Bradley Manning sentenced

Like it or not, but the military in many countries are organizations of tens of thousands of people, where lives are at stake, people die, and the success of any action depends on people doing what they are told and following the chain of coofftopicnd.

If everyone suddenly felt that doing what Manning did can be let go with a slap of the wrist, what do you think will happen to the discipline that is needed to make such an organization work?

Not too long ago, a sailor shouldering a navy officer would be flogged over a barrel for all to see, because harsh discipline is the only way to insure that a crew stays functioning and doesn't deteriorate into anarchy or mutiny.
 
Out of curiosity, why is everyone suddenly calling him 'her'?
I seem to remember that he hasn't even had hormone treatment, let alone surgery. So wouldn't that make him still 'him' for the time being?

I don't know any transgender people so I am not clear on where the point lies where you switch from addressing 'him' as 'her'
Could someone who knows more about this subject fill me in?
 
I feel its important to point out a lot of those sailors weren't there by choice so the floggings were meant to keep them "enthusiastic" and, ironically, the discipline was a major factor in defections to piracy.
 
Personal wishes? Manning hasn't had any treatment to become a woman, but as she's come out and said that's how she feels then its only a politeness to refer to her as a she. Biologically speaking she's still a dude but that's a minor point imo.
 
Surgery effectively changes sex, which is a physical attribute, gender relates to a sociocultural attribute. Manning has announced that she now of the feminine gender and as such should be referred to using female gender specific pronouns.
 
This.

I don't know the statistics on it, but I'm confident most transgenders are actually not post-op and hormone treatment. It's a very long and expensive process that many cannot afford.
 
Leaving aside the morality of whistleblowers such as Manning,Assange etc, it seems
to me that their motivation is egotistic rather than altruistic.
 
i know that warfare has casualties, and the civilian casualties are included. these numbers are ridiculous. more civilians are dying than combatants. and lets be honest, this far into the game is it worth it? not at all.

it makes no difference in i'm 18 or 80. the military doesnt work for itself, it works for the american people. that includes me.

it's amazing because these are objectively terrible things, but people are willing to put up with it as a 'cost of doing business'. thats not right. not only is the american military comically over funded, its grown frankly out of control.
 
i'm fully aware of the universal code of military justice. i understand that it tends to be more strict and i understand that soldiers are tried separately for different crimes.

please don't assume a lack of knowledge because i disagree with you. from my point of view morality should always be held above law. military or not. what manning did was a moral obligation.
 
because manning identifies as female, and so should be referred to as such. regardless of genitalia or hormone levels.
 
It helps to get the name right of something when you make a declaration of knowledge and awareness. It is the Uniformed Code of Military Justice. It is not universal and it only applies to the forces of the United States of America.
 
thats nitpicking and you know it. i typed universal when it was really uniform, thats not relevant. i know it only applies to the armed forces of america. Me making a small mistake of wording doesn't effect the integrity of what i'm saying in any way.
 
If you read some of my earlier posts you would know I'm not saying it's acceptable. I'm saying it's an expected byproduct of war and if you're shocked and appalled than you're kind of naive. It's like somebody finding out physical injury in martial arts is part of practicing them and then being amazed it happens in this day in age. We try to make training as safe as it can be now, we don't just accept getting physically injured and we take care of the issue when it happens, but due to the nature of the beast it's going to happen at some point. You don't have to cast aside your moral backbone to not be shocked and amazed and appalled at something that has always come with war.

You're right that it doesn't matter if you're 18 or 80. I wasn't saying your statement essentially wasn't true (although your contribution to warfare in tax money is probably something like .0000000001% of a dollar, paying for maybe a grain of gun powder). What I was saying is that your rhetoric was stronger than what you have to really back it up with and it makes your post look distasteful and contain an air of entitlement without having done much of anything yet. You may not look at it that way, but quite a few people will. It would benefit you to change how you approach the argument.

You're also mixing a ton of different things in your argument here. You're also arguing against the war which I don't disagree with. I think we should either get out of there or limit it to specialized units which won't look like a freaking occupying force that's really not there doing anything but getting blown up and being put in really sticky situations (civilian/combatant isn't as easily defined as you seem to believe it to be). You're also talking about our military budget which I also agree is a bit much at this time. All of that has shaky if no attachments to the Manning situation which is what we are discussing.
 
It is absolutely relevant, not because of wordplay but because you put your foot down in statement of "I know what I'm talking about" and you clearly do not. How can I take your statements into consideration when you don't know the simplest thing about the subject we're talking about (when you could have googled it even), which is a simple definition.
 
i'm not surprised, just disgusted. just because something is common doesn't mean i should deplore it any less.

you don't seem to have a continuing view point in your second paragraph, first you say it doesn't matter if i'm 18 or 80. then you entirely contradict that point. i have just as much right to protest the actions of my government as anybody else. there is nothing else to it.

my points arguing against then war and military funding have everything to do with the manning sentence. the documents manning released show not only that the war has a higher cost than we have been lead to believe, but that our own military has been lying to us. both are things that cast doubt on why exactly we put so much money toward the armed forces.
 
so, because i didn't google the exact wording of something i have no knowledge of it? that's ridiculous. i got two words mixed up. something that happens to people all the time. i'm sure there have been times when you have used the improper word for something accidentally.

can you tell me with honesty that you have never made such an error? to relate it to martial arts, lets just suppose that i accidentally called the kata kihon godan by the name kihon yondon. it doesnt mean i don't know the kata, it means i accidentally mixed up the name. nothing more than a superfluous error.
 
I don't know if its a bit too OT, but I don't see how you can state civilian casualties of war are objectively terrible. That's an incredibly subjective topic to my mind. It relies solely on your own morality and views of war.
 
i can see no frame of mind that would make civilian casualties anything less than a tragedy. there are some fights worth the collateral damage, but i dont believe this is one of them.

its subjective if the casualties are worth it, but not if they are terrible.
 
No, it's because it's an indicator in THIS discussion that you're not entirely informed on some of the details in this situation. The difference between civilian law and the UCMJ are quite significant. I doubt you're familiar enough with civilian law and how it works, much less the UCMJ. I'm not claiming to know a significant amount more myself about either, however I do have working experience with the UCMJ and enough to realize that there is a disconnect with understanding Manning's sentencing and why it is so harsh under the UCMJ in some of the commentary in this thread, that's all my point is. A lot of comments about it are too ingrained in an emotive reaction without understanding the scope of the situation.

To further your analogy, take that kata for example and say we were discussing it and I knew more about it than you, and you were describing it completely wrong based on a different method of training that you thought was correct, and then called it by the wrong name. It becomes more than a trivial error at that point.

And yes, I have made mistakes like that. I can also tell you the exact moment I stopped defending myself when I was wrong or poorly informed (convo. with English teacher on why I need to reference material when I was 19) about something and decided to start asking questions, researching, and listening a little bit more before I formed a conclusion based on how I felt about a subject.

You can still feel the way you feel but realize there are bigger things involved than your emotions and understand why things have to be a certain way, regardless of how much they suck.
 
But whether they're worth is isn't objective. I don't believe the fire bombing of Dresden (may have spelt that wrong) was worth it and think it borders on a war crime. Many other people disagree with me and think it was either necessary retaliation for the blitz, or a show of strength to try and limit more attacks on British civilians. Obviously I like to think I'm right, but I wouldn't say I'm undeniably objectively correct. Morality is subjective and this is a moral based judgement.
 
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