Justice?

SPC Bradley Manning was arrested two weeks ago at his post in Iraq, and is currently being held in custody in Kuwait with no formal charges. His arrest came after a supposed admission that Manning was responsible for the release of confidential military materials to the whistleblower site WikiLeaks; namely, a video portraying U.S. soldiers firing on and killing innocent civilians and members of the press from an Apache helicopter in Baghdad in 2007.

WikiLeaks released the video this past April, and was generally responded to with outrage. Shot from an Apache helicopter, the video clearly shows a shameless act of unprovoked aggression, an act that WikiLeaks has come to refer to as "Collateral Murder." It shows 22 year old Reuter's photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and his colleague, Saeed Chmagh, walking down a Baghdad street carrying their equipment, when they were gunned down and killed along with 10 other civilians by U.S. soldiers inside the helicopter. Two small children were also wounded in this attack.

The video had been kept under wraps, despite many attempts by Reuters to obtain it through the Freedom of Information Act. The military had also supposedly performed an investigation into the killings, and deemed the actions of its soldiers justified. According to a military official, "no innocent civilians were killed on our part deliberately. We took great pains to prevent that. I know that two children were hurt, and we did everything we could to help them. I don't know how the children were hurt." If you watch the video, it is clear that these comments are false (Warning: this video depicts murder, and is quite graphic and traumatic; it is NOT for the faint of heart).

The soldiers who shot and killed twelve innocent people for no good reason were never prosecuted nor were they formally reprimanded for their actions. BUT, the man who releases a video revealing these actions is being held for breaching confidentiality? What type of message is the U.S. military sending? That it is o.k. for soldiers to murder civilians, but not o.k. to talk about it? That revealing an embarrassing truth is a criminal act?

Whether or not these soldiers were acting on good faith intentions, they were blatantly indecorous, and should be treated as such. In contrast, I hope that Private Manning is punished in a manner that is reflective of the severity of his actions, and not of the corresponding dishonor that the military has experienced as a result of this embarrassing leak. But despite the internal conflicts this may have created for military personnel, the event was in any case an utter and unnecessary tragedy. My last thought goes to the families of Chmagh and Noor-Eldeen, of the other 10 victims, and all of the victims of collateral murder in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and in unspoken wars around the world.