Leniency for a traitor

With his 70,000th-hour commutation of the sentence of Chelsea Manning, formerly known as Army Private Bradley Manning, President Obama has granted leniency to a traitor. This is not justice. Megaleaker Manning deliberately exposed a vast trove of U.S. secrets, endangering Americans and setting back the national interest. Whether or not the 35-year term Manning was handed down in 2013 was correct, a mere seven years, a fifth of the sentence, is unjustifiably lenient.

In 2009, Manning, an enlisted soldier and lowlevel intelligence analyst in Iraq, stole and handed off to WikiLeaks hundreds of thousands of documents.

These included: military incident logs from two wars; sensitive diplomatic cables from American embassies across the globe; intelligence assessments of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, and much more.

Though no doubt some of the information — such as revelations about civilian deaths in Iraq likely being higher than official estimates, and video of an American helicopter attack in Baghdad — educated the public, that is no excuse for rampant and indiscriminate violations of the duty to protect sensitive secrets, in a manner that informed battlefield enemies of American vulnerabilities.

While Manning’s lawyers claim that a 35-year term far exceeded what other convicted leakers got, Manning’s offense was orders of magnitude worse in severity than the others, as was the diplomatic and national security damage done.

A nation whose eyes have recently opened to the pernicious interference of WikiLeaks in an American election should now be especially sensitive to such crimes.

Clearly, what tipped the scales of presidential sympathy in Manning’s favor as Obama’s term ran down was the unusual circumstances of locking up a self-identifying woman in a man’s prison. Manning, seeking sex-reassignment surgery, is miserable there and has twice attempted suicide.

No doubt prison is unpleasant whether one is straight or gay or transgender, and the Fort Leavenworth stockade is a maximum-security facility, not a country club.

This is not to justify mistreatment. The Army had and has a responsibility to ensure the convict’s confinement is not cruel, with reasonable sensitivity to Manning’s gender dysphoria.

Humane punishment is imperative. A get-ofout-jail-free card was the wrong answer.