Permission to Engage

Dear Mr. President,

A documentary I watched called Permission to Engage, by Shuchen Tan, dissects frame by frame the video Bradley Manning allegedly sent to WikiLeaks that shows the cold-blooded killing of Iraqi civilians by a U.S. Army helicopter gunship. Manning has spent two years in military prisons for his alleged crime, a year of that in solitary confinement without a trial. Only in the past few months has his pre-trial hearing begun and it is already clear the military kangaroo court will be finding him guilty, suppressing exculpatory evidence and denying testimony from witnesses who might weaken the government’s case. Tan went to Iraq and tracked down some victims’ families, showing their pain and rage at the injustice visited on them. She also tracked down one of the soldiers on the ground that day, the man who pulled two horribly wounded children from a bullet-riddled van. Her documentary includes a fascinating analysis by that ex-soldier of the context and exactly what happened. As one who experienced the war in Iraq firsthand, he went through frame by frame explaining how the group of men might have been mistaken for insurgents up to the point where the helicopter crew, requesting “permission to engage,” lied about the color and type of vehicle. They described a truck used in an insurgent attack earlier in the day, clearly not the van. That, the ex-soldier said, was when they crossed the line. That made it a war crime. But he also recounted the attitude of his sergeant toward the killing of Iraqi children: “they’re just future terrorists.” The callousness and disregard for life that starts at the top, in your office, is appalling and chilling. What that soldier, the narrator, finally understood is that we were the terrorists in Iraq. We are also the terrorists in Afghanistan, Mr. President, and Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Mexico, the list goes on. Everywhere you fly your drones, fire your missiles, commit extrajudicial assassinations, more haters of America are created and we are less safe, less free, and less human. You have been a disaster for America, Mr. President, you are destroying the very soul of our nation and it will, one day come back to haunt us. I may not be around to see it but I hope you are. I hope you and your evil-doer twins, the Bushes, the Cheneys, the Rumsfelds, the Holders, all one day stand in the dock to answer for your war crimes and atrocities against those who suffered at the hand of Imperialist America.