The airman, who filmed the incident and could be heard yelling “Free Palestine,” was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries after collapsing to the ground.
The U.S. Air Force member who set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., in an apparent protest against the Israel-Hamas war has died, according to a U.S. official.
Next of kin notification is continuing, so the Air Force won’t release his name until 24 hours after the final notification is complete.
The District of Columbia Fire and Emergency Medical Service Department responded to a call about a person on fire outside the embassy just before 1 p.m. Sunday, and found the flames extinguished by the Secret Service’s uniformed division.
Say his name for the record. Luther Ray Abel wrote that article. I want this to be searchable with that name. Let it be known that Luther Ray Abel discards human dignity; specifically Aaron Bushnell inherit human dignity, in exchange for snarky article clicks.
Went to the article and there are 172 comments. Didn’t read them all as it was enraging. Everyone is agreeing with the article and calling him suicidal, insane or other such things. Fuck that place
The National Review is the same level of conservative propaganda as The Washington Times or Newsmax.
Even the use of “our military”—at least to me—sounds highly exclusive, as if the writer is talking of a type of person who doesn’t belong in “our military.”
Then the piece of shit purposefully mangles the message that the late airman was trying to amplify. Is “free Palestine” the same as “free hamas?” No the fuck it isn’t.
If it makes you feel any better, you have to knowingly be in an echo chamber to call what he wrote anything that even resembles “journalism” …
“so it’s conceivable that Bushnell was on his command’s radar but hadn’t done anything to warrant action . . . at least until now.”
Uhm, excuse me? Is this what passes for journalism now, blatant speculation?
The only people who would willingly read that garbage are well aware their head is in the sand, they just want to hear validation.
I mean, he apparently does not realize that Israel is a separate country from America, with its own military and chain of command, that is distinct and outside of America’s military and command structure.
He flat out said that he thinks it’s the job of America to dictate to our allies their own domestic policy, and if they don’t go along with our demands, America should abandon our allies. I mean, what is that if not utter ignorance? In no way is that how diplomacy is conducted and doing it that way would be counterproductive to most of America’s foreign policy goals; how does he think all of our other allies would react? How would we continue to conduct diplomacy if an alliance with America isn’t worth anything?
What message does it send our other allies if we continue providing military aid even when their ‘targeted military operation’ devolves into a genocidal bloodbath?
his last words were:
“My name is Aaron Bushnell. I am an active duty member of the United States Air Force, and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal… FREE PALESTINE!”
I dislike this. I’ve seen first hand what serious burns do to people, both in the immediate and long term. Imo, this is there should be no speech louder than this, but it just kinda gets an “oh, damn, really? Man. What’s on the next channel?” reaction. I dislike that people resort to this when they’re going to get ignored, and I dislike that it largely is ignored except for a fleeting moment of sensational headlines.
The problem is, as far as I see it, that this doesn’t change minds. Thousands of children are dead now. Unless you’re totally ignorant of that, in which case you will be totally ignorant of why he killed himself in this manner, it’s not going to make you suddenly care about Palestine when exponentially more dead children who didn’t die by their own hand will not.
Or discredit him as a libtard crazy. That is what people on the other side of this argument have been saying. I hate this world.
The base’s Pavlovian rejection of anything said by an accused outsider has got to be one of the Republican party’s biggest real “achievements.”
Or maybe I’m giving them too much credit. Mixing simple “ill will towards others” with a dash of “confirmation bias” will produce a very similar result.
It’s easy for far away things, even horrific things, to just seem like trivia with no real salience to our lives. A statement like this is meant to wake people up that caring about the victims of our foreign policy is something for Americans to do. We as Americans have some small input into the process by which our taxes fund a genocide. And even if we don’t, maybe famously “empathic” Joe Biden might spend a second thought on the morality of his actions.
As I told someone else- after Thích Quảng Đức’s suicide by setting himself on fire, the Vietnam War raged on for 12 more years.
