Bradley Manning: Not Guilty

[Zengus]

I think I understand why Phant said those things; it isn't that he thinks collateral damage is a light issue, it's that he respects the procedure in place to deal with it and feels disgust toward someone else working in a related field that chose to ignore that procedure in favor of seeking public appeal. It's how I feel whenever someone walks off a line during service; maybe they've done something good for themselves, or even something that a lot of outside observers who really have no idea what's going on would cheer them on for, but what they have actually done is completely fuck everyone else that they're working with. Feels like getting betrayed.

Anyway, I don't know anyhwere near enough about the situation to make a call either way (obviously I think it looks pretty bad, and there's no question there have been some fuckups). But I can understand and recognize professional outrage.

[Rip]

I get that too. I understand that Phant and everyone else whose job it is that has to deal with human death, especially in the causing of it, has to do certain things to their heads to be able to deal with what they do.

I understand what it's like to have to deal with the guy in your job who took it on himself to ignore the rules his peers all follow, and I understand that chaos results from disorder, and I more than understand what it's like to have to put yourself to the grind that much harder when one of your co-workers goes off the rails.

I'll betcha one of those eight people knew what it feels like too. I'll betcha some of them had had a hard day at work within the recent week or so of their lives, I'll betcha some of them took it out on their children or their spouse, and I'll betcha some of them enjoyed a delicious breakfast somewhere within that time frame too.

Because they were human beings. Human beings who were turned into desensitizing phrases.

Phant is right: those of us who never chose to take money for enabling the death of other human beings will ever, EVER know what it's like. He's also right, in that culturally, we have to see those humans who chose to do so in very extreme viewpoints. They are either justified in the death they deal, in which case they are heroes, or they are not, in which case they are murderers. Sometimes, because humans are humans and mistakes are made in every "job", a hero kills an innocent man.

Our culture is much murkier on this point.

When things get murky for humans, we leap at extremes. Military people claim that no civilian will ever know what it's like. They "other" us, and place themselves above us, because they have to believe that they are heroes, willing to do a job us puny civilians can never understand. The alternative is (hopefully) utter functionless depression. This is not an effective mindset to have when trying to stay employed.

Unfortunately, Phant's job is necessary, if only because official murderers are very good at stopping unofficial murderers who do not like to play by the pretend rules at all. Civilians are capable of understanding this.

In fact, the idea that "civilian human beings" and "military human beings" can never understand each other may be the biggest issue here. Separating humans is the first step to destroying them, after all, and the military understands this very well. You have to train a man to see another man as not a man. It's just that the rest of us men want to be sure that you don't lose sight of it entirely ("you" being "all of you").

When we, who are separated from the Heroic Killers, see our heroes do something that could only have come to them at the end of a long journey of desensitization, and we have not ourselves been desensitized, we get scared. It is as natural a reaction as fearing the dog you raised as a puppy when he snarls and bares his fangs, and it is a fear borne out of intelligence, not ignorance. Turning your back on a dangerous thing is stupid, all humans know this.

The point, then, is that Superman is held to a higher ideal. The Joker is not. We don't expect The Joker to care for his victims, we expect him to mock them, because he is Evil. We expect Superman to remember his victims, and to apologize for each one, not to turn his nose away and call them human debris, even though it makes his job easier to do so, even when they are Doomsday. It may be easier, but it's not heroic.

The world isn't black and white; "good" and "evil" are what we collectively decide. But the weight of culture is against villains, and we know what they act like; we create our stories around them.

So I guess what I'm saying is, don't tell us we can't understand you. You are us.

[dexeron]

What Rip said, I think. Maybe.

[Rip]

http://www.shsu.edu/~eng_wpf/authors/Tw ... ranger.htm

[Phantomgrift]

I'm not going to lie... Rip, that was an impressive answer.
Thank you.

The only minor thing I'll add is I don't know many in the military that feel we're "better" than civilians per-say, but there is definitely this sense of "us" and "not-us", when it comes to the differences we face.

[Despanan]

It was actually 11 people who were killed, not eight.

Also - 2 kids were seriously injured.

The problem is not that the soldiers were joking about the people they killed. The problem is that they confused cameras with RPGs. Because they did this they murdered 11 people, including 2 journalists - which is a war crime.

After committing this war crime, they were not charged. Instead the incident was covered up by their commanders. The journalists families were lied to.

Until Bradley Manning leaked it, and thousands of other cables which exposed a massive amount of national and international corruption.

I'm not mad at the soldiers for being rude, I'm mad that their callous disregard for human life caused them to make a bad decision which then resulted in a war crime, for which they were never held accountable.


I'm also mad that the person who pointed out this serious breach of justice is facing 131 years while the corrupt people he outed get off scot free.

That's messed up.

[Rip]

So, now we have the two viewpoints, and I believe we are standing on a common enough ground to speak about them, i.e., we all agree that military jobs are necessary, military human beings have to keep a certain mindset in order to function, that innocent human life is a horrible thing to waste, and that heroes only remain heroes when they act like heroes.

All of this said, we have the case before us: a man sees things that normal civilians never get to see, and he shows them, and the military reacts according to the culture they have to maintain in order to exist as they do.

Collateral Damage is an ancient term. It is as old as warfare, older than the language we now use to describe it. However, the culture is far different today; we can call it enlightened, but that's what all modern eras do to themselves, so let's just notice the earmarks: first and foremost, the sanctity of ALL human life is held in higher regard now than it likely ever has been. The nature of the world is such that "hiding things" is fast becoming a pipe dream. Transparency is something the United States, and the rest of the planet, is going to have to deal with whether it wants to or not.

How does the military survive?

[Despanan]

When in the hell did you become the reasonable one RIP?

[Phantomgrift]

Desp, if you've watched the video, put yourself in the pilots shoes... How do you discern if someone's aiming a camera at you- Or aiming something at you that can kill you and your co-pilot?

And let's not forget that the building and the people associated with the building and not the van, were indeed valid members of the Taliban and therefore legitimate targets.

Rip, I think it's a tricky situation.
There may be a need for transparency in some areas, but to much of anything is damaging. If you show your hand in full at the Poker game of Intel/Counter-Intel and Terrorism/Counter-Terrorism, then you've lost. The other guy knows what you have and how to defeat it in the next go-round. And unfortunately, as long as humans exist, there will always be the rats out there that want to make everyone submit to their ideals through violence and bloodshed. So we have to create tactics to defeat those rats. And thus a cycle continues.

Short of straight-up mind-control, universal enlightenment is light-years away.

[Despanan]