4 ms·

So maybe he was living under a rock. Is that a crime? What is the alternative hypothesis, that when he joined he had an understanding of the ongoing horrors?

• anigbrowl 13y ago
  He was between the ages of 19 & 20 when he joined the Army. I think it's quite reasonable to expect basic adult awareness of what organization he was signing up for and to be aware that the Iraq war was far from a clean-cut ethical situation. If he lacked such basic awareness, then that does not say very much for his judgment, does it? As it was, he had been described since high school days as 'very smart, very opinionated, very political' and had taken college classes in history before signing up for the army. As it was he had a Top Secret clearance before he was ever deployed to Iraq. Now there is no way he got a Top Secret clearance without exhibiting the ability to understand the military context he was headed into. If he had ethical reservations about the conduct of the war then it just might have been a good idea to raise them prior to deployment, no? I'm not unsympathetic to the guy, but taking his story at face value requires adopting a position of spectacular naivete.
  • jlgreco 13y ago
    There are two meanings of "expect" which are often in conflict. Consider: "A mother walks into her living room to discover her teenage son playing video games the night before a big math test. Reasonably upset, she says, 'I expect you to do well on that test tomorrow.'" Now, does she think that her son will do well on that test? No, she wouldn't be upset if she did. Does she nevertheless consider it his responsibility to do well? Of course. She does not expect him to do well on the test, but she does expect him to do well. It is not reasonable to expect a 19/20 year old who is signing up for the military to have a full appreciation for the implications of his action and the actions of the military he is joining. Nevertheless, society expects exactly that of him.
    • anigbrowl 13y ago
      He had a Top Secret clearance before he ever went to Iraq. I think it is reasonable to expect a minimal degree of introspection and self-awareness from anyone who's entrusted with a top secret clearance. We're not talking about some involuntary draftee here, as if he had top secret clearance foisted on him when he wasn't looking.
      • jlgreco 13y ago
        Expect? Sure. Expect? No. Regarding it as obligatory is fine. Regarding it as likely is just being foolish. Do you have any experience with people? Seriously though, what is your thesis here? That he joined with the intention of leaking secrets? That he doesn't actually think anything objectionable was going on? What? You have made it plain that you think he should have known that shit was hitting the fan, but you haven't actually made a point.
        • anigbrowl 13y ago
          I have made a point - that he knew, or should have known what he was getting into. If he failed to do that (which I don't believe) then he should not have trusted his own judgement about what was or wasn't constitutional and what should be leaked - because the vast majority of what he leaked didn't expose any wrongdoing whatsoever. My thesis is not tha the joined with the intention of leaking secrets. My thesis is that he joined up thinking it would help him straighten out his sexual identity issues and when it ended up making them worse it's unfortunate (largely for himself) that he didn't seek a medical discharge on basis of his gender dysphoria and the severe stress it was causing him. I don't think he's an inherently bad person, but if you're going to carry a top secret clearance you have to be aware that that's some Serious Business. Do you have any experience with people? More than you seem to imagine. It's because I've spent so much time out at the fringes of society that I have so little patience with this infantilist bullshit. Like Manning, I left home and (broken) family at a young age to make my own way int he world, instead of going along with the crowd on the conveyor belt. I sympathize with him, but I also think that respecting his right to make his own choices also involves investing him with the responsibility for the outcomes of those choices. I like what I see of Manning, but think he made some catastrophic mistakes that's he's going to be paying for for the next few years. Your view of events is predicated on him being a helpless automaton that joined the army and earned a top secret clearance without understanding what any of that meant, which is to deny him agency for his own actions.
  • bobwaycott 13y ago
    A surprisingly large number of Americans live in a position of spectacular naivete--in their teens, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and so on. Until death.
  • resu_nimda 13y ago
    Not everyone thinks like you, not everyone has the same experiences and viewpoints as you. There are people all over this country that continue to enlist in and support the military, and view it and the government as forces for good. Obviously he knew there was some controversy, but so what? That doesn't mean he's going to make the same conclusions as you. You're arguing from a certain viewpoint, and being blind to the fact that people can come from different places that are entirely foreign to you. Maybe he was brainwashed, or willfully ignorant, or something else; whatever the case may be, it's possible for people to come to realizations that they were unable to see before.
