A Letter to Chelsea Manning

Dear Chelsea,

When I first heard about you I didn’t really know what to think. On one hand, I was still of the mind that information you were leaking could be dangerous and a security threat to America. But on the other, I felt that if what you were leaking was evidence of egregious crimes we were committing, then maybe you were doing the right thing. I didn’t have to struggle with those thoughts for very long though, because the military told me what to think. You were a misguided, immature kid, a traitor, who did what he did because he wanted attention or was bored. I was told that to look at anything you had shared with WikiLeaks would be a crime and I would jeopardize my career to do so. So I didn’t look at your leaks, and you fell out of my mind. Because you were just…