RSSQuestions of Ethics: Charles Rangel, Bradley Manning, et al.
Gene Lalor | July 30, 2010
Making ethical judgments is a complex business, fraught with nuances and subjectivity.
Ethics has been defined as “the study and evaluation of human conduct in the light of moral principles. . . the standard of conduct that individuals have constructed for themselves or as the body of obligations and duties that a particular society requires of its members. Ethics has developed as people have reflected on the intentions and consequences of their acts.”
That definition may be reduced to four words, doing the right thing.
There’s a narrow distinction between unethical behavior and simply lying although some form of lying is usually associated with a lack of ethics.
Thus, when Elena Kagan dissembled in her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee by saying she had merely “suggested” changes in the language of an anti-partial birth document to which she objected she was both lying and acting unethically to accomplish her goals: http://tiny.cc/9l5jb
On the other hand, when President Obama appeared on “The View” today and listed dealing with the H1N1 “pandemic” as one of the “thorns” of his first 18 months in office he was dramatizing, bloviating, in a word, lying. There was no H1N1 pandemic in 2009 as he well knew. It was no more a pandemic than the average year’s flu. The Center for Disease Control had grossly exaggerated the H1N1 virus danger and the manufacturers of the Swine Flu vaccine reaped a windfall in the billions.
Much more clearcut as unethical behavior were the actions of United States congressman Rep. Charles Rangel and Pfc. Bradley Manning of the 10th Mountain Division Second Brigade in Baghdad.
Rangel, a popular Korean War hero and virtual institution in the House of Representatives after 40 years in office, has been charged with no less than 13 counts of ethics violations ranging from concealing income to a “pattern of submitting inaccurate and incomplete financial disclosure statements” to “solicitation of donations for a City College center named after” him.
As this is being written, Rep. Rangel is attempting to cut a deal with the House Ethics Committee in order to save his job. Word is, a deal was not struck maybe because of his intransigence or Republican correct insistence that he not get off with a mild rebuke or slap on the wrist.
The very fact that Rangel was still wheeling and dealing at this late stage of the House investigation lends crediblity to the various charges against him and the fact that investigators were so convinced they had the goods on him that they had gone this far is indicative of a substantial assurance of guilt.
Conventional wisdom holds that speaking of ethics and politicians in the same breath is as oxymoronic as jumbo shrimp but Rangel is entitled to a fair hearing to determine the degree of his unethical behavior, if any.
Ironically, his Democrat compatriots in the House are acting unethically by bargaining with him. If the evidence is as cut and dried as it seems, to negotiate with Rangel rather than moving ahead with a full public hearing, in effect a trial, is almost as wrong as the charges against him.
Problem is, that trial wouldn’t be held before September, less than two months before the off-year elections on November 2nd, and therein lies the rub. Democrat Speaker Nancy Pelosi had vowed upon taking the gavel in 2008 to “clean the swamp,” her reference to the alleged dirt left behind by Republicans and their alleged lack of ethical behaviors.
The House doesn’t get more unethical or swampy than it is now with Charlie. Democrats should fish or cut bait, cut out the negotiations, cut Charlie loose and drop the charges or prepare for a trial to expel him asap.
That would be the ethical thing to do.
There are ethical violations and there are ETHICAL VIOLATIONS. The charges against Rep. Rangel, though numerous and serious are relatively small potatoes in the greater scheme of things. They don’t involve life or death.
The accusations against baby-faced Pfc. Bradley Manning clearly do involve lives and deaths, possibly many deaths, and if he is found guilty he should be sent to Leavenworth for the remainder of his sorry days, if not executed for treason during wartime.
No doubt Manning believed he was doing the right thing, just as Daniel Elsberg felt in 1971 when he self-righteously turned over the top secret “Pentagon Papers” to the New York Times because he felt Vietnam was “a wrongful war.” That treasonous act led to massive upheavals in American streets, eventually to our losing that war, to the slaughter of thousands of South Vietnamese by the Communist Viet Cong, and to a million consigned to “reeducation” (brainwashing) camps.
Whether 22 year old Pfc. Manning thought through the consequences of his treason is not known. What is known is that, with his top secret clearance in his brigade’s intelligence operation, he accessed and stole thousands of pages of secret, sensitive military documents relating to the war in Afghanistan and through an intermediary released them to WikiLeaks.com which promptly published 76,000 of them.
There are few things as dangerous as a self-righteous, determined, and unethical man.
WikiLeaks has announced it is in possession of 15,000 additional Afghan documents which it is redacting before release. That comes a few days late and a few bucks short. Significant damage has already been done not only to the war effort but to friendly Afghanis who were named in the initial release and whose lives are now in peril.
Thanks to Manning and WikiLeaks, the insurgents, the Taliban, and the al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, none of which is known for tender mercies, now have access to the same tens of thousands of secret war files.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen said WikiLeaks and its insufferable founder, Julian Assange, a modern day peacenik, “might already have on their hands the blood of a young soldier or that of an Afghan family:” http://tiny.cc/kck6e
Mullen is downplaying the effects of Manning’s deeds. Many more than one “young soldier,” American and Afghani, and many more than a single “Afghan family” could very well lose their lives as a result of the private’s breach of good conduct and breach of ethics. If Assange, WikiLeaks, and Manning don’t yet have American and Afghan blood on their hands, it’s a very good bet they soon will, and a lot of it.
“Pfc. Manning already was charged by the military in July with illegally taking secret State Department files and disseminating a classified video, which defense officials said was the one released by WikiLeaks showing a U.S. military helicopter firing on a group of people in Baghdad. Two Reuters journalists and seven others were killed in the 2007 incident.”
That’s known in the military as the fog of war. Tens of thousands of the Allies lost their lives in World War II as a result of such “friendly fire.”
Politically aware from a young age, bullied by his peers with whom he was often at loggerheads, discontented with his brief stint in the military, a hometown friend said of Manning, “If he did it, it was not to make money or be famous. He would only do something like this if he thought it was right.”
All very much like another malcontent who didn’t much care for his country, Daniel Elsberg.
America won World War II. It’s very possible we will loss the war in Afghanistan just as we lost the war in Vietnam and the consequences for the Afghan people will be similar to that of the Vietnamese after we bug out. And that blood also will be on the hands of Assange and WikiLeaks, but especially on Pfc. Manning whose ethical irresponsibility caused it all.
Contributor's website: http://www.genelalor.com/
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