The Brighter the Light, The Stronger The Shadows

The news of the video and story distributed by Wikileaks continues to percolate into the national conversation, including the Christian Science Monitor. Their coverage is concerned with contrasting the story the US Military told Reuters in 2007, with the account told by the video tape. [spoiler alert: there are differences - significant ones]

Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com has been following the story since 06:00 this morning and has posted several updates. He is pretty rough on the slant of publishers such as Mediaite.com (where my original post emanated from) who shoot the messenger for slandering the troops and/or making much of an aberration.

Greenwald also takes the time to flesh out the point that the callous and/or sadistic satisfaction shown by the soldiers shouldn't surprise anyone - they are a product of their training. When we accept that the training process has changed them in this way, it's easier to understand them under these circumstances. It may also help understand the source of the changes we as family members may see in them, when they return home. As Greenwald puts it,

If you take even well-intentioned, young soldiers and stick them in the middle of a dangerous war zone for years and train them to think and act this way, this will inevitably be the result. The video is an indictment of the U.S. government and the war policies it pursues.

He closes his original post with the statement:

The value of the Wikileaks/Iraq video and the Afghanistan revelation is not that they exposed unusually horrific events. The value is in realizing that these events are anything but unusual.

If facets of military training impair a soldier's longterm moral compass when he or she is exposed to trauma, that soldier is being served poorly by a country they are sworn to defend.    I think we - that's us - you; me; the bank teller; the grocer; the school teacher... need to advance the need for a thoughtful conversation about this, until improvements are made.    It is the least we can do in support of our children, our brothers, sisters, wives and husbands who serve in the military.

Leak as Learning Opportunity

Today, Easter Monday, I returned home from my extended family in New York.  The sun was warm on a calm afternoon with a gentle breeze.  I ate watermelon ice cream with my two girls in our driveway after the four hour drive, happy to be home and alive on a beautiful Spring day.   I came up to my office and began looking through my incoming messages, to see ‘what’s behind door numbers one two and three,’ or in other words find out what’s new and exciting in the technosphere.  I was surprised and saddened to find the item below, from a site called Mediaite.com:

“In the past few weeks, the Pentagon has been waging battle on a whole new front: classified information that ends up on the Internet…In the following video, US Military in an Apache helicopter gravely mistake a group of Iraqi men for insurgents (what appears to be a camera is viewed by those in the helicopter to be a RPG.) Warning, the video below is graphic in nature.”

Mediaite labeled Wikileaks as the problem and its target in the article.  I’m really not sure why.  Wikileaks’ ‘…primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but … also expect[s] to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations.” 

I did not bring a dog to the fight between Wikileaks and anyone else; as a group it appears to have released information that matches its stated goal of exposing unethical behavior.  The most important thing in my humble view is that the story is out there, and maybe now we can discuss how to prevent the recurrence of such an incident.  The costs of this outcome are substantial, and long-lasting.  Perhaps the outcomes should be considered the (quoting Mediaite again) ‘…real threat to national security…’  

·        Our troops are killing non-combatants, and it’s being covered up.  There’s a good chance if the event is whitewashed, the effects on those troops is likely to be ‘unseen’ by military management, as well.  Threat to us:  more emotional problems, suicides, dislocation in military families, occurrences of substance abuse.

·        Our actions show we no longer recognize medical evacuation as part of the ‘rules of combatant engagement.’  The video and audio show the attack team is given permission to continue shooting at people who have been wounded, and are crawling away.  Threat to us:  If the hors de combat designation of the Geneva Convention won’t be honored by one side, there’s no incentive for the opposing side to do so.

The threat to the country’s security was exposed by Wikileaks when it published the story.  The man or woman behind the gun should not have to live with responsibility for the deaths of non-combatants, especially for shooting wounded.  Particularly, when the persons they’re shooting do not shoot back.  This ‘real threat’ remains, until the procedures our troops follow are changed.  Expediency can carry the day, but will serve our troops poorly.  

If the Military does not change those procedures to make the job safer for the soldier (and in the process for others) then the Military can only blame itself, or try and shoot the messenger, over the result.

Bubble, Bubble, Toil & Trouble...

Fed,Maiden Lane

[ Note: In January of this year, Robert Reich moved to a new Blog space to continue gathering his articles from here and there. Since he writes often this is a great way to keep up without the usual stream of celebrity sightings, tea party pot shots, and pharmaceutical adverts which are now ...pretty much everywhere. Thank you, Mr. R., for your distraction-free pages.]

 

Chesterton said, "I believe in getting into hot water. I think it keeps you clean." In his article "The Fed In Hot Water," Mr. Reich covers the Fed's recent disclosure that it assumed tens of billions of dollars of debt from investment banks, which the government now has full responsibility for. And did so quite a while before being authorized to do so by the Congress - as a unilateral decision.

 

Not completely new news; we knew the Fed was acting in a crisis mode to help support the economy, but the ‘new’ message is disclosure of how much money was paid and what it paid for - something the American people have been asking for quite a while. Some people are likely to be pretty ticked off to find out that the government covered debt assumed to buy out Hilton Hotel properties. Outraged may be an appropriate description for some.

 

But for many, this is TMI - too much information - to take in.  There's too much other 'stuff' in the main dialog, which already competes with stuff in our personal dialogs.  Examples:

• There aren't jobs enough for everyone, and jobs held feel less secure than ever.
• The cost of fruits - fresh, canned and frozen - is increasing as are staples and meats.  And gasoline.
• We have elected figures being called 'Nigger,' 'Faggot,' 'baby killer,' and 'Homo Communist' - by other Americans, and other elected officials. The senate and congress men and women, the people who speak for us, appear to accept this behavior.. 
• Information about our armed combat forces, our family members, in Afghanistan and Iraq is very sparse.  There’s no information at all about our forces in Japan, Bosnia, and South Korea.
• 'Celebrities' - Tiger Woods, Jesse James, and Michael Jackson - are 'above the fold' news.
• The weather is crazy, flooding some areas and causing draught in others.

I wonder if at times Mr. Reich must feel like Cassandra.