Andrew J. Bacevich - Are Manning and Snowden patriots? That depends on what we do next.”

Andrew J. Bacevich lays out important insight and question in “Are Manning and Snowden patriots? That depends on what we do next.”

“ . . . By taking technology that the state employs to manufacture secrets and using it to make state secrecy Iran’s nuclear program. Forget the rise of China. Manning and Snowden confront Washington with something far more worrisome. They threaten the power the state had carefully accrued amid recurring wars and the incessant preparation for war. In effect, they place in jeopardy the state’s very authority — while inviting the American people to consider the possibility that less militaristic and more democratic approaches to national security might exist.

impossible, they put the machine itself at risk. Forget al-Qaeda. Forget

In the eyes of the state, Manning and Snowden — and others who may carry on their work — can never be other than traitors. Whether the country eventually views them as patriots depends on what Americans do with the opportunity these two men have handed us.”

Pentagon Papers Leaker Daniel Ellsberg Praises Snowden, Manning, Scott Neuman, NPR News

Pentagon Papers Leaker, Daniel Ellsberg, PraisesSnowden, Manning

Here's a reflective, connective story and personality that helps us to see the need for leakers when democracy at large is asleep. 

'Daniel Ellsberg, the military analyst who in 1971 leaked the top-secret Pentagon Papers detailing the history of U.S. policy in Vietnam, tells NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday that unlike Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, he "did it the wrong way" by trying first to go through proper channels — a delay that he says cost thousands of lives. 

. . . Asked whether he thinks Manning and Snowden, the CIA contractor who leaked details of secret U.S. electronic surveillance activities to The Guardian newspaper, had been discerning in what they chose to release publicly: "Yes, that's obvious with Snowden," he says.

. . . Since The Guardian's exposés, based on information obtained from Snowden, first broke in June, "the whole focus has been on the risks of truth telling, the risks of openness, which are the risks of democracy, of separation of powers," Ellsberg says. 

"I've really heard nothing at all about the risks of closed society, of silence, of lies," he says.”'

                                                                                                                    Scott Neuman, NPR News / August 03, 201312:16 PM