Bradley Manning is
the only combat veteran of the Iraq war whose service is worth honoring. Like
hundreds of thousands of servicemen, Manning carried out unlawful orders to
participate in an illegal war. Unlike any of the rest, he took necessary action
to expose discrete criminal acts committed in the larger context of that
illegal enterprise.
While serving as an
intelligence analyst in Iraq, Manning sometimes felt as if he were “watching
nonstop snuff films,” according to a New York
magazine profile. His job consisted
of sitting at a work station and evaluating Iraqis as targets. This meant “reducing
a human being to a few salient points. Then he made a quick decision based on
imperfect information: kill, capture, exploit, source.”
Unlike countless
other U.S servicemen who took refuge in the idea that obedience to superiors
immunizes criminal behavior, Manning tried to discriminate between “insurgents”
and innocent bystanders, only to find that such distinctions do not exist when
one is fighting a war of aggression. When he expressed concerns about this to
his superiors, Manning was told to choke down such questions and get back to
the task of killing people who resented being occupied by a prohibitively
stronger foreign power.
In late 2009, Manning
told a psychological counselor “about a targeting mission gone bad in Basra” in
which an unambiguously innocent bystander was killed. That incident left
Manning incapacitated with guilt and remorse. It’s quite likely that it also
led Manning to confront the moral reality that every use of lethal force by
U.S. personnel in Iraq was an act of murder.
Shortly after
speaking with a psychologist about the Basra incident, Manning performed a
heroic act in the service of his country and the rule of law by leaking the Iraq
war logs
and the notorious “Collateral
Murder”
video documenting the slaughter – by two U.S. Apache helicopter gunships – of
twelve innocent civilians.
During the recently
concluded show trial of Manning, the prosecution insisted that by publicizing
the “Collateral Murder” video, the whistleblower had given material aid to the
enemy. In fact, he had exposed a criminal policy imposed and carried out by the
superior officers to whom he was expected to report such atrocities.
Former U.S. Army Specialist Ethan McCord, who can be seen in the video
attempting to carry two wounded children to safety – has testified that the
crime documented in the video was the product of “standard operating procedure”
dictating “360 degree rotational fire” in residential neighborhoods in
retaliation for IED attacks on occupation troops.
When
Manning became aware of war crimes, he was legally and morally obligated to
report them – not just to his superior officers, who were at best aggressively
indifferent to them, but to the public from whom those officers derive their
supposed authority. Tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers witnessed war crimes,
but as far as we presently know, Manning was the only soldier deployed to Iraq
who had the character and moral courage necessary to avoid silent complicity in
them.
Although Manning was acquitted of the charge of aiding the
enemy – which carried a potential sentence of life without parole – he was
convicted of 19 criminal counts, including five espionage charges, and could still find himself
facing the equivalent of a life sentence. Prior to his trial, Manning was
held for nine months in an
especially severe form of solitary confinement that involved forced nudity,
sleep deprivation, and persistent abuse. His treatment,
which constituted torture, won him a reduction off 112 days from the prison
sentence he will receive for the supposed offense of exposing officially
sanctioned crimes.
If Manning had been a war criminal, rather than an honorable
soldier who exposed war crimes, his pre-trial confinement would have led to
dismissal of the charges against him – or his sentence being overturned.
Like Private Manning, Sgt.
Lawrence Hutchins served in Iraq. He committed war crimes of the kind
Manning helped expose to the public. He led an eight-man squad that kidnapped
an innocent Iraqi man from his home, took him to a ditch and shot him in the
face. They then planted a gun and a shovel and claimed that the Iraqi, a
retired police officer, was a suspected insurgent.
Hutchins was sentenced to 11 years for murder. A
military appeals court has overturned that conviction, claiming that his
rights were violated when he was unlawfully detained without a lawyer for seven
days. Hutchins was released after serving roughly five and a half years in
prison. Manning has already spent more than three years behind bars. His father
described the convicted murderer as a “scapegoat,” insisting that he “was
unfortunately in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
The same was true of every
other U.S. soldier who took part in the occupation of Iraq, including Private
Manning. The difference was that Hutchins faithfully carried out orders to
murder Iraqis, and Manning understood that the government that employed him is
not exempt from the moral law.
