Bradley Manning Nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize?

Is this the first time in history that a Nobel laureate is overseeing the criminal prosecution of a Nobel nominee?

Apparently, three members of the Icelandic Parliament have nominated Army PFC Bradley Manning for the Nobel Peace Prize. On February 1, 2012, Birgitta Jónsdóttir, Margrét Tryggvadóttir, and Þór Saari, all members of the Icelandic Parliament, sent their nominating letter to the Nobel nominating committee.

This is, of course, their right to do so. But it shows a deep ignorance of what Manning stands accused of.

Manning, you may recall is to be court-martialed for allegedly capturing 250,000 Department of State diplomatic cables, Department of Defense gun camera video and other classified documents onto CD-RWs labeled Lady Gaga, spiriting the discs out of the Secure Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) where he worked, and sending the information to Wikileaks. In effect, what Manning did was put the lives of American service members, diplomats, and citizens at greater risk.

I disagree that the Nobel committee members who nominated Manning don’t know what he stands for. They do. They fully understand that he betrayed the trust of his country because he disagreed with one narrow policy, a policy that had nothing to do with terrorism. He apparently disagreed with Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, a policy that was later overturned via the political process Manning had sworn an oath to defend. His betrayal certainly didn’t serve the ends of peace: It put the lives of many good people in grave jeopardy.

Nobel rewarded Jimmy Carter for trashing America. They rewarded Barack Obama in anticipation that he wouldn’t forcefully advocate for the American idea. Now they’ve nominated a traitor who betrayed America in war time. It’s obvious that the Nobel Peace Prize has become the Nobel America Sucks Prize. Nobel couldn’t just go all out and award Osama bin Laden posthumously (though it did award the prize to another unrepentant terrorist years ago), so in Manning it gets the next best thing.