those that we perceived were the
enemy, we sometimes killed innocent civilians. Whenever we killed innocent civilians,
instead of accepting responsibility for our conduct, we elected to hide behind
the veil of national security and classified information in order to avoid any
public accountability."

Public accountability is essential to democracy. We can’t have meaningful "consent
of the governed" without informed consent. We can’t have moral responsibility
without challenging official hypocrisies and atrocities.

Bradley Manning clearly understood that. He didn’t just follow orders or turn
his head at the sight of unconscionable policies of the U.S. government. Finding
himself in a situation where he could shatter the numbed complacency that is
the foundation of war, he cared – and he took action as a whistleblower.

After being sentenced to many years in prison, Manning conveyed to the American
public an acute understanding of our present historic moment: "In our
zeal to kill the enemy, we internally debated the definition of torture. We
held individuals at Guantanamo for years without due process. We inexplicably
turned a blind eye to torture and executions by the Iraqi government. And we
stomached countless other acts in the name of our war on terror.

"Patriotism is often the cry extolled when morally questionable acts
are advocated by those in power. When these cries of patriotism drown out any
logically based dissension, it is usually the American soldier that is given
the order to carry out some ill-conceived mission."

Clearly, Mr. President, you have sought to make an example of Bradley Manning
with categorical condemnation and harsh punishment. You seem not to grasp that
he has indeed become an example – an inspiring example of stellar courage and
idealism, which millions of Americans now want to emulate.

From the White House, we continue to get puffed-up sugar-coated versions of
history, past and present. In sharp contrast, Bradley Manning offers profound
insights in his post-sentencing statement: "Our nation has had similar
dark moments for the virtues of democracy – the Trail of Tears, the Dred Scott
decision, McCarthyism, and the Japanese-American internment camps – to mention
a few. I am confident that many of the actions since 9/11 will one day be viewed
in a similar light. As the late Howard Zinn once said, ‘There is not a flag
large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.’"

Imagine. After more than three years in prison, undergoing methodical abuse
and then the ordeal of a long military trial followed by the pronouncement of
a 35-year prison sentence, Bradley Manning has emerged with his solid humanistic
voice not only intact, but actually stronger than ever!

He acknowledged, "I understand that my actions violated the law; I
regret if my actions hurt anyone or harmed the United States. It was never my
intent to hurt anyone. I only wanted to help people. When I chose to disclose
classified information, I did so out of a love for my country and a sense of
duty to others."

And then Bradley Manning concluded his statement
by addressing you directly as president of the United States: "If you
deny my request for a pardon, I will serve my time knowing that sometimes you
have to pay a heavy price to live in a free society. I will gladly pay that
price if it means we could have a country that is truly conceived in liberty
and dedicated to the proposition that all women and men are created equal."

You failed to break the spirit of Bradley Manning. And that spirit will continue
to inspire.

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of
the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include War
Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.

In Oslo, the world’s most important peace prize has been hijacked for war.

In London, government authority has just fired a new shot at freedom of the press.

And in Washington, the Obama administration continues to escalate its attacks on whistleblowers, journalism and civil liberties.

As a nation at peace becomes a fading memory, so does privacy. Commitments to idealism – seeking real alternatives to war and upholding democratic values – are under constant assault from the peaks of power.

Normalizing endless war and shameless surveillance, Uncle Sam and Big Brother are no longer just close. They’re the same, with a vast global reach.

Last week, I met with the Research Director of the Nobel Committee at its headquarters in Oslo. We sat at one end of a long polished conference table, next to boxes of petitions signed by 100,000 people urging that the Nobel Peace Prize go to Bradley Manning.

The Nobel official, Asle Toje, remained polite but frosty when I urged – as I had two hours earlier at a news conference – that the Nobel Committee show independence from the U.S. government by awarding the Peace Prize to Manning. Four years after the prize went to President Obama, his leadership for perpetual war is incontrovertible – while Manning’s brave whistleblowing for peace is inspiring.

In recent times, I pointed out, the Nobel Peace Prize has gone to some dissenters who were anathema to their governments’ leaders – but not to any recipient who profoundly displeased the U.S. government. Toje responded by mentioning Martin Luther King Jr., a rejoinder that struck me as odd; King received the prize 49 years ago, and more than two years passed after then until, in April 1967, he angered the White House with his first full-throated denunciation of the Vietnam War.

I motioned to the stacks of the petition, which has included personal comments from tens of thousands of signers – reflecting deep distrust of the present-day Nobel Peace Prize, especially after Obama won it in 2009 while massively escalating the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan.

We were in the grand and ornate building that has housed the Nobel Committee for more than a hundred years. Outside, a bust of Alfred Nobel graces the front entrance, and just across a small traffic circle is the U.S. Embassy, an imposing dark gray presence with several stories, hundreds of windows on each of its three sides and plenty of electronic gear on its roof. (That intersection is widely understood to be a base for American surveillance operations.) More than ever in recent years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee building’s physical proximity to the U.S. Embassy is an apt metaphor for its political alignment.

Over the weekend, the British government showed more toxic aspects of its "special relationship" with the U.S. government. As the Guardianreported, "The partner of the Guardian journalist who has written a series of stories revealing mass surveillance programs by the U.S. National Security Agency was held for almost nine hours on Sunday by UK authorities as he passed through London’s Heathrow Airport on his way home to Rio de Janeiro." David Miranda, who lives with Glenn Greenwald, "was held for nine hours, the maximum the law allows before officers must release or formally arrest the individual. … Miranda was released, but officials confiscated electronics equipment including his mobile phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and game consoles."