Sgt.
Ray Girouard is another war criminal who was granted leniency by the
government that had employed him. Like Hutchins, Girouard commanded a combat
unit that committed an atrocity – in this case, the murder of three handcuffed
Iraqi detainees. Like Hutchins, Girouard was convicted on the testimony of his
comrades, all of whom were given lighter sentences in exchange for testifying
against their squad leader. And like Hutchins, Girouard claims that he is a
“scapegoat” who carried out orders and then covered up for his men “out of
loyalty” when they “messed up.”
Girouard commanded a May 9, 2006 mission in which he was ordered
to “kill all military-age males” in an area described as a terrorist training
camp. His unit dragged three men out of a house, zip-tied their hands, and
called for a chopper. Girouard
claims that when he left the house, “I [heard] this volley of gunfire…. I
run back and see these three bodies lying on the ground with their blindfolds
half-off. My guys are shouting, `They tried to escape. We shot them. They were
terrorists. They were going to come back and kill us.’”
It should be acknowledged that attempting to kill
foreign invaders who have occupied your country is not an act of terrorism.
It’s also worth underscoring the fact that this account, if taken at face
value, marked the soldiers under Girouard’s command as incurable cowards. Their
behavior is eerily reminiscent of the conduct of police officers who lose
bladder control and gun down unarmed citizens who are seen as a threat to
“officer safety.” This isn’t surprising, given that the crime in Iraq was
carried out by another branch of the Regime’s fraternity of armed bullies.
According to Girouard, he covered up the killings by filing
a false official report claiming that the victims had attacked his men. That
would make him an accessory to murder. However, the soldiers who carried out
the murders later testified that they had done so under Girouard’s orders. One
of them, Specialist Juston Graber, claimed that he had “finished off” a wounded
detainee after being explicitly ordered to do so by Girouard.
After being found guilty of negligent homicide, Girouard was
given a ten-year prison sentence. He spent three years in Ft. Leavenworth before
his conviction was overturned and he was given a “general discharge under
honorable conditions.”
“It’s such a blessing,” exulted Girouard after returning to
his home in Sweetwater, Tennessee. “I get all my benefits and everything now.”
Such leniency is reserved for those who are faithful in
carrying out imperial crimes. From the perspective of those who control the
Regime, committing war crimes is a duty, but reporting them is a
felony.
Dum spiro, pugno!
8 comments:
And we wonder why those little demons are convincing a lot of vets to kill themselves.
one cannot escape his conscience but for so long.
Don't forget about Frank -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Wuterich
It is so sad, for the moment, for those who commit suicide in our military and for the ones who they have killed But it is all in “God’s Eonian Purpose” to be so. We die. We kill, God makes alive. Simply Google and read the booklet…… “God’s Eonian Purpose” to learn what your Sunday school teacher and Pastor cannot tell you. K7VHQ
Dear Mr. Grigg,
It always hurts when I visit your site.
Too many ugly truths.
Best wishes
Thanks for the well written article. I wish more folks read this and understood the duty to report war crimes.
My wife offered the opinion (which I share) that Manning, in spite of the horrific treatment he has received, is still much better off than the many service members that end up committing suicide as a result of witnessing or committing these atrocities.
Without judgment as to the ethics of his actions, the guts that it took to expose various elements of an unjust war, must have been a tremendous psychological burden on him. Do I forbear my own ethos or face potential charges of treason. I often time have argued that our current form of military service is conducted under a contract of involuntary servitude, thereby unconstitutional under the Section 1, of the XIII Amendment. Additional support for Citizens Militias being necessary for the security of a free nation.
This is just one article i bet theirs alot more to come from yenem,aghanistan,pakistan, etc. I wish americans youth read articles rather than play video games...
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