In response to the WikiLeak's release of graphic video showing a U.S. military attack killing more than a dozen civilians, including two Reuters news staff, the military has decided on transparency. Spencer Ackerman has the the statement and a link to the documentation they've released regarding the incident.
We are aware that several media outlets are airing footage depicting gunfire from a U.S. helicopter and claiming that this footage was recorded during an incident in 2007 in which two Reuters reporters were killed. At this time, we are working to verify the source of the video, its veracity, and when or where it was recorded. The incident presumably associated with this video was investigated in 2007, and the releasable portions of that investigation are available [here].
This is a move toward transparency that should have been practiced from the moment the army found out they killed a number of innocents, and importantly two Reuters employees. The killing of innocents is the collateral damage that is inevitable in war, and what makes a war of choice rather than necessity that much more immoral. That this was a war of choice creates even greater responsibility on the U.S. to be honest in how it conducts that war, and honest with the American people who are sending their sons and daughters to fight it.
There's also the practical fact that cover-ups are almost always far more damaging than the event they are meant to hide. In this case, because two of the innocents killed were connected with a media organization, it was inevitable that the truth would come out. But it's compounded when it sustains the myth that war is not hell and that the U.S. doesn't conduct war that way, and it's dangerous, as Glenn writes:
Shining light on what our government and military do is so critical precisely because it forces people to see what is really being done and prevents myth and propaganda from distorting those realities. That's why the administration fights so hard to keep torture photos suppressed, why the military fought so hard here to keep this video concealed (and why they did the same with regard to the Afghan massacre), and why whistle-blowers, real journalists, and sites like WikiLeaks are the declared enemy of the government. The discussions many people are having today -- about the brutal reality of what the U.S. does when it engages in war, invasions and occupation -- is exactly the discussion which they most want to avoid.
But there's a serious danger when incidents like this Iraq slaughter are exposed in a piecemeal and unusual fashion: namely, the tendency to talk about it as though it is an aberration. It isn't. It's the opposite: it's par for the course, standard operating procedure, what we do in wars, invasions, and occupation. The only thing that's rare about the Apache helicopter killings is that we know about it and are seeing what happened on video. And we're seeing it on video not because it's rare, but because it just so happened (a) to result in the deaths of two Reuters employees, and thus received more attention than the thousands of other similar incidents where nameless Iraqi civilians are killed, and (b) to end up in the hands of WikiLeaks, which then published it. But what is shown is completely common. That includes not only the initial killing of a group of men, the vast majority of whom are clearly unarmed, but also the plainly unjustified killing of a group of unarmed men (with their children) carrying away an unarmed, seriously wounded man to safety -- as though there's something nefarious about human beings in an urban area trying to take an unarmed, wounded photographer to a hospital....
All of this is usually kept from us. Unlike those in the Muslim world, who are shown these realities quite frequently by their free press, we don't usually see what is done by us. We stay blissfully insulated from it, so that in those rare instances when we're graphically exposed to it, we can tell ourselves that it's all very unusual and rare. That's how we collectively dismissed the Abu Ghraib photos, and it's why the Obama administration took such extraordinary steps to suppress all the rest of the torture photos: because further disclosure would have revealed that behavior to be standard and common, not at all unusual or extraordinary.
Perhaps the majority of Americans don't want to know what's been done in their name. Perhaps ignorance is bliss and the routine revelation of the conduct of war wouldn't phase America a bit because America wouldn't pay attention. But we have a right to know and to be told. After all, this is happening in our names, with our troops, and our treasury.
And for the rest of the world, and particularly for the Muslim world, it's critical. Max Fisher points out in The Atlantic that transparency with Iraqis has been the key element of whatever successes we have had there.
Nothing about this war was done right by the Bush administration, from making the choice to go to war against a country that did not pose a threat to us, to creating a vast fabric of lies to justify that choice, to deciding to torture to back up those lies. These were dangerous, immoral, and extremely damaging decisions. That damage can't be undone, but it can be mitigated. The only way to do it, though, is with sunlight, even if that means looking backward.
For a critical reaction from someone who's been there, don't miss ranger995's diary.