Re: Should Bradley Manning aka the Shit Starter Recieve the Death Penalty?
death? no.
forced to work on a farm or factory in rural China for the rest of his life? maybe.
Interesting one -- except the Chinese government would drain him of everything else he knows.
Instead, I'm sure there's an Army base in the U.S. that could use someone to do janitorial work for twenty years or so.
So, what are we going to do now that we know Karzai isn't an effective leader? Run from Afghanistan and leave a weak government there? We can't. We have to leave Afghanistan in a position where it can uphold law and order. Right now it can't.
That depends on what you mean by "law and order". If you mean like in Amsterdam or Helsinki or Madrid, you're right.
But they could manage a sort of monarchy with a Parliament of warlords and city mayors -- maybe two houses in their parliament, just like that. The first step toward stability is to assure the PTBs they're not going to lose out, and put into place something that can slowly transition. A Republic of warlords and mayors would be better than a corrupt central system ready to disintegrate back into nothing if coalition forces leave.
It's a solution that could be put in place in just months, a Republic where all local offices are elected -- and mayors, I would presume. We could leave perhaps an air base to provide support, but turn the rest over to them.
And make it clear that if they let the Taliban take over again, we won't be as nice next time.
That's the thing. Manning didn't want to blow a whistle. He just wanted to steal as much information as possible, and give it to whoever he could. Whether it was because he hated his country or just wanted to make a name for himself (I'm leaning on the latter), he didn't actually show any care whatsoever for what he stole. (if he had just stolen the data concerning Iraq and afghanistan, and specific data instead of the mass that he did steal, this would have been a whole different story)
He grabbed too much data to be selective -- which says he didn't care.
It's a different code one lives by when you put on that uniform to serve your country.
That's important to remember.
But Manning had no idea what was in the vast majority of stuff he handed over to Wikileaks. No one human could have waded through all that info in a lifetime.
That's his real condemnation: he didn't care. He didn't care enough to look through it, didn't care if any of his fellow service folks were put at risk, didn't care if the cause of freedom was set back here and/or there, didn't care about what might hurt his country.
But there's no death penalty material there. The death penalty belongs in two places only: at the hands in the intended victim in the course of defending himself, and with mass or serial murderers when a panel of psychologists and psychiatrists say the person can't be changed.
So... no.
why would she execute anyone like that? 
