12 ms·

After WW2, the Allies condemned and executed a number of German and Japanese officers who had done little more than follow orders. What they had done was not ag

• enraged_camel 13y ago
  Exactly. The stubborn application of law is not justice. It is authoritarianism, which Wikipedia defines as "a form of government as well as a personality and social trait [that] is characterized by absolute or blind obedience to authority, as against individual freedom and related to the expectation of unquestioning obedience." It seems people are quick to point out that Manning broke some rules, but are too narrow-minded to look up and see the big picture. Manning undeniably made a service to the greater good, which is the good of his country. Whether he broke some rules internal to his organization should not even have come into play in this trial.
  • rayiner 13y ago
    I feel like you're fighting a different battle than the one that exists. One in which Manning uncovered and released targeted evidence of clear war crimes, instead of a bunch of unflattering information along with some evidence that was at best ambiguous and at most showed bad judgment on the part of some soldiers.
  • throwaway9848 13y ago
    "The stubborn application of law is not justice. It is authoritarianism, which Wikipedia defines as [...]" That is super stupid. You don't understand authoritarianism, then, citations of Wikipedia aside. You do a disservice to the actual victims of authoritarianism. EDIT: Look at the downvoting.. and this is nice compared to what I wrote at first. Since I'm already -3, I'll remove the politeness filters and say that this comment is idiotic. Stubborn application of the law is authoritarianism? How is that not the dumbest thing written on the internet today. Perhaps I'm the stupid one for believing that WORDS have MEANINGS beyond what is convenient at the moment. It's like people saying that food stamps are socialism. It's not opinion, it's INCORRECT.
    • enraged_camel 13y ago
      You may need a few more throw-away accounts after this one, friend.
      • throwaway9848 13y ago
        I created it to allow myself a different degree of expression from my normal account. Sometimes I just want to release my id - say, for engaging with a not-unsubstantial population on HN of people whose intellect doesn't keep pace with their arrogance. I still try to be constructive and take care of as though it was a primary account. But I really don't care about karma/points. The account is serving precisely the purpose it was created for.
    • brazzy 13y ago
      > Perhaps I'm the stupid one for believing that WORDS have MEANINGS beyond what is convenient at the moment. Funny. That is exactly the point this "retarded" commment is making.
      • throwaway9848 13y ago
        Explain how. Also, I removed that word. You were right to call me out for that.
    • glesica 13y ago
      It sounds like a totally reasonable definition to me. All you've done is to repeat over and over again that the definition is stupid, without identifying why it is stupid or how it could be improved. That's why you got downvoted, not because of your opinion.
      • throwaway9848 13y ago
        Let's examine typical examples of authoritarianism: Stalin, Pol Pot, Pinochet, Franco, to name a few. Note these are people, not nations, yet they they instantaneously identifiable with the USSR, Cambodia, Chile, and Spain. This is a key aspect of authoritarianism - the origin of laws and their enforcement are from a person or cabal, not from the people of that nation. Dictatorship is not synonymous with authoritarianism, but they have a large overlap. All of my examples are universally considered extremely immoral. However, there are also some countries that are mostly authoritarian, but are arguably not immoral (some middle eastern sultanates come to mind). There is an enormous body of though on the morality of laws. This starts in Greek time with Plato and The Republic, and has had contributions from Aquinas, Hobbes, and more recently MLK. A non-authoritarian state can easily pass immoral laws, too. Finally, the degree of enforcement of law is a concept which I consider separate from the system of government and the particular laws of the society. So my objection is that the post commingled three separate ideas: the origin of law within a society, the morality of law, and the rigor of law enforcement. I think the commingling was incorrect. I think some of this is so obvious that not recognizing it can be fairly characterized as stupid. Hope that I hope that clarifies things. To offer my opinion, the US is not close to being an authoritarian state. However, it has some immoral laws. That can be rectified via a democratic process. I think the enforcement of those laws in this case was actually fairly lax, because he clearly committed crimes and it would not have been difficult to have made a case for treason which would have been eligible for capital punishment, as another commenter noted.
