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Manning in his military uniform.

Some weeks ago I watched that video. If you go here and scroll down a little ways you will see it. It is called "Collateral Murder." I should warn you, it is not an easy video to watch. I had trouble believing I was seeing a real video recording of about a dozen people being murdered. I was horrified. Then I felt rage and confusion. I found myself screaming at the men doing the killing. I was appalled at their absolute indifference to human life to the act of killing. When it finished (it took about 17 minutes) I was left with a profound feeling of despair. I felt that I did not want to live in a place where this kind of thing can happen not just occasionally but more or less daily. Yet there is no place to move to unless I just want to kill myself. Which I don't, really. I suspect that I am not alone in having this kind of emotional reaction.

A still from the video of the attack.

What I saw on the video was worse than earthquakes or tornadoes. Or disease. They cause suffering, but there is something especially horrifying about human beings doing this to other human beings. It is even worse when the killing is not an act of rage but something that is done in a methodical and dispassionate manner. When it is done even with joy with enthusiasm. "Pick up that weapon" one of the gunners pleaded. He was speaking to a wounded man who, of course, could not hear him. The soldier wanted the excuse he needed to kill again. "Good shooting" another said, after one of his buddies killed several people. "Thanks" the gunner replied. It was as though they were at a fair trying to win some cheap prize. They were enjoying it.

As I tried to make some sense of what I had seen I ran into an interesting commentary by a soldier who had seen action in Iraq. It was on OpEdNews.com.: here

The observations of the soldier, Josh Stieber, are summed up by the OpEd reporter as follows:

Josh told me that the horror and disgust over the words and behaviors of the soldiers involved in killing the Reuters photographer are misplaced because they were doing what the system wanted them to do. He suggests that our challenge is to not question the men but, rather, the system and policies that created them. He's suggesting that the self-righteous indignation currently being aimed at the soldiers who did the shooting should be aimed at the leaders, the policies and values that the US has established for training soldiers.

The point is well taken. Perhaps we should not be so self-righteous about what we are seeing, as horrible as it is. This is what war is. This is the kind of behavior and people that war inevitably creates. It is toward the politicians who lead us into wars that we should direct our indignation.

Perhaps.

Its an interesting question. Who is responsible? The soldiers themselves? Politicians? The American people? Human nature? The wealthy people behind the military industrial complex? It would seem that we all share responsibility for this kind of thing. Perhaps graduations of guilt are irrelevant. Maybe its a binary thing guilty or innocent with no in-between. In that case none of us is in position to throw the first stone. Still, though, don't we as individuals have some responsibility for what we allow ourselves to become? We lose track of this fact because we are trained to believe authority. If authority tells us to injure or kill, it must be OK. And how many 18 year olds have any idea what they are choosing when they join the military? How many 22 year olds know when it is time to blow the whistle on brutal and illegal activities carried out by those in authority? Manning is the exception.

Another still from the video of the attack.

Once one grants the validity of war as a solution to a problem, one has made a choice that necessarily leads to unspeakable evil a choice that requires the gutting of our young people of their humanity. So we need to go back to the question of why the United States has embarked on a path of never-ending war.

Perhaps David Werner's "but why" approach will help us here.

David Werner, the author of "Where There Is No Doctor" recommends a "but why" game as a means of trying to expose the causes of events on increasing fundamental levels. (See for example, the use of this technique in a community diagnosis in "Health in Harmony A Program in Borneo that Links Community and Environmental Health" -- pp. 20ff -- which can be downloaded free, here). It is simple, really. One begins with the question, "why" and then in relation to each answer one continues to ask "but why" until arriving at the rock upon which everything else sits. Applied to the video that wikileaks made available, the technique might look something like this:

Q: Why were these people murdered?

A: Because that is the kind of thing war produces.

Q: But why were we at war?

A: Because the president and the politicians decided to go to war.

Q: But why did they decide to go to war?

A: To defend the American Empire.

