The Dangers of Acting Ethically

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning

When I was a child I was told to "do what's right" and to tell the truth. Though I have developed a somewhat more sophisticated system of ethics and sense of morality, these two exhortations remain moral mainstays. Granted, doing what's right isn't always crystal clear and telling the truth sometimes steps on people's toes. The tasks are thus to determine what is the morally right action and how best to tell the truth.

I imagine these considerations, or something like them, raged in Army Pfc. Bradley Manning's mind when he saw what was happening in the U.S. military. Rape, torture, indiscriminate killing of civilians (to name but a few) were all there to see in his role in the US Army. He was expected to see it and keep his "mouth shut". The question must have surfaced in his mind,
"At what point is following orders outweighed by higher moral principle?"

Evidently, his decision was that doing the right thing involved telling the truth about what was happening inside the US military. The higher good was exposing wrongdoing so that it could be corrected. The higher good was truth telling. But the military doesn't see it this way. To them, following orders is the ultimate "right thing". Apparently, it does not matter that the orders are morally wrong in most minds. It just matters that the orders were given.

Bradley Manning knew what he was doing and probably knew the consequences but elected to release the details of military wrong doing anyway. His mistake was in expecting that anything would really change inside the military which has stayed busy trying to cover the left and right flank. Wrong was done but their only response was to portray Manning as a traitor to his country. Instead of investigating the torture, the killings and other misdeeds the mainstream media in this country followed the lead of military command like cows being led around by the nose. The media have fallen for the classic misdirect. While what Manning released demonstrated terrible misdeeds by the military, the military command tried (somewhat successfully) to distract by making Manning the evildoer. In fact, Bradley Manning simply told the truth or, more accurately, let the truth tell itself.

We are in deep trouble as a society. Telling the truth about evil should be expected not punished. The military, major corporations and politicians all want the truth to go away when, as it often is, inconvenient for them. They will make sure it goes away one way or another. Bradley Manning's fate was sealed the moment he made the moral decision. In this world, acting ethically is a very dangerous thing to do. We need more like Bradley Manning.