Oathbreakers 2

(Another partial answer to Jim Wright on Bradley Manning. [Added] I didn't post this one there, either.)

All the US service oaths I know contain a paradox: they are oaths to uphold the constitution, some laws, and obey one's superiors. But how when one's superiors are corrupt, all the way to the top? Where does loyalty lie?

Do you really believe that going through channels would have worked for Manning? In a time when we have to defend the idea that torture is illegal? In a time when the Secretary of State of the United States stood up in front the United Nations General Assembly and lied to justify a war? None of the Bush administration officials who made the war, who have made torture policy, who argued that it was legal, have been disciplined in any way. There has been no action to set matters straight in any way by the Obama administration—the war criminals of the Bush administration keep their pensions, their private lives, their war profits—yes, I'm looking at you, Mr. Former Vice President.

You know this. What, exactly, could PFC Bradley Manning do against so much corruption? As far as I can see the only effective action he could take was the action he did take. We can argue the law and the merits of the law endlessly. But what is the point?  We need to step back and ask ourselves what we have become and why we have become it. And, if we feel very brave, we might ask ourselves why Bradley Manning faces decades in prison while the people who killed hundreds of thousands in Iraq, who are making the USA enemies worldwide with their dirty wars and their killings of civilians, go free and are lauded as great men.  What harm could Bradley's revelations do compared to that? 

I think we are like the extended family that is run by violent fathers and uncles, and who beats up the son who goes to the police, whose members say that everything was all right until someone blew the whistle.  No.  Everything was not all right.  Everything that went before is not irrelevant, is not to be ignored.  No-one lets bygones be bygones when someone has died, let alone the hundreds of thousands who have died.  And—the people you have rightly criticized for tearing the country apart—they are the ones who have done this, who are doing this.  Not Manning's defenders on the left.  Not the moderate conservatives like you.  The people who made the dirty wars, who looted the banks, who wrecked the global economy. 

Let us fight the real enemy, not the poor schmuck who cries out, "My god, what have we done?"

Oathbreakers 1

(A partial answer to Jim Wright on Bradley Manning. [Added] I didn't post it there; my wife thought it was too inflammatory.)

My impression, as an outsider, is that all the official channels Manning might have used to raise the issues he encountered were closed during the Bush II administration, and have not been re-opened. If this was to come out, it would have to have come out as a leak.

None of the warmongers of the Bush administration have so much as lost their pensions.  Instead, their abuses have become settled policy.  So, Manning embarrasses the USA, and possibly weakens some programs, and gets, probably, decades in jail.  But top Bush administration officials start a series of wars that make a huge number of enemies in Central Asia and the Middle East, inaugurate policies of torture and assassination that make even more enemies, go free and are lauded as great men.

They also took oaths.

The Non-Lynching of George Zimmerman

(In response to a conservative claim that George Zimmerman is being "lynched" in the press.)

To be lynched, someone has to die. Someone did die. But it wasn't Zimmerman.

Why Do You Want To Conserve That?

Eugene Volokh, taking another jump over the shark, has defended the Zimmerman verdict. It was back in 2005 when he argued for torturing criminals before execution (commentary from Henry Quiggin Farrell.) I don't think this man's legal reasoning is sound.

OK, conservatism is about conserving what is worthwhile about the past. Racism? Torture? I think you guys are crazy!

Zimmerman/Martin

A basic principle: the stalker does not get to claim they killed their victim in self-defense, even if the victim turns and fights. All Zimmerman had to do to avoid personal risk was go home.

Martin ran away from Zimmerman, who pursued in his automobile. By the account of Martin's girlfriend, who Martin called, he then stopped, breathing heavily. There was a bump and cell phone noise. Martin's girlfriend screamed. Then the phone was disconnected.

Transcript of George Zimmerman's Call to the Police

Transcript of police interview of Trayvon Martin's girlfriend.

Links:

1. Frederick Leatherman's law blog.
2. Coverage of the case at Mother Jones.
3. Ta-Nehisi Coates, arguing that the conclusion is in accord with Florida law.
4. Trayvon Martin short biography (NPR), longer biography (Miami Herald)
5. George Zimmerman short biography, longer biography (Sunshine State News.)
6. The Onion: Nation Throws Hands Up, Tells Black Teenagers To Do Their Best Out There

I do not see a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman committed “the unjustifiable, inexcusable, and intentional killing of a human being without deliberation, premeditation, and malice," which is to say manslaughter under Florida law.

There is one ray of hope here: this is news. 50 years ago, this case would have sunk without a trace.

Libertarians: Pwnd By Peter Weiss

"Screaming in language that no-one understands / Of the rights that we grabbed with our own bleeding hands / When we wiped out the bosses and stormed through the wall / Of the prison they told us would outlast us all!"—Peter Weiss, The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade (defensively called Marat/Sade by just about everyone who writes about it.)

The play is about the failure of the French Revolution of 1793. But it occurs to me that the verse could equally apply to Tea Party Republicans or libertarians. Does anyone know what their leaders are talking about when they talk about "freedom?" How can freedom involve so much war, poverty, imprisonment, and pain?

The Law is the Loser

Ta-Nehisi Coates, "On The Killing Of Trayvon Martin By George Zimmerman." He thinks that, by the law, this was a reasonable decision, however troubling. These are derived from my first thoughts in response to Coates in his comments.

Meanwhile in Florida, Marissa Alexander, black, with a stalker ex-husband, has been sentenced to 20 years for firing a warning shot at the man, who was violating a restraining order.

By the letter of law perhaps Coates is right. There will be time, later, to pour over the trial transcripts and the minutae of the law. I will be watching Frederick Leatherman's blog for more thoughts. Meantime, though, I think the popular intuitions about these two cases are more accurate than the measured legal thoughts. This is unjust, and there is little chance, in the short term, of seeing Florida law turned in the direction of justice.

I am struck by the inability of the US legal system to render justice. We see it constantly: in the failure to prosecute anyone for the looting of the banking system, in the abrogation of the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects," in the mainstreaming of torture, in the gutting, on narrow technical grounds, of the Voting Rights Act, in the sentencing of Alexander to 20 years while Zimmerman walks. We are in a legal regime as corrupt as that of 1856.