    • einhverfr 13y ago
      A parallel is useful. My father joined the Junior ROTC in high school, and the ROTC in college. He rose eventually to the rank of second lieutenant in the US Army Reserve. He started taking some of his college time to do charity work in Mexico and eventually ended up helping build houses in a Native American community that had finished an uprising against the government. He returned to file for conscientious objector status only to discover he had been promoted to First Lieutenant. Given that Vietnam was escallating, they refused his request for a general discharge and he refiled. They called him up for active duty and he refused. They sent him to to the stockade and he set himself up as the go-to person for helping people apply for conscientious objector status. His request for a general discharge was rejected again, on the basis that he was too honorable for it. Six months later (more time in the stockade, I think totalling around a year), they reached a deal where he would teach a driving course and be honorably discharged. The course was done on film, but by the time they finished it, they discovered that Lt. Travers had made such a name for himself in the stockade in terms of helping people apply for discharges that they couldn't use it. At the end of the day he was honorably discharged and the court martial called off. It's one thing to watch movies or think about things. It is another thing to see the results of war with one's own eyes.
  • sophacles 13y ago
    Are you saying it is impossible for a person to change their stance based on time and increased exposure to something? Heck if you had asked me when I was 20 my stance on any number of things and then asked again today, you'd find they had changed. The basic facts about them haven't changed, but my perspective and exposure to their consequences sure has,and therefore so has my understanding and attitude towards them. How is it so unbelievable that a kid wanting to serve his country was changed by the experience of doing so, having been placed to see what it means firsthand? Finally, it is well understood that brain development continues into the mid 20s - so changes to thinking should be physiologically expected at least.
  • PhasmaFelis 13y ago
    Have you known many, um...humans? We are all of us terribly, terribly eager to be on the right side. When we see evidence that our side is wrong, our first instinct is to doubt it, to discredit it, or to ignore it entirely. Changing our minds on issues of core identity does not come easily, if at all. Some of us realize all this; some fewer struggle against it; fewer still manage to actually escape it, sometimes, for a while, in some cases. God knows I try, but the definition of the beast is that we rationalize failure as success; you can never know whether you've actually succeeded or just found a new level of self-deception. Young Manning's "spectacular naivete" is what the rest of us call "the human condition." But maybe you're the one actual rational human being in all of history. Congratulations.
    • anigbrowl 13y ago
      That makes perfect sense to me, and I've also been aware since my early teens that there are plenty of people out there who will try to manipulate people on that basis. Count me out from this moral vacuity you describe.
  • jcc80 13y ago
    "taking his story at face value requires adopting a position of spectacular naiveté." It really doesn't. Just need ability to put yourself in the other person's shoes. Admittedly not easy. Hard enough to do when building an app for users, let alone analyzing someone else's life choices.
  • SamBoogie 13y ago
    Apparently it's not all that exclusive to get top-secret clearance to government intel (as evidenced by the Snowden incident). Also, who is it that was calling him 'very smart, opinionated, and political'? It could be that he was smart, opinionated, and political in favor of the agenda that the army invaded Iraq & Afghanistan under. If I'm in a position of power in the Army and I see that someone is smart and opinionated in favor of my agenda, that's someone likely to gain a security clearance from me. I don't completely disagree with you though. It seems pretty logical to me that war is a nasty business where morals are swept under the rug. I think it would take more thorough research to postulate on Manning's political leanings prior to the war. My gut feeling is he was liberal-leaning prior, and his conscience was attacked by the reality of what he experienced.
• jfoutz 13y ago
  More likely, it's easy to convince a teenager. "yeah, there may be a few rogues out in the middle of a war zone. There are hundreds of thousands that serve with honor, and those that don't will be punished. Please sign here.
  • jlgreco 13y ago
    Absolutely, though I'd consider such naive trusting to fall somewhere in the general neighborhood of "living under a rock".
    • philangist 13y ago
      Or being 18 years old ;)
  • graycat 13y ago
    One view of the military recruiting teenagers is that the military exploits the fact that a large fraction of teenagers are really eager to belong to something.
    • anigbrowl 13y ago
      If that's your argument, then we shouldn't trust them with the ability to vote, enter into contracts, or get married.
      • praptak 13y ago
        Only if we start from the premise that there is no middle ground between totally infallible and too stupid to take any responsibility.
      • graycat 13y ago
        I meant teenage boys. Okay, you have a really nice daughter, cute, sweet, pretty, darling, adorable, precious, a girl you have never been able to say "No" to, who has had you wrapped around her little finger since she was six months old, great student, cooks, sews, plays piano, great babysitter, loves kids, popular, etc. and at 16 falls in love with a boy 18 and wants to get married. You "trust" him with your daughter? That little scenario aside, the claim in my statement is that the military doesn't just use the strong desire of teenage boys to be members of groups but exploits it. The exploitation is in basic training, etc. It's a manipulation. For voting, entering into contracts, and usually even marriage, the role of manipulation is usually much lower and the consequences less deadly.