The Meaning Of The Manning Commutation

Almost immediately upon praising Barack Obama’s decision to commute the prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, I received predictable pushback.

Praising Obama’s commutation decision as an “unqualified” good is just that: praise for a discrete, isolated act. The act was praiseworthy on its own terms, and declaring that requires no qualification. Put another way, it was an unqualified good for Obama to have commuted the sentence. Now, does Obama deserve praise for allowing Manning to suffer under harsh conditions for seven years? No. I didn’t say, “Obama deserves unqualified praise for the entirety of his handling of the Manning case.” I said Obama deserves unqualified praise for this specific act: the commutation.

Stating that Obama deserves praise for this specific act doesn’t mean you’re letting Obama “off the hook” for other acts. It doesn’t mean you’re thereby an “Obama supporter.” Just as praising Trump for some specific good act wouldn’t require you to become a “Trump supporter.” Too frequently, people conceive of these things in terms of unproductive binaries: supporter/opponent, good/bad.

Obama’s interior motive in handing down the commutation — whether humanitarian impulse or purely cynical “legacy” burnishment — has no bearing whatsoever on whether the act produced a just outcome, which it undeniably did. Therefore, because Obama took an act which produced an undeniably just outcome, he deserves unqualified praise. There are plenty of other things to criticize Obama for, including various aspects of his handling of the Manning/WikiLeaks affair since 2010. As I noted in my NY Daily News column today calling for Manning to be granted clemency, in 2011 Obama made a flippant remark at a fundraiser essentially pre-judging Manning’s guilt long before trial. In doing so he likely prejudiced the verdict. So there’s plenty to criticize, but today’s act is being rightly heralded as an unqualified good. (By the way, the NYDN column was published about an hour before the announcement came down — I’ve never been so happy to have an article rendered moot.)

Freddie DeBoer put it well on Facebook:

I’m perfectly willing and eager to express my gratitude to Obama for doing this. The gratitude is vicarious: I express it on behalf of Manning, who will be relieved from suffering as a result. That’s essentially it. This doesn’t at all compel me to excuse or defend anything else in Obama’s record. As rational humans, we can use our reasoning faculties here.

I think this is one of the noblest acts of Obama’s entire presidency, and it should be seen as a richly-deserved victory for the various writers, activists, lawyers, and others who worked so scrupulously on Manning’s behalf for years. Obama said long before he assumed office that he would be open to hearing criticism from below: I think he heard it in this case, and it impelled him to act.

I’ll have a longer piece out soon encapsulating my fuller thoughts on Obama’s “legacy,” of which this is now a big and positive part.

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