The NSA Overreach: Parallels between the Treatment of Thompson and Snowden...

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Recently, Chris Hedges wrote a piece extolling Edward Snowden's moral courage and, in that piece, he mentions others who have exhibited what he considers to be moral courage. It is interesting to see what Hugh Thompson stated (in his own words) about how he was treated after his act of moral courage. There are parallels to how he was treated and how Edward Snowden has been treated:

Edward Snowden’s Moral Courage
Chris Hedges

Last Thursday Chris Hedges opened a team debate at the Oxford Union at Oxford University with this speech arguing in favor of the proposition “This house would call Edward Snowden a hero.” The others on the Hedges team, which won the debate by an audience vote of 212 to 171, were William E. Binney, a former National Security Agency official and a whistle-blower; Chris Huhne, a former member of the British Parliament; and Annie Machon, a former intelligence officer for the United Kingdom. The opposing team was made up of Philip J. Crowley, a former U.S. State Department officer; Stewart A. Baker, a former chief counsel for the National Security Agency; Jeffrey Toobin, an American television and print commentator; and Oxford student Charles Vaughn.

I have been to war. I have seen physical courage. But this kind of courage is not moral courage. Very few of even the bravest warriors have moral courage. For moral courage means to defy the crowd, to stand up as a solitary individual, to shun the intoxicating embrace of comradeship, to be disobedient to authority, even at the risk of your life, for a higher principle. And with moral courage comes persecution.

The American Army pilot Hugh Thompson had moral courage. He landed his helicopter between a platoon of U.S. soldiers and 10 terrified Vietnamese civilians during the My Lai massacre. He ordered his gunner to fire his M60 machine gun on the advancing U.S. soldiers if they began to shoot the villagers. And for this act of moral courage, Thompson, like Snowden, was hounded and reviled. Moral courage always looks like this. It is always defined by the state as treason—the Army attempted to cover up the massacre and court-martial Thompson. It is the courage to act and to speak the truth. Thompson had it. Daniel Ellsberg had it. Martin Luther King had it. What those in authority once said about them they say today about Snowden.

...

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/edward_snowdens_moral_courage_20140223

Here is page 27 of the abridged transcript of the Fall 2003 William C. Strutt Ethics lecture, given to the community of the US Naval Academy:

...

Question
You said you felt a lot of negative peer pressure. While you were
acting that day, did you feel any sense of regret?

Mr. Thompson
"No, I never felt any sense of regret. When I confronted the
lieutenant and trained the weapons on him, I do remember
thinking that you’re going to spend the rest of your life at
Leavenworth, and to me, I guess it was worth it, because I went
ahead and did it. It wasn’t something I planned to do. It was
something I had to do. Believe me, I had tried to help. I tried
talking. You know, I tried everything. I felt like a damn animal
in a cage, being pressed further in the corner. It was time
something had to be done.

After it broke in the United States, I was not a good guy. I was
sure not being invited to Annapolis or West Point or any other
university that I’ve been to since, because I was a traitor. I was a
communist. I was a sympathizer. I was neither one of those, I
didn’t think. I was very confused about why I was being treated
this way, because how wrong can it be helping a fellow human?
And I’m no pacifist either. You know, I’m not one of these
peacenik guys. So I was just very confused, and that went on for
about 30 years.

I became invisible. When it first broke, people thought
everybody was picking on Lieutenant Calley. Believe me,
Lieutenant Calley was very guilty. There is no way to get around
it. But we, being Americans, we cheer for the underdog, so that’s
what people were thinking. They thought the establishment was
picking on this little guy. The turmoil the United States was in
during this time was quite significant. We had demonstrations on
every campus in the United States except about three I can think
of, and I guarantee they were right outside your gate, because we
had been there too long. We were [the demonstrators said]
nothing but a bunch of baby killers, you know, and it was just a
bad time for America. And Congress came after me real hard. A
very senior congressman made a public statement that if anybody
goes to jail in this My Lai stuff, it will be the helicopter pilot
Hugh Thompson."

...

http://www.usna.edu/Ethics/_files/documents/ThompsonPg1-28_Final.pdf

That kind of treatment certainly seems familiar.

[WillyT]

1. K & R !!!

[struggle4progress]

2. Hugh Thompson remained in the military, became a Major, and retired in 1983. For his actions

at My Lai he was awarded by the army in 1998 a Soldier's Medal for heroism. He died in 2006

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3. And while that is what happened, your statement makes no difference...

as far as parallels are concerned. Your statement is a misdirection.

Hugh Thompson had guns trained on those who were going to likely kill those Vietnamese civilians and possibly him for intervening. (If you read the post, you read that fact right after the question in the transcript - when Thompson talks about confronting the lieutenant.) In other words, Thompson protected himself from being shot.