Assaulting press freedom is part of a comprehensive agenda that President Obama is now pursuing more flagrantly than ever. From seizing phone records of AP reporters to spying on a Fox News reporter to successfully fighting for a federal court decision to compel reporter James Risen to reveal his source for a New York Times story, Obama’s war on journalism is serving executive impunity – for surveillance that fundamentally violates the Fourth Amendment and for perpetual war that, by force of arms and force of example, pushes the world into further bloody chaos.

The destructive effects of these policies are countless. And along the way, for the Nobel Committee, more than ever, war is peace. Across the globe, aligned with and/or intimidated by official Washington, many governments are enablers of an American warfare/surveillance multinational state. And in Washington, at the top of the government, when it comes to civil liberties and war and so much more, the moral compass has gone due south.

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books includeWar Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.

The headquarters of the Nobel Committee is in downtown Oslo on a street named after Henrik Ibsen, whose play "An Enemy of the People" has remained as current as dawn light falling on the Nobel building and then, hours later, on a Fort Meade courtroom where Bradley Manning’s trial enters a new stage – defense testimony in the sentencing phase.

Ibsen’s play tells of mendacity and greed in high places: dangerous threats to public health. You might call the protagonist a whistleblower. He’s a physician who can’t pretend that he hasn’t seen evidence; he rejects all the pleas and threats to stay quiet, to keep secret what the public has a right to know. He could be content to take an easy way, to let others suffer and die. But he refuses to just follow orders. He will save lives. There will be some dire consequences for him.

The respectable authorities know when they’ve had enough. Thought crimes can be trivial but are apt to become intolerable if they lead to active transgressions. In the last act, our hero recounts: "They insulted me and called me an enemy of the people." Ostracized and condemned, he offers final defiant words before the curtain comes down: "I have made a great discovery. … It is this, let me tell you – that the strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone."

Alone Bradley Manning will stand as a military judge proclaims a prison sentence.

As I write these words early Monday, sky is starting to lighten over Oslo. This afternoon I’ll carry several thousand pages of a petition – filled with the names of more than 100,000 signers, along with individual comments from tens of thousands of them – to an appointment with the Research Director of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. The petition urges that Bradley Manning be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Like so many other people, the signers share the belief of Nobel Peace laureate Mairead Corrigan-Maguire who wrote this summer: "I can think of no one more deserving."

Opening heart and mind to moral responsibility – seeing an opportunity to provide the crucial fuel of information for democracy and compassion – Bradley Manning lifted a shroud and illuminated terrible actions of the USA’s warfare state. He chose courage on behalf of humanity. He refused to just follow orders.

"If there’s one thing to learn from the last ten years, it’s that government secrecy and lies come at a very high price in blood and money," Bradley Manning biographer Chase Madar wrote. "And though information is powerless on its own, it is still a necessary precondition for any democratic state to function."

Bradley Manning recognized that necessary precondition. He took profound action to nurture its possibilities on behalf of democracy and peace.

No doubt a Nobel Peace Prize for Bradley Manning is a very long longshot. After all, four years ago, the Nobel Committee gave that award to President Obama, while he was escalating the war in Afghanistan, and since then Obama’s dedication to perpetual war has become ever more clear.

Now, the Nobel Committee and its Peace Prize are in dire need of rehabilitation. In truth, the Nobel Peace Prize needs Bradley Manning much more than the other way around.

No one can doubt the sincere dedication of Bradley Manning to human rights and peace. But on Henrik Ibsen Street in Oslo, the office of the Nobel Committee is under a war cloud of its own making.

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books includeWar Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.

Why have Edward Snowden’s actions resonated so powerfully for so many people?

The huge political impacts of the leaked NSA documents account for just part of the explanation. Snowden’s choice was ultimately personal. He decided to take big risks on behalf of big truths; he showed how easy and hazardous such a step can be. He blew the whistle not only on the NSA’s Big Brother surveillance but also on the fear, constantly in our midst, that routinely induces conformity.

Like Bradley Manning and other whistleblowers before him, Snowden has massively undermined the standard rationales for obedience to illegitimate authority. Few of us may be in a position to have such enormous impacts by opting for courage over fear and truth over secrecy—but we know that we could be doing more, taking more risks for good reasons—if only we were willing, if only fear of reprisals and other consequences didn’t clear the way for the bandwagon of the military-industrial-surveillance state.

Near the end of Franz Kafka’s The Trial, the man in a parable spends many years sitting outside an open door till, near death, after becoming too weak to possibly enter, he’s told by the doorkeeper: “Nobody else could have got in this way, as this entrance was meant only for you. Now I’ll go and close it.”

That’s what Martin Luther King Jr. was driving at when he said, in his first high-risk speech denouncing the Vietnam War: “In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity.”

Edward Snowden was not too late. He refused to allow opportunity to be lost. He walked through the entrance meant only for him.

When people say “I am Bradley Manning,” or “I am Edward Snowden,” it can be more than an expression of solidarity. It can also be a statement of aspiration—to take ideals for democracy more seriously and to act on them with more courage.

The artist Robert Shetterly has combined his compelling new portrait of Edward Snowden with words from Snowden that are at the heart of what’s at stake: “The public needs to know the kinds of things a government does in its name, or the ‘consent of the governed’ is meaningless. . . The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed.” Like the painting of Snowden, the quote conveys a deep mix of idealism, vulnerability and determination.

Edward Snowden has taken idealism seriously enough to risk the rest of his life, a choice that is to his eternal credit and to the world’s vast benefit. His decision to resist any and all cynicism is gripping and unsettling. It tells us, personally and politically, to raise our standards, lift our eyes and go higher into our better possibilities.