Q: But why is it US policy to impose an Empire on the world?

A: To protect the financial interest of the very rich.

We seem to have dug down to solid rock. It is oil, after all, that is the key issue in the middle east. One would have to be pretty uninformed not to know that.

Let's go at this again:

Q: Why do the American people not vote the people responsible for this endless war policy out of office.

A: Because they are never offered presidential candidates that would oppose this policy. And only very rarely do voters have the chance to vote for less important public servants who

seriously oppose the idea of Empire.

Q: But why?

A: Because the very rich decide with their campaign contributions, their advertising, and their lobbies who the candidates will be.

Q: OK. But many Americans support these wars. Why can they not see what is in their interest?

A: Because they have been systematically fed a very distorted image of the world they live in by the mass media.

Q: But why does the mass media not present a broader and more balanced picture of what really are the issues?

A: Because the bulk of the media is owned by the same big corporations who benefit from the US world empire. And those that are not, are controlled by their advertisers again mostly big multi-national corporations.

It seems that all our "but why games" lead us back to the same rock big multinational corporations and the banks that support them. It is hard not to conclude that the kind economic system we have requires war. War, to be effective, requires the creation of human beings who have had their humanity gutted out of them who are no longer able to feel compassion in the face of suffering, take responsibility for who they are becoming, assert control over what they are doing, or be guided by a sense of affinity with all human beings. It requires the murder of countless people. And it requires the loss of our collective soul.

So who should be condemned for what we see in this video? Maybe that has to be left between the individuals involved and their God or higher self. I would suggest that the goal of an enlightened morality is not the condemnation of anyone for whatever they have done, but the challenging of people to take responsibility for what they will do and become in the future.

The practical question is, how do we bell this huge cat the corporate oligarchy that has usurped our world and is determined to treat it as its own? An extensive answer to that question is beyond the scope of this article, but I might suggest in passing that addressing the problem of ignorance will have to be central. That means education:

• Schools which teach children how to gather evidence and think.

• Election reform so that the rich cannot buy the outcomes.

• Education of voters.

• Better control of lobbyists.

• Spreading real news and alternate perspectives on the Internet.

• Keeping the Internet free.

• Educating young people who are thinking about enlisting, about what their decision might actually mean.

That kind of thing.

Much of it boils down the the simple fact that if the American people are to gain a clear understanding of the world in which they live, they must have accurate information. Without this information it is not possible to be responsible citizens. Unfortunately real information is often not available to the mainstream press and when it is, it is often ignored. The secrecy that hides the reality of US foreign policy is not mainly for the sake of national security. It is about hiding information that would expose the United States for what it is: a nation that has embarked on an illegal, unconstitutional, and ill-advised project to enslave and micromanage the rest of the world for the benefit of large multi-national corporations. It is a policy that undermines democracy at home and abroad, and that is pursued by means of lying, assassinations, state terrorism, endless war, and the crushing of the hopes of the non-wealthy throughout the world.

Bradley Manning is not un-American. He believed in the American ideals that he was undoubtedly taught in school, and he has acted in the worthy tradition of Top Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau, Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King Jr. In various ways all of these people articulated a simple and valid principle: when those in power violate the basic principles of the constitution, and when they act in opposition to the basic principles upon which this nation was founded, then it is the responsibility of the people to resist them, with civil disobedience if need be.

We are in danger of creating a life that is not worth living, except perhaps for those 400 or so billionaires who run the show. But in this process they too, even if they have not noticed it, are losing their souls their capacity for love, for identification with the rest of life, for affirming a meaning larger than their own appetites, and for relationships based on reciprocity rather than domination. And it is, after all, this loss of our individual and collective souls that is the greatest threat of all to a meaningful and worthwhile life. And to life itself.

I believe Bradley Manning has earned a place of honor in American history for his courageous act in exposing the un-American activities of the American government.

www.opednews.com/articles/1/A-Worthy-Act-of-Civil-Diso-by-James-Hunter-100611-780.html