Comment by anongraddebt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anongraddebt | Hacker News Reader

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I used to be a fairly strong supporter of our military. Not blanket support (since there are always exceptions to anything), and I wasn't super enthusiastic/patriotic like some are, but in general I had a pretty positive view.

My uncle is a general in the Air Force, all three of my grandfathers fought in WW2 (my Dad's biological father was killed by a drunk driver when he was 7), etc etc. I have pictures of my grandfather standing under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris with the tank squad he commanded.

Wikileaks helped change my mind quite a bit. Among the many things they published, there was one video that really stood out: POV camera from a apache as the pilot releases a missile into a group of civilians that included a number of journalists. Things like this couldn't be ignored, because of Wikileaks record. You couldn't start off down a path of rationalizing, etc. They made you face up to the ground-level reality.

I still support and appreciate the people who serve in our armed forces, but thanks to Wikileaks I have a much more nuanced,skeptical, and (I believe) more appropriate view.

>They made you face up to the ground-level reality.

The news media has consciously hidden and censored the ground level reality of war since Vietnam, where they made the mistake of showing families the graphic ground level realities of war in color while they ate TV dinners in their living rooms. This created what was perhaps the greatest anti war sentiment in US history -- it was not sustainable. Meanwhile Hollywood perpetually pushed out war and action movies glorifying violence while also censoring the disgusting reality of it.

why was anti war sentiment not sustainable for tv news stations?

because "Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media"

Manning's Collateral Murder video was a turning point in my political views.

To see the people responsible for getting that out - something that should never have been kept secret - imprisoned and hunted across the world has only confirmed those views.

I assume you’re talking about this video.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007,_Baghdad_airst...

Reading the Wikipedia entry seems to indicate the Apache’s has reason to believe they were hostile forces. Indeed, some of the men with the journalists had weapons and were in the same spot as harassing fire had come from earlier.

Have you watched the video itself?

I have. It seems like a tragedy of war, which unfortunately happens some times.

I didn’t think it was some great revelation about the US military.

If random bombardment of civilians without a positive ID is standard operating procedure for the US military (and then concealing that the people killed were civilians until this information was leaked), then I would say that this was a revelation for me about the US military.

Then firing on the dad who stopped his car to try to help the civilians injured by our strike, killing him and injuring his kids? Yeah, I had no idea that medical assistance was no longer considered protected in war.

I guess it’s the context.

Being in the company of armed men who aren’t friendly forces while US forces are under fire in close proximity seems like a bad idea as well t wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume you are hostile forces.

And as for the ambulance - “The van had no visible markings to suggest it was an ambulance or a protected vehicle”

> US forces are under fire in close proximity

I'd be curious how close the proximity was. What I've read indicated that somewhere in that region, and somewhere earlier in the day, they had been under fire. If US forces were under fire in that area recently, it seems like it'd make sense for the journalists to bring security with them.

> “The van had no visible markings to suggest it was an ambulance or a protected vehicle”

Sure, but you can see that all they were doing was collecting the injured.

Not arguing your perspective isn’t valid, just sharing my own.

From the Wikipedia article it seems to state that the armed men were in an area where shooting had come from before and were in the path of oncoming soldiers.

And in terms of loading injured people, the enemy does pick up their own injured. My understanding is unless you’re clearly marked as medical personnel, you’ll be regarded as hostile.

Can clearly see where the concern comes from, but at least my own perspective is that it’s not that unusual in war.

This https://collateralmurder.wikileaks.org/

It made even one involved soldier to speak out: https://www.wired.com/2011/04/ethan-mccord/

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