Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden and the educated way!
We suppose that much of the world has been occupied over the last couple of years with the antics of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden and their predilection to want to release the nations secrets to the world at large. Manning just avoided a lifetime jail term when a judge ruled that he had not shared national secrets with the enemy even though the enemy included an Osama bin Laden who had some of them on computer disks taken from his compound after he was killed in the raid of a couple of years ago. We suppose intent was everything but how one could say that there was no intent is puzzling when you put things out in public view that anyone can retrieve and use against the nation at large.
Many remember the old posters posted on ships and military installations during times of war that used to say simply: Loose lips sink ships!
We are either at war or we are not at war and there is really no two ways about it. Ask the people of Boston, Massachusetts if we are not at war and they will point to what the two terrorists did to their population just a few months ago. Ask troops in Afghanistan if we are at war and they will look at you like you are crazy as they dodge bullets from an enemy that is both invisible and fanatical to the point of insanity.
Ask the five thousand souls who have died fighting for this nation against its opponents and they will silently stand there by their graves as a testament to what is going on and has gone on since a September eleventh almost twelve years ago. As the three thousand who died on that September day and their quietness will attest to the day when innocence passed away across this country and across this world.
And yet we allow people with little education and all that that lack of education brings with it to rule our world as they make single minded decisions that affect millions with their actions. Bradley Manning barely got through high school and flunked out of college after one term. When one looks at his background one sees a troubled youth from a broken home whom one could paint with the brush of resentment without any effort at all. Edward Snowden did not even have a high school education yet was entrusted with the nations highest secret clearance which he used to damage this nations interests perhaps to an incalculable degree.
It is interesting to note how these souls are backed by organizations such as the Guardian newspaper or the very questionable Wikileaks of Julian Assange who profess to be run by educated people with university degrees. Yet these very educated individuals use those with a lack of any real formal higher education to achieve goals that they feel are worthy of the nation and the worlds attention. The key phrase here is that they “use” these people because if the Mannings and the Snowdens did not have their platforms to perform on, they would be anonymous today and the world might be a much safer place.
It is not really about Manning and Snowden and their ilk. It is more about those who have gotten profit and publicity off of what they have done, and, have been able to highlight positions that they feel need to be brought to light by their facilitating of their actions. Many pundits across the educated world have applauded what Manning and Snowden have done and they feel that the debate that has raged because of what they have revealed has somehow made this world a better place. However, can a world ever really be a better place if it is not a safer place? There is a hierarchy that states that peace ad tranquility comes before almost anything else and it goes all the way back to a time when cave people found refuge and some temporary safety on a ledge, in a tree, or wherever they could find some place to stay alive. The history of much of the world is filled with the stories of those who were able to provide stability for those who then rewarded them with positions of power and trust for having done so for the general population. Look at the number of successful military leaders that the United States has elected to its own highest office.
It has been a long haul to achieve what much of the world has achieved with its democratic approach and almost all of those gains have been made because people have been willing to trust those that they place in power to do what is necessary to maintain the stability that we just previously talked about. In any stable democracy when someone begins to usurp power with secret doings it will almost always be finally brought to light by those with the education and the experience to know that something is amiss. Education and experience are missing from what Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden have cast upon this world. And, many very experienced and educated and respected and trusted people have been deeply offended by what they have done.
We are sure of one thing and one thing only out of this whole sorry mess that these two uneducated and illiterate except for computer people have done. People are far less safe than they were before they did what they did. And some innocent souls are going to die for the sake of what they did. Perhaps some already have! There are those that say that is just the price for maintaining a democracy. We say that it is also the road toward losing a democracy. We feel that it is a symptom of a failing form of government when those in charge of selecting those to keep the public trust as embodied in its national secrets cannot differentiate between the Mannings and the Snowdens and those that they can really trust.
Trust has died a quiet death in all of this and without it, no form of government that truly represents the people can ever continue to exist. Those who know better who enlist and enable pathetic souls like Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden just to prove a point do, in reality, just the opposite of what they are trying to accomplish. With these people, it is the point that means everything to them instead of the consequences that may come from their sponsorship of the actions that have been done. It is perhaps the greatest irony that the educated use the uneducated to achieve goals that only show their own lack of any real and lasting benefits from education itself.
IOVHO,
Regards,
Joe
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