  • ballard 13y ago
    This trial was political: people vs. government. The government won by not upsetting the people "too much" by giving him a "light" sentence of only 35 years (what a deal). He will lose 5 years of his life for the service of the greater good.
  • Perceval 13y ago
    > The stubborn application of law is not justice. It is authoritarianism No it's not. The stubborn application of the law is called "rule of law" and it's the foundation of the political theory coming out of Enlightenment liberalism. Authoritarian governments are characterized by personalistic/charismatic rule, and the use of fiat/decree in the place of pre-existing legal standards. Bradley Manning knowingly violated a long-standing law in the military code of justice that he was fully aware of since signing up. Applying the law to Manning is an example of rule of law not authoritarianism.
• cynicalkane 13y ago
  Those officers oversaw the intentional mass murder of millions of Jews and Chinese. That's slightly more serious than the secrets Manning leaked. And by "slightly" I mean "an unguessable number of orders of magnitude." They only executed those officers for which they could prove this was the case, which is why only a few dozen were executed.
  • foobarbazqux 13y ago
    It's strange though, because nobody got executed for dropping atomic bombs, which was also intentional mass murder.
    • moheeb 13y ago
      This is an excellent point. I think there is an argument in there somewhere for actions starting a war versus actions ending a war. Also doing it Charlie Sheen style helps (winning!)
    • Spooky23 13y ago
      Winning the war is obviously the biggest factor in terms of who goes to the gallows. But there's a difference between loss of life in combat versus deliberate murder of noncombatants outside of a combat situation or of prisoners who are in your care. It's not about who has the highest scorecard of death and depravity. Ask the same question about incendiary bombing, which happened throughout the war. The B-29s dropping incendiaries on Tokyo killed more people than the atomic attacks. Are those pilots war criminals? Are the artillerymen who leveled towns and villages full of people war criminals? Based on the "total war" approach embraced in WW2, they were not.
      • foobarbazqux 13y ago
        Yeah, I only meant the atomic bombs, which was quite clearly "deliberate murder of noncombatants outside of a combat situation" as far as I can tell. I mean, it was essentially, "We have unlimited capacity to randomly murder 100,000 of your civilians at once, we've demonstrated it twice now, so submit to our authority." Well, they did.
• enoch_r 13y ago
  People in the military have the right, and legal duty, to refuse unlawful orders, including orders that violate the international laws of war. They do not have the right to unilaterally decide to violate a lawful order because they think it is better for humanity at large. They do not have the right to expose classified information because they think it shouldn't be classified. They do not have the right to violate orders because they are stupid, or because they're bad policy. They do not have the right to make those decisions because, in the US, the military is supposed to be entirely subordinate to the laws enacted by our elected officials. Not "subordinate as long as it's for the best overall." This is a good thing--when enough members of the military decide to do what's better for the country against the lawful orders of the elected government that they serve, we call it a coup. Obviously there are grey areas. After all, the Nuremburg trials punished people for violating laws that didn't exist during the commission of the crimes. If Manning had, say, only released extremely strong evidence of war crimes, I might agree that hiding that evidence was itself unlawful. But he didn't--he released a giant trove of classified diplomatic cables and military logs. These may have been unnecessarily classified, but were not unlawfully classified. Releasing them put Manning firmly in the "violating lawful orders" camp.
  • chris_mahan 13y ago
    The US government, through various means, seems to be intent on removing from public discourse the very information needed for those in uniform to properly assess the legality of their orders. Also, in case they forgot, the Constitution is the Law, and if Manning saw that the government was violating the Constitution, I don't think it's wrong for him to expose such wrongdoing. That's the very definition of whistleblowing. And, to those who claim that he should have pursued his whistleblowing through established military channels, I would reply that the US government, the Military, as well as other agencies, seem intent on keeping the truth from the American People, so it is entirely reasonable to expect that the military and other agencies in the government would attempt to disallow the whistleblower's efforts. update: fixed typo.
