From military prison, Chelsea Manning offers punditry on Iraq

The simmering debate about the evolving U.S. military strategy in Iraq and Syria was joined on Tuesday by an unlikely pundit: Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning.

Manning, a former U.S. intelligence analyst convicted last year of leaking classified U.S. information to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, argues in a new piece for the Guardian newspaper that the United States cannot defeat the Islamic State militant group by bombing them, and should focus on containing them instead.

The piece says only that the writer, who joined the Army as a man known as Bradley Manning, was "in Fort Leavenworth," and does not mention her conviction or passing of military secrets. In a separate piece, the Guardian reports Tuesday that "Manning wrote the Guardian article in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where she is in military custody."

Manning’s piece was published as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appeared on Capitol Hill for a hearing on the U.S. strategy against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Dempsey said that U.S. military advisers could find themselves involved in ground combat missions if needs dictate it.

Conversely, Manning argues in her piece that the Islamic State should be allowed to set up its own region to control. Doing so is a stated goal for the militants, who want to establish a caliphate, a state under the control of strict Islamist law.

"Let Isis succeed in setting up a failed ’state’ - in a contained area and over a long enough period of time to prove itself unpopular and unable to govern," Manning argues. "This might begin to discredit the leadership and ideology of Isis for good."

Manning argues for the U.S. to pursue three other initiatives. They include countering the narrative the militants have pushed in online recruitment videos and setting up clear, temporary borders that would "discourage Isis from taking certain territory where humanitarian crises might be created."

Her fourth initiative to pursue includes a series of measures to cut off funding from the militants, including establishing a moratorium on anyone paying ransom for hostages and preventing the Islamic State from stealing valuable artifacts and taking over oil reserves in Baiji, Iraq.

Writes Manning:

"The Islamic State (Isis) is without question a very brutal extremist group with origins in the insurgency of the United States occupation of Iraq. It has rapidly ascended to global attention by taking control of swaths of territory in western and northern Iraq, including Mosul and other major cities."

Bradley served in Iraq in 2009 and 2010 and was sentenced to 35 years of confinement in August 2013. Her highest rank: private first class.

Manning has been in the news most recently because her attorneys have threatened to sue the Defense Department on her behalf if officials do not immediately provide gender dysphoria treatment for the soldier. In July, Army officials indicated publicly they would begin a basic level of treatment.

The publication of Manning’s piece got a mixed reaction online: