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you're arguing from an ethical viewpoint, which is fine, but it does not apply to this sentence. i know this is hard, but let me explain. in the civil justice
by pinaceae 13y ago
you're arguing from an ethical viewpoint, which is fine, but it does not apply to this sentence. i know this is hard, but let me explain.
in the civil justice system there are laws. if you break them, you get punished. some of them have special rules around them. take murder. kill someone, go to jail. but if it was self defence, you might walk. easy, right?
in the military justice system, leaking classified docs is a punishable offence. there is no way around this. there is no self defence, etc alternate way. you break the rule, you get court martialed. morals, ethics do not come into play here.
as a soldier, your interpretation of your oath does not apply here. it would when refusing orders like "kill those civilians over there", but only maybe and not in the way you'd like. again, military justice is not following the same framwork of rules and ethics you're used to as a civilian.
the armed forces in itself are not a democracy. they are a special area of society that exist to provide the ability to kill other humans. in order to do so anything civilian quickly goes out the window. the rules exist to enforce the most optimal sytem to maintain a killing force, not the well being of the individual within the organization.
if you don't like that, you should campaign for complete disarmament and the complete disassemblement of the armed forces. there is no half-way, grey area. once you have an army, it exists to kill humans, with all the consequences. the hero whorship present in the US around any soldier seems to imply that the US society has forgotten this (and then is surprised once something like the sentencing of Manning happens).
Nuremberg does not apply at all here. German officers were tried by the Allied Forces, not their own Army. This was the victors cleaning up. The US has not joined the International Criminal Court for similar reasons, to prevent other nations prosecuting its officers and soldiers (for war crimes, etc.). If you want to do so, you'll need to invade the US and be the victor. Note that Saddam was tried and sentenced by an Iraqi court, not an international tribunal even though US soldiers caught him.
- foobarbazqux 13y agoThe problem is not military justice per se, the problem is the corruption of military justice.
- math0ne 13y agoYou make it sound as if life is a video game or something. He broke an arbitrary rule so he must pay the price. This isn't a game, ethics are always at play and we as the public have a duty to make sure our military is acting ethically. It's not like the us military has had some unchanging set of rules. Throughout the last 50 years public ethics policy has vastly changed how the military functions and will continue to do so. The armed forces may not be a democracy but they exist by the grace of our democracy.
- pinaceae 13y agoif you care that deeply about morals and ethics, you need to be for the complete abandonment of the Armed Forces. which is a classic pacifist position, but it should be clear that there can't be a grey area. you either have an apparatus to kill other human beings (incl. collateral damage) or you don't. insisting on clean war is hypocrisy. insisting on a clean and nice army is hypocrisy - soldiers exist to project force through violence, aka killing human beings. policy has changed in regards to gays and females in the military, yes. but where exactly has there been policy impact when it comes to the ones of the receiving end of the military force? the US bombs people all over the world, all the time, women, children, no problemo. not a US citizen, no rights at all. hypocrisy. "the grace of your democracy guides the US Armed Forces". HORSESHIT.
- Perceval 13y ago> He broke an arbitrary rule The rules against releasing classified information are in no way arbitrary and have been long-standing parts of military and foreign affairs since their inception. There has been no time when releasing an indiscriminate cache of State Department cables would have ever been considered a legal gray area. (Indeed, the confidentiality of diplomatic communication has been a norm that has existed for thousands of years: http://isanet.ccit.arizona.edu/noarchive/jonsson.htm http://isanet.ccit.arizona.edu/noarchive/jonsson.htm). Manning very clearly broke the law and could not have failed to know that he was breaking the law.
- anigbrowl 13y agoMakes you wonder why Manning joined up in the first place, consider the highly public ethical and practical failures of the executive branch and the army in the context of Iraq.
- PhasmaFelis 13y agoYou seem to think that I (and everyone else defending Manning) expected the prosecutors and the judge to have mercy and let him go with a pat on the head. You've got it wrong. Asking the military to set Manning free is as pointless as asking a hot iron not to fall on a child's face when the cord is tugged. Any curious toddler can be expected to yank on a cable, and any decent adult should be expected to expose concealed atrocities. The thing is, we're asking why the the iron was left out unattended, and you're going "uh, stuff hurts when it falls on you, it's the law of gravity." You're missing the point. Manning's fate isn't the disease, it's the symptom.