Manning Revealed Realities of War that Armchair Warriors Want Sanitized

[xchrom]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/08/02



Power has to be relentlessly fought. Without being constantly checked, exposed, harangued, mocked and driven back, it would swiftly devour all the rights that were won at its expense. There is invariably a cost. The powerful know that if those who chip away at their authority are not undermined, or humiliated, or even persecuted, others would be emboldened to strike blows at them, too.

And so it is with Bradley Manning. Although a military judge has found him not guilty of aiding the enemy, the guilty verdicts on other charges will leave him languishing in military custody for much, if not all, of his life: indeed, he faces a sentence of 130 years. Here is the sacrifice he has paid for exposing the secretive actions of a government that claims to act in the name of the US people.

Here's why. Over a decade ago, the US initiated two calamitous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with a terrible human cost that is still paid every single day. The then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan declared that the Iraq invasion was illegal; the country is today still awash with car bombings and gruesome sectarian bloodletting. It was always in the interests of the US elite to keep the consequences of their actions as far away from public consciousness as possible. The justification is that such secrecy is needed to protect the American people from the country's enemies. “It's for your own good” is the stock defence of every authoritarian. But the real aim is to stem opposition. Every US hawk still shivers at the photographs of naked Vietnamese children, faces contorted with panic, running with their skin burned after a napalm attack, which helped galvanise the anti-war movement of the 1960s and 70s.

By being responsible for the biggest leak of classified information in US history, Manning revealed the sordid realities of a war that the armchair warriors want sanitised. Like an Apache helicopter, bombing the life out of Iraqi civilians and a Reuters journalist, the corrupted pilots dismissing their victims as “dead bastards”. He found evidence of US-backed death squads and militias operating in Afghanistan. He helped reveal the rampant corruption of the US-backed Tunisian dictatorship, who basked in luxurious homes and extravagant lifestyles while their people suffered grinding poverty, providing ammunition for the revolutionaries who toppled Ben Ali.

[PM Martin]

1. K/R

[intaglio]

2. Happy to k&r n/t

[Chaco Dundee]

3. 1974

I have seen war.bradley did not tell the halve of it.doubt anybody can.

[heaven05]

4. exactly

war ain't pretty. But no surprise the chickenhawks got us into war, they've either went AWOL or found reasons not to serve. None never was up close and real personal.

[WillyT]

5. K & R !!!

[They_Live]

6. if there is to be killing in our name

that we are paying for, we should be able to see it. And the mistakes.

[cpwm17]

7. Bradley Manning is a hero

Our rights didn't happen by accident. A peaceful world doesn't happen if right-minded folks just sit by passively. The selfish, greedy, and evil minded sociopaths certainly don 't. They're what gives us the Vietnam War, Iraq War, Slavery, economic collapses, etc.

The sociopaths seek power and influence. They run an aggressive propaganda machine to get the general public on their side. The authoritarian suckers support their positions and goals. This process isn't really conspiratorial, it's just the natural corruption the needs to be fought. Bradley Manning has helped fight back. He's a hero.

[YoungDemCA]

13. Oh, there are plenty of conspiracies....

They do happen-all the time, in fact. But they tend to be a series of smaller conspiracies. It's not really one grand, overarching conspiracy, though it does seem that way sometimes. It's more a matter of shared interests converging -the rich and powerful do what's in their own narrowly defined "self-interest." A growing number of them aren't competing with each other, they are collaborating.

[cpwm17]

15. 'Conspiracy' has such a broad meaning

I want to distinguish the process that happens in reality from the CT fantasies of the woo minded.

Sure, there are a lot of little conspiracies that combine to create our corrupt government. Really, about everything we do that requires more than one person can be considered a conspiracy, if one wants to go that far.

Over time, as the powerful become more brazen and the rest of us become more complacent, reality can start to look more and more like the CT fantasies. We still don't want to lose sight of reality and how corruption really works.

[Duval]

8. Manning is

a much needed whistleblower, NOT a traitor. We The People need to know what our Government is doing.

[Link Speed]

9. I wish Peter Arnett would surface.

Remember, he pissed in their chili three different times.


The gassing of US defectors in Laos

Bush1 bombing the baby milk factory

Bush2 fucked-up incompetence


He got fired every time.

[KoKo]

10. I thought he died... ???

Agree though...I like his reporting.

[tumtum]

17. Nope, he's still around.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Arnett

[KoKo]

18. Ahh...thanks. That was interesting to follow up where he's been.

I remembered his firing ...didn't know he'd found reporting jobs internationally since then.

[leftstreet]

11. DURec

[YoungDemCA]

12. K&R. Don't let the defenders of the Warfare state define the message.

So much blood has been spilled, countless families have been ripped apart, whole generations of people are scarred forever.

The truth has to win.

[Pelican]

14. Iraqi civilians with RPGs and AKs...

As admitted to and edited out by the gloryhog himself Assange....

[cpwm17]

16. What right do we have to murder Iraqi civilians on Iraqi soil

regardless of what they were carrying? It's all irrelevant, except the fact that the US committed mass murder.

[Hydra]

19. So it's ok to kill civs, jounalists, responders and wound childen

To get two guys in a crowd? We're supposed to be better than that, and have better technology.

By all means though, lower the bar. Makes it amusing when we try to pretend to be better than Dictator Putin.

[Pelican]

25. From the POV of the pilots...

... and within the boundaries of the rules of engagement.

A fine way to get shot at the time was to wander the streets, post curfew with RPGs and AKs.

You can add to the list, hanging around with guys carrying those weapons or driving your children into that area while it is actively being targeted. It isn't like a video game where it magically pops up "Warning: Journalist walking with insurgents"

[Hydra]

26. Ya, the pilots were doing a good job of reprisenting our country that day

You know, we used to call out other countries for doing things like this and excusing their soldiers for "collateral damage"- we also used to talk about using our technology to keep the kills to a narrow focus. Apparently it's now ok for us to kill indiscriminately because well, they should have known better than to get in the way of our helicopters.

So much for the moral high ground.

[Pelican]

27. Send in your plans for helicopter mounted laser snipers....

... that only kill "bad guys" to the Pentagon. I'm sure they'll be interested.

[Kingofalldems]

20. Bush supporter eh?

[Zorra]

28. +1

[hrmjustin]

21. Pelican did you support the iraqi war and do you still?

[Mnemosyne]

22. He looks so tired, but not beaten. Hope he holds up well. nt

[Uncle Joe]

23. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, xchrom.

[RedCappedBandit]

24. Merica. Where heroes get tortured.

[Catherina]

29. Committing crimes, no problem. Reveal them, go to jail.

[xchrom]

30. +1