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David McBride: former army lawyer sentenced to five years for stealing and leaking Afghanistan war documents (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

40 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Complete bullshit. Regimes that punish whistleblowers harder than war criminals reveal themselves as dreaming of tyranny.

The entire trial was cooked, and I'm furious :(

That non parole period is nuts too, pure revenge. What danger does this man represent? If he's out on the streets some war criminals better watch their backs?

edit: I should add, it's also quite frustrating that at the end of all this top brass has had no light shone on them, which was his initial goal on leaking. He thought the SAS was being investigated overmuch as a distraction from leadership failures. I guess we'll never know. A slap on the wrist for the executioners, no systematic investigation, and an inconvenient man in gaol.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Not going to downvote you, partly because I only downvote spam and partly because kbin doesn't federate downvotes so I can't even see downvotes from you and vice versa.

But I fundamentally disagree. One of the lessons of Nuremberg was that obeying orders isn't a good enough reason to commit war crimes.

One of the corollaries to that, for me, is that obeying rules isn't a good enough reason to be complicit in covering up war crimes either.

If a secret is a crime it's more treasonous to keep it a secret, because the people of our nations haven't voted to leave the Geneva Conventions and go out and commit war crimes.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I just don't think we can live in such a black and white world.

I wish we could.

I'm not saying you're wrong in any point though, I think i you're entirely right. Just it's all an impossible situation.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

I'd say believing that leaking military secrets is treasonous no matter what's being leaked is a more black and white opinion than believing the responsibility is on the individuals involved to determine if keeping the secret is unjust.