"Suicide bombings, beheadings, mutilation, cutting out tongues, cutting off ears, amputations, gouging out eyes, genital mutilation, and dismembering dead bodies is common and widespread. Although our natural inclination is to relegate these horrific acts to another century, when interpreted in the context of religious ideologies, sacred customs, and cultural traditions it is obvious that they are not anachronisms."– Dawn Perlmutter, Mujahideen Desecration: Beheadings, Mutilation& Muslim Iconoclasm, 2007
Afghans were so feared as fighters, especially for their reputation for torturing and dismembering the captured or wounded, even Rudyard Kipling, a fierce nationalist who considered the British military to be a pathway to salvation for people in the countries it conquered, immortalized Afghans as an enemy so fearsome that suicide was preferable to even the risk of capture:
When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, And the women come out to cut up what remains, Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains An' go to your Gawd like a soldier. – Rudyard Kipling, The Young British Soldier, 1895
Not the kind of people, you'd think, who would be irretrievably offended by the act of peeing on a dead man.
Courage vs. outrage
Bradley Manning, on the other hand, assuming he is the one who shipped all those files to WikiLeaks, only pissed people off. He pissed off the entire power structure of the most powerful country on Earth, which you'd have to put on a resume under Notable Accomplishments.
There's no doubt stealing all those secret files and publishing them was illegal, or that it was insanely rash, but it was also an act of courage to knowingly accept the risk of almost inevitable arrest to publicize policies and behavior you oppose.
That doesn't change the fact that the files were stolen and that in stealing them – assuming, again, that he's guilty – Manning broke both military and civilian law.
He did not do it for personal profit or other contemptible motivations, however. There's no defense or pity available for the likes of Aldrich Ames or Robert Hanssen.
It's harder to baldly condemn publishing information about illegal killings and torture that violate the most basic principles of the Constitution you've sworn to uphold.