    • anigbrowl 13y ago
      OK, and what unconstitutional activity was revealed by the release of many thousands of State Department cables? I mean, it's all very well to say that Manning saw the government was violating the Constitution, but I would like some specific examples of what he revealed. Abuses such as the operation of Abu Ghraib were not exposed by Manning. Manning joined the Army in late 2007/early 2008, by which time the US had been involved in what a lot of people (including myself) consider to have been an illegal war in Iraq for 4-5 years; one in which the existence of appalling human rights abuses such as torture and extraordinary rendition were well documented, and which by then was well understood by the public to have been predicated on faulty intelligence. It seems to me that if you have a negative view of war and militarism, then you should probably not join the organization involved in fighting that war in the first place. You could serve your country perfectly well and without taking part in military aggression by, say, joining the Coast Guard. Frankly, I think the only reason Manning has hero status on HN is because he was a computer nerd, and so other computer nerds are willing to suspend their critical faculties because they can identify with him. I can identify with him up to a point, but not to the point of wanting to join the army 5 years into a clusterfuck like the Iraq war run by an administration that had tossed things like the Geneva convention out the window.
• gadders 13y ago
  People still believe in moral relativism? I hardly think pitchforking live babies into cauldrons of boiling water (as during the Rape of Nanking) is "just following orders".
• __--__ 13y ago
  I think that was a good thing because it established the principle that joining an organization does not absolve you from higher duties towards your fellow citizens or humanity at large. Taking the high ground on soldiers just following orders in the context of WWII is bizarre. American soldiers killed a startling number of german soldiers and citizens during the post-war occupation. I imagine those American soldiers were just following orders too. The only reason the German and Japanese soldiers were demonized for following orders instead of the American soldiers is the fact we won and they lost. Morals are decided by the victor.
• Justsignedup 13y ago
  In layman's: Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Moral of this story: Don't join the military for any reason whatsoever. And if you are drafted in, claim on your defense: "I would have been executed otherwise"
  • vectorjohn 13y ago
    Basically this is the only answer. I think of this (but rarely say it) when I hear people talk about supporting our troops and honoring their service. I don't honor people who willingly decide to be put in situations that almost certainly will be immoral. The immoral act starts when you volunteer to join the gang that commits it.
    • Nrsolis 13y ago
      LOL. SERIOUSLY? I just met a guy who lost his legs to an IED that he KNEW was on the route he was ordered to take because they needed to get from A to B in the quickest possible time. He volunteered to go himself (he was the Captain of the platoon) but his team refused to let him make the run himself. That was the THIRD IED he was hit by. I'm glad we have people who are willing to risk their lives for us, no questions asked. They willingly go into hellish situations where they could lose life and limb and with little expectation of reward. Frequently the opposite. You benefit from this sacrifice. You PROFIT from it. Don't pretend you're morally superior. Police go out and beat up bad guys so you can be safe. If you were more of a man, you'd admit your cowardice and stay quiet otherwise.
      • vectorjohn 13y ago
        This is precisely my point. People like you are wrong. Sure, your friend may have done something brave, but he still put himself in a situation where he would likely be asked to do wrong. He supported a government that uses force to try to get its way. We don't need that. I don't need that. Even if I profit from it, I didn't ask for it, and I really do have the moral high ground here. Don't act like the people joining the military do it for some high flying idea of honor and defense of the country. They join in droves because they get to have an adventure with the feeling of danger but extremely low chance of injury. If we were actually fighting a real enemy that really could do us harm, I /might/ call that bravery. You have an antiquated view of what it is to be "more of a man". You seem to be stuck in the past where blindly killing the others is somehow a good thing without stopping to think about the reasons. How about, why was your friend walking around in a foreign country in the first place? I like how you couldn't try making your point with a reasoned argument, you had to use ad hominem. Classy.