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Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

mpyne, funny I see you a lot around these kind of topics these days :)

Anyway, you make good points. But regarding the Arab Spring, even if Manning was indeed a catalyst for these movements (which I highly doubt), having an uprising does not always lead to thousands of deaths. As you can see those who were responsible for the deaths in these countries were the government leaders who refused to listen to the crowd and sent the army and tanks instead of promoting dialog. The responsibility for these deaths is very clear and it would have nothing to do with Manning.

And your reference to the "invasion of Iraq" as "formation of democracy" is dubious at best. Installing a puppet Pro-US government is hardly anything democratic, and the elections process in Iraq have been showing many issues (threats on voters, fraud, etc...). Hardly a good example of a "democracy at work".

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Think of it though, if I set a bomb somewhere and someone else tells you to walk over near it, that person bears some measure of responsibility as well, because they know the consequences that must result from a bomb detonation. If Manning is to take some of the credit for the Arab Spring then he must also bear some of the responsibility. You don't topple despots without bloodshed, so by all means take credit for your good deeds but don't try to weasel out of the negative effects you should also have known about. Of course, I don't know if Pfc. Manning himself even knows that people are making this claim for him, so I don't ascribe it to him personally.

In fairness to your latter point, we also call the U.S. a democracy despite the threads on voters, fraud, etc. ;)

> In fairness to your latter point, we also call the U.S. a democracy despite the threads on voters, fraud, etc. ;)

Democracy is not only about the election process. I was just highlighting the fact that you cannot even START a democracy if you do not have proper elections in the first place. The US may have issues as well but it's an established democracy for a number of other reasons and it would not stop being one unless drastic measures are taken against accepted civil liberties.

> so by all means take credit for your good deeds but don't try to weasel out of the negative effects you should also have known about.

G.W. Bush likes to think the war in Iraq was mission accomplished, WMD dismantled, democracy restore to Iraq, a great success.

When will he and the US government stop trying to weasel out and come clean on their stupid mistake of starting the war in the first place?

I don't know when G. W. Bush will, but even his own party relegated him to obscurity in the 2008 election, despite the fact that he was still the President at the time. To this day Iraq is an easy punching bag for politicians on both sides of the aisle.

In fact I read part of the HASC's proposed NDAA for FY-14 and despite being Republican-dominated the bill was full of warnings about applying the lessons learned from Iraq when deciding what to do, or not do, about the ongoing war in Syria.

It sounds to me like the U.S. government in all sectors is well-aware of how stupid that mistake was.

This is a very popular argument when blaming woman for being raped.

No, as the women being raped are not witting planners in their own attack.

This is, on the other hand, a very popular argument when blaming the getaway car drivers of bank robberies.

Are you trolling? You think Manning was a witting planner of Arab Spring?

You may not be able to read it because it's faded, but I mentioned the reasoning earlier. You do not "inspire" pro-democracy uprisings without knowing full-well that people will die.

"inspiring" and "planning" are two completely different things. You can, quite easily, inspire something without knowing that you will inspire it quid pro quo demonstrandum.

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