Based on that, this is, unfortunately, not going to have any effect.
no speech louder than this
It’s loud about the strength of this guy’s conviction but it provides no actual argument or information. I don’t think it’s cause to change one’s opinion about Biden’s foreign policy one way or another. In fact, I’d go further and say that it probably should be ignored as much as possible in order to avoid motivating other people to do the same thing.
I disagree. Fairly certain it got politicians attention. When your own soldiers are standing outside of your house setting themselves on fire it’s probably best to pay attention to the message.
It wasn’t “soldiers”, it was one guy. One person who wasted their life, instead of lobbying for what they wanted.
Now he’ll never get to vote, donate, or campaign for what he believed in. He actually hurt his cause in the long run.
“No dumb bastard ever won a war by going out and dying for his country. He won it by making some other dumb bastard die for his country.”
– General George S. Patton
I’m not supporting the cop’s actions, but the guy was staggering around and was engulfed in flames. If he went and hugged someone like the EMS, there would be two people dead. I imagine he kept his weapon on him in case he decided to run towards someone.
It may not seem like a weapon, but when someone is on fire from gasoline and walking, they’re a clear and present danger to the people around them.
This is not an accurate recounting of the video. The “may I help yous” were over a second or two as he was trying to light himself, not a long period. The “get on the ground” started basically as soon as the fire lit and continued until he collapsed at which point the presumed speaker with the gun came on screen and continued to actively dance around the first responders trying to put Bushnell out so that his shot line would remain clear.
Why bring up the terrible cops reactions to a statement of the person’s convictions?
Because of no one should have to watch the video
https://imemc.org/article/us-soldier-self-immolates-in-protest-at-israeli-embassy/
the Secret Service officers and Metropolitan Police who were present at the scene watch for a full minute, saying, “May I help you sir?” and as he’s on fire scream at him to get on the ground, but do not otherwise engage. One cop appears with a gun drawn on the man after he collapses, still consumed by flames.
“Imo, this is there should be no speech louder than this”
I really don’t know what you were trying to say there, but you managed to fuck it up so badly it makes no sense.
“Imo, this is there should be no speech louder than this”
I really don’t know what you were trying to say there, but you managed to fuck it up so badly it makes no sense.
That’s an awfully rude response to not being able to extrapolate this from the quoted bit:
“A man felt so deeply that this was wrong, and so powerless to get the attention of anyone who could even consider doing anything to help, that he doused himself in gasoline and burned himself to death in public, leaving behind his family and everything he cared about. Maybe people should pay attention to such a strongly sent message, and consider whether there are valid reasons that someone might feel so strongly about this topic.”
"As a tactic, self-immolation expresses a logic similar to the premise of the hunger strike. The protester treats himself or herself as a hostage, attempting to use his or her willingness to die to pressure the authorities. This strategy presumes that the authorities are concerned with the protester’s well-being in the first place.
It is not willingness to die that will sway our rulers. They really fear our lives, not our deaths—they fear our willingness to act collectively according to a different logic, actively interrupting their order."
If you pull that trigger, Takeshi, it doesn’t all go away. Just you.
-Quellcrist Falconer
This strategy presumes that the authorities are concerned with the protester’s well-being in the first place.
Actually, it presumes access to media outlets/social media who will help build pressure on authorities. It’s a pressure campaign tactic whose success or failure relies on building outside, non-state civil society support. By failing to engage with why people resort to tactics like hunger striking or self-immolation and just making shit up, the piece fails to really make its case.
While I don’t support self-immolation as a tactic, the mentality this critique relies on enables the abuses that lead people to self-immolate or go on hunger strike to start with.
BTW about 98% of everything CrimethInc publishes is exactly this off-base and unhelpful.
The article showing a (sanitized) picture of the consulate with police standing around is something of a disservice to the man who sacrificed himself to make a statement.
[…] in an apparent protest against the Israel-Hamas war […]
The article is just blurring the act, censoring its force gained by sacrifice, and mis-attributing its target. One can easily say, after having been exposed to hundreds of similarly malicious wording in public accountings of acts usually consisting of protests not in line with the local authority, that this is very deliberate and made to utilize even the last thing a person does to raise awareness about a systemic unjust treatment.
Someone with zero context about the situation could easily understand this act with different intent.
