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"In Mr. Finkel's book, he writes about the aerial weapons team attack. As, I read an online excerpt in Google Books, I followed Mr. Finkel's account of the event belonging to the video. I quickly realize that Mr. Finkel was quoting, I feel in verbatim, the audio communications of the aerial weapons team crew.
"It is clear to me that Mr. Finkel obtained access and a copy of the video during his tenure as an embedded journalist. I was aghast at Mr. Finkel's portrayal of the incident. Reading his account, one would believe the engagement was somehow justified as 'payback' for an earlier attack that led to the death of a soldier. ... For me it's all a big mess, and I am left wondering what these things mean, and how it all fits together. It burdens me emotionally. ...
"I hoped that the public would be as alarmed as me about the conduct of the aerial weapons team crew members. I wanted the American public to know that not everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan are targets that needed to be neutralized, but rather people who were struggling to live in the pressure cooker environment of what we call asymmetric warfare."
Dangerous Information
A final comment or two before I leave for the start of Manning's trial. Is it not transparent what our government wants to keep hidden from us? Is it not a safe bet that the court proceedings will be orchestrated such that what remains hidden will not be revealed? But truth has a way of seeping out. I trust that it will.
Friends in the Los Angeles Catholic Worker have given this very serious issue a light touch with bumper sticker: "Jesus Loves WikiLeaks -- Mark 4:22." Here's the verse from Mark: "Whatever is hidden away will be brought out into the open, and whatever is covered up will be uncovered."
Which prompts the question: Where are the leaders of Christian institutions on all this? Deafening silence.
Sometimes it takes a compassionate but truth-telling outsider to throw light on our country, its leaders, and its policies. After the attacks of 9/11, Bishop Peter Storey of South Africa, a long-time fearless opponent of the earlier apartheid regime, offered this prophetic word:
"I have often suggested to American Christians that the only way to understand their mission is to ask what it might have meant to witness faithfully to Jesus in the heart of the Roman Empire. ..."American preachers have a task more difficult, perhaps, than those faced by us under South Africa's apartheid, or by Christians under Communism. We had obvious evils to engage; you have to unwrap your culture from years of red, white, and blue myth.
"You have to expose, and confront, the great disconnect between the kindness, compassion, and caring of most American people and the ruthless way American power is experienced, directly and indirectly, by the poor of the earth. You have to help good people see how they have let their institutions do their sinning for them.
"This is not easy among people who really believe that their country does nothing but good. But it is necessary, not only for their future, but for us all. All around the world there are those who believe in the basic goodness of the American people, who agonize with you in your pain, but also long to see your human goodness translated into a different, more compassionate way of relating with the rest of this bleeding planet."
A Charism Moment
Bradley Manning has given us a charism-moment -- a Christian belief in total consecration to Jesus -- and a chance to reflect on all this. It is up to us now to unwrap the red, white and blue myth and ask ourselves if we are up to taking the kind of risks required by the times, if we really believe we are "our brother's keeper."
As we did our best on Saturday to wave our Veterans for Peace flags, I thought back to the President's May 23 speech on drones and on Guantanamo. With eight American flags behind him and one on his lapel, Barack Obama referred to the "ruthless demagogues who litter history." He then added that "the flag of the United States will still wave from small town cemeteries ... to distant outposts abroad. And that flag will still stand for freedom."
And I thought of the late Howard Zinn's observation: "There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."
Obama concluded his long speech with his customary: "And may God bless the United States of America." If there is a God of Justice (and I believe there is), we run the risk of forfeiting that blessing, unless and until we stop playing the role of violence-prone Cain; that is, if we fail to recognize, as Bradley Manning did, the mandate to be keepers, not oppressors, of our brothers and sisters.
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