By leaving the country, Edward Snowden is merely protecting himself from those who would do him harm - the same ones who are abusing their positions in government in the name of the "American" people.

By your reasoning, Thompson should have simply stood without any form of protection between those soldiers at My Lai and the Vietnamese civilians who were about to be murdered.

Would you have ridiculed Hugh Thompson for protecting himself? I do not believe that. For the same reason, you should not now be hectoring Edward Snowden.

[struggle4progress]

4. I provided no "reasoning" but merely some facts regarding Major Thompson. Here's what he said later:

... I reported to my platoon leader. He said let's go see the operations officer. In turn we went to our commander and the words were said for me that day that, you know, dean this up. "If this damn stuff is what's happening here," I told him, "You can take these wings right now 'cause they're only sewn on with thread." I was ready to quit flying.

My commander was very interested. Within a day or so--- I don't think it was that day, it was probably the next day--- we were called up to the command bunker at LC Dottie and everybody gave their statements. This was a full colonel (a full colonel is next to a general); that means he can walk on water. He was very interested it seemed; I remember him taking notes and that was it, I do believe. I don't know if I was called again to report to the commanding general.

There was one thing in my mind that I think, but I can't be positive. Our two units were like sixty miles away. So we didn't have contact with these ground people every day. A lot of people don't understand that sixty miles into Vietnam is a long way away You just don't go there. I guess I assumed something was being done. It wasn't a colonel's position to come down to a Wl and inform him of his investigation, that just was unheard of. It seemed like it was just dropped after that.

Approximately two years later is when it was broke publicly and that's when all the investigations started. I was called before the US Senate, the Department of the Army IG and for every one of the court-martial investigations. They appointed Lieutenant General Peers to investigate this. I honestly think the Army thought they had a 'yes-man' when they got Lieutenant General Peers and found out when he released his final report that he was not a "yes-man." I think he made a fairly accurate report of what happened that day ...

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mylai/Myl_hero.html

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6. My apologies...

In the future, I will not credit you with providing reasoning in any context - be it implicit or explicit. It was my mistake to think that you were addressing the ideas of the OP.

However, since you have nothing and are simply posting off-topic, please proceed.

[struggle4progress]

5. ... Thompson threw away the Distinguished Flying Cross he was awarded for saving the lives

of Vietnamese civilians “in the face of hostile enemy fire.” The citation didn’t mention that the hostile fire was from the American side, and Thompson felt his commanding officers were trying to buy his silence.

In 1998, a nine-year letter-writing campaign started by a university professor finally brought Thompson the Soldier’s Medal for heroism not involving conflict with an enemy. He refused to accept the award unless it was given also to his door gunner, Lawrence Colburn, and posthumously to Andreotta, who was killed in a crash three weeks after My Lai.

Ten days after receiving the Soldier’s Medal at the Vietnam Memorial, Thompson and Colburn attended a service at My Lai marking the thirtieth anniversary of the massacre. Thompson was stunned when a Vietnamese woman wished aloud that those who had shot at them had attended so that they could forgive them—something he said he could never do.

Later that year, Thompson said Americans need to select leaders very carefully. “We need some negotiators first and fighters second,” he told CNN.

Hugh Thompson Jr.
Helicopter Pilot : 1943–2006

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7. Off-topic cut and paste is easy for someone with nothing to say. n/t

[struggle4progress]

8. Thompson, at some personal risk, intervened to stop an on-going massacre, then reported back

through channels what he had done, fully aware that it could cost him his career and indifferent to that cost

In the end, so many people (including military personnel and members of the political establishment) agreed with his moral stand, that it did not cost him his career

The alleged parallels with Snowden are rather unclear

Snowden stole perhaps 1.7 million documents, far in excess of what he himself could possibly have read, by stealth, employing various deceits, whereupon he fled the country, notified the Chinese press of NSA targets in China, and then fled to Russia, where he is currently represented by a lawyer with close ties to Russian intelligence

His actual motives may have disappeared behind the coaching he has received: Snowden apparently planned to post on the web a manifesto explaining his acts, but Greerwald thought it too reminiscent of the Unabomber's manifesto and dissuaded him

In any case, the glowing PR, regarding Snowden's alleged concern for the constitutional rights of Americans, does not really cover the ever-growing list of diplomatic crises produced by the carefully-timed releases of Snowden's pilfered documents

Bullshizz doesn't help us think clearly

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9. If that is true then why do you post it so frequently? Is it because you are willfully blind? n/t

Last edited Thu Feb 27, 2014, 08:25 PM - Edit history (1)

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

10. The crises were produced by what Snowden's documents revealed. Not by Snowden.