{"id":13561,"date":"2011-07-18T12:00:36","date_gmt":"2011-07-18T11:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=13561"},"modified":"2011-07-16T15:47:06","modified_gmt":"2011-07-16T14:47:06","slug":"pfc-bradley-manning-conscience-and-agency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2011\/07\/pfc-bradley-manning-conscience-and-agency\/","title":{"rendered":"PFC Bradley Manning: Conscience and Agency"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following is a response to last week’s New York Magazine article,\u00a0Bradley Manning’s Army of One<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Serving with my\u00a0unit 2nd battalion 16th infantry\u00a0in New Baghdad Iraq, I vividly remember the\u00a0moment in 2007, when our Battalion Commander walked into the room and announced our new rules of engagement:<\/p>\n

“Listen up, new battalion SOP (standing operating procedure) from now on: Anytime your convoy gets hit by an IED, I want 360 degree rotational fire. You kill every [expletive] in the street!”<\/p>\n

We weren’t trained extensively\u00a0to recognize an unlawful order, or\u00a0how to report one.\u00a0But many of us could not believe what we had just been told to do. Those of us who knew it was morally wrong struggled to figure out a way to avoid shooting innocent civilians, while also dodging repercussions from the non-commissioned officers who enforced the policy. In such situations, we determined to fire our weapons, but into rooftops or abandoned vehicles, giving the impression that we were following procedure.<\/p>\n

On\u00a0April 5, 2010 American citizens and people around the world got a taste of the fruits of this standing operating procedure when\u00a0WikiLeaks<\/a>\u00a0released the now-famous\u00a0Collateral Murder<\/a>\u00a0video. This video showed the horrific and wholly unnecessary killing of unarmed Iraqi civilians and Reuters journalists.<\/p>\n

I was part of the unit that was responsible for this atrocity. In the video, I can be seen attempting to carry wounded children to safety in the aftermath.<\/p>\n

The video released by WikiLeaks belongs in the public record. Covering up this incident is a matter deserving of criminal inquiry. Whoever revealed it is an American hero in my book.<\/p>\n

Private First Class Bradley Manning has been confined for over a year on the government\u2019s accusation that he released this video and volumes of other classified documents to WikiLeaks \u2014 an organization that has been selectively publishing portions of this information in collaboration with other news outlets.<\/p>\n

If PFC Bradley Manning did what he is accused of doing, then it is clear\u2014from\u00a0chat logs<\/a>\u00a0that have been attributed to him\u2014that his decision was motivated by conscience and political agency. These chat logs allegedly describe how PFC Manning hopes these revelations will result in \u201cworldwide discussion, debates, and reforms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Steve Fishman’s article\u00a0Bradley Manning’s Army of One<\/a>\u00a0in New York Magazine (July 3, 2011) erases Manning\u2019s political agency.\u00a0\u00a0By focusing so heavily on Manning’s personal life, Fishman removes\u00a0politics from a story that has everything to do with politics.\u00a0The important public issues wrapped up with PFC Manning\u2019s case include: transparency in government; the Obama Administration\u2019s unprecedented pursuit of whistle-blowers; accountability of government and military in shaping and carrying out foreign policy; war crimes revealed in the WikiLeaks documents; the catalyzing role these revelations played in democratic movements across the Middle East; and more.<\/p>\n

The contents of the WikiLeaks revelations have pulled back the curtain on the degradation of our democratic system.\u00a0 It has become completely normal for decision-makers to promulgate foreign policies, diplomatic strategies, and military operating procedures that are hostile to the democratic ideals our country was founded upon.\u00a0 The incident I was part of\u2014shown in the Collateral Murder video\u2014becomes even more horrific when we grasp that it was not exceptional.\u00a0 PFC Manning himself is alleged to describe (in the chat logs) an incident where he was ordered to turn over innocent Iraqi academics to notorious police interrogators, for the offense of publishing a political critique of government corruption titled, “Where did the money go?<\/a>” These issues deserve \u201cdiscussion, debates, and reforms\u201d \u2014 and attention from journalists.<\/p>\n

Fishman’s article was also ignorant of the realities of military service. Those of us who serve in the military are often lauded as heroes.\u00a0 Civilians need to understand that we may be heroes, but we are not saints.\u00a0 We are young people under a tremendous amount of stress.\u00a0 We face moral dilemmas that many civilians have never even contemplated hypothetically.<\/p>\n

Civil society honors military service partly because of the sacrifice it entails.\u00a0Lengthy and repeated deployments stress our closest relationships with family and friends.\u00a0\u00a0The realities, traumas, and stresses of military life take an emotional toll.\u00a0This emotional battle is part of the sacrifice that we honor.\u00a0That any young soldier might wrestle with his or her experiences in the military, or with his or her identity beyond military life, should never be wielded as a weapon against them.<\/p>\n

If PFC Bradley Manning did what he is accused of, he is a hero of mine; not because he’s perfect or because he never struggled with personal or family relationships\u2014most of us do\u2014but because in the midst of it all he had the courage to act on his conscience.<\/p>\n

____________________<\/p>\n

Ethan McCord is a former Specialist in the US Army and was among the soldiers seen on the ground in Collateral Murder<\/a>, an army video released by WikiLeaks in 2010.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 commondreams.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is a response to last week’s New York Magazine article, Bradley Manning’s Army of One. Serving with my unit 2nd battalion 16th infantry in New Baghdad Iraq, I vividly remember the moment in 2007, when our Battalion Commander walked into the room and announced our new rules of engagement: “Listen up, new battalion SOP (standing operating procedure) from now on: Anytime your convoy gets hit by an IED, I want 360 degree rotational fire. You kill every [expletive] in the street!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-focus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13561\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}