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.
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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.
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Despite being on the other side, he clearly demonstrated that he’s on the right side: humanity. I hope I can someday have a tenth the courage this man did.
You mean Luther Ray Abel, the guy who spoke ill of an active duty service member’s act of protest through self immolation? Is that the Luther Ray Abel you’re referring to?
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.
Luther Ray Abel, the known piece of shit who discards human dignity in exchange for snarky article clicks? That Luther Ray Abel?
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
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The National Review is the same level of conservative propaganda as The Washington Times or Newsmax.
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Wow. Luther Ray Abel is a total loser. I’m willing to bet this young airman, Aaron Bushnell, had infinitely-more courage and moral conviction than this piece of shit.
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.
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Dawg, I spent all pandemic scrolling r/HermanCainAward.
I’ll tell you what I told conservatives crying about that sub - it’s really hard to care when they do it to themselves.
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?
I don’t see it that way and neither do our other allies.
That’s you responding to me and our allies. Even Canada disagrees with you.
Your belief’s popularity doesn’t make them correct. The nazis had a majority. They got japan and italy and croatia and hungary and thailand and finland to go along with their genocide. what’s your point?
Very well taken point. My views on this is are very unpopular though, seems like they are only shared by western diplomatic and foreign services people and heads of state, and the patience is wearing thin.
I think those who agree with me just find preserving democracy in the Middle East to be the greater moral imperative than is tip-toeing around Gaza asking Hamas to come out nicely and leaving the tunnels intact.
Hamas is very popular in Gaza. Houthis are very popular in Yemen. Their popularity might be considered democratic, but it is fouled by its authoritariansm: the lack of minoritarian rights; no freedom of speech or religion, no due process, no equal protection, no prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. These are rights that, to your point, protect the unpopular from unchecked populism. Hamas and all other Islamist movements do not recognize these rights. They are unchecked populism, comparable to Nazi populism.
As revulsive as is 30,000 people killed, much more revulsive is 3,000,000, or 30,000,000, which is what we will see if these terrorist groups manage to put Israel on its heals enough to make Iran take its shot, or if Trump gets elected and forces Iran to take a shot.
Anyone on the fence about Biden may recall that this already happened once, when Trump ordered an airstrike on an Iranian general while he was visiting Iraq. I’m glad the dude is dead but it was reckless as fuck to the lives of hundreds of millions of people. The only reason Israel avoided hot war with Iran in that moment was because Iran missed its shot and hit a civilian airliner instead.
I hope that of all these belligerents, the ones with democracy are going to use it to excise their authoritarian tumors, and that we will see Trump and Netanyahu firmly rejected, popularly.
Well this is the fucking problem and the reason the guy set himself alight in the first place Sherlock. All western governments are burying their head in the sand if not actively helping with the genocide.
What’s your next perl of wisdom, water wet?
pearl
LOL autocorrect.
Perl shouldn’t even be in my dictionary
I think it’s a programming language?
Did I get tricked by terrorists who use human shields and sympathy as a tactic?
No, it’s the entire diplomatic and intelligence corps of the Western world that’s wrong!
Sorry, isn’t this like, a fallacy? I couldn’t help but post to be honest.
But like, so they support what you believe in, what does that mean? Does that make you correct? Does that make them correct?
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.
I wish I could say I was surprised.
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.
“The” achievement. It was enabled by humanity’s shitty heuristics and still developing (it will never get to develop, I don’t think) ability for longer term thinking.
It wasn’t hard to do, but they sure kept at it.
If we can’t fix it, if the world continues on a slide to shit, if it’s all doomed to a stupid end then I have but one desire:
That when the echelons at the top tumble alongside the rest of civilization, they try at the end, right at the very 11th hour to recall their rabid masses because they need them to listen…
Only to hear back “Fake news” as the rabid mass of blind hatred they built tumbles down their would-be world too.
There are days your wish seems to be the most likely outcome in the long run.
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.”
I see this in every argument on Lemmy.
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.
Oh I’m sorry that self-immolation isn’t a magic “stop” button and movements and social change take time to play out. Claiming it was inconsequential is just fucking insanely ahistorical. Next up, “Rosa Parks’ protest had no effect on the Civil Rights movement because it took 9 years for the Civil Rights Act to be signed”.
I would say that’s a little different from a president saying it was a turning point and then the guy who followed him massively escalated the war.
If Rosa Parks did her protest, Kennedy never got the Civil Rights Act passed and Nixon went back to encouraging segregation until he had not choice but to promote civil rights, that would be an apt comparison.
Nope, they’re both stupidly ahistorical statements to make. Ending the war wasn’t even the target of the protest, just an arbitrary end result you say wasn’t achieved quickly enough.
So neither of these people set themselves on fire with the goal of ending a war?
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
What if he felt those things were less effective than self-immolation? Because I certainly do.
You change your vote based on people killing themselves? Like if you are pro-choice and a pro-life person killed themselves, you would change your mind? Do you look up stats on the number of people on both sides who kill themselves and compare them? Do you think suicidal people are a good basis for a system of government?
If you do any of those things, you are not a normal voter. Voters do not care about that at all. It grabs attention, but just talking to your friend about who you’re voting for is much more persuasive. If you kill yourself people rightfully think you have mental issues.
You’re going out of your way to misunderstand this.
This can sway my vote and yes, things that people are willing to give their lives for are very compelling to me.
I’m not allowed to change who I vote for in this system.
We already know the arguments. All that is left is for us to weigh it for ourselves. What this man did was heavy and affects that weighing process.
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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.
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.
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Oh no not cop hating when they keep showing they need major reforms
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.
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Self immolation started the Arab Spring.
We have no idea what still happen.
This was an active duty servicemember. I share your pessimism that anything will change, but I don’t think Biden can NOT comment on this. That should at least drive awareness. I’m sorry I have nothing less hollow than that to offer.
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“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 FalconerThis 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.
“This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”
– Aaron BushnellI think it is done to pressure the regular people to overthrow the government. Showing how important the issue is and how much he sacrificed himself just to motivate people, that everybody else can sacrifice far less by risking arrest overthrowing the government.
Yo where is that quote from? Like is that a tv show, movie, philosopher?
Altered Carbon.
Very much worth a watch IMO
It’s horrible that someone feels this situation is so dire that they need to resort to this.
However, I also don’t know that this will achieve anything any more than it did in Vietnam.
What? The photograph of Thích Quảng Đức was hailed by JFK as one of the most influential photographs in history and a turning point in Vietnam.
The Vietnam War ended 12 years after he did that. I wouldn’t call that a success.
Aaron Bushnell is a hero and understood what is at stake. I wish people stop trying to downplay his actions as being mentally ill.
Jan Palach self immolated in Prague to protest the invasion of Soviet forces at the end of the Prague Spring… there are monuments to him around the city. It seems lighting youself on fire aint what it used to be
Protesting Russian war crimes means you are a hero and should be remembered forever.
Protesting Western war crimes means you are a mentally ill tankie and need to get off Twitter.
I’ve seen people on Reddit blaming “leftist circlejerk holes” for “radicalizing” him (apparently Aaron had a Reddit account)
I felt the urge to get off Reddit more than ever.
I’m reading your comment right now as a lifelong reddit guy abandoning the site for here because of that. Hi
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.
They meant it to be a disservice.
[…] 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.
Next of kin notification is continuing, so the Air Force won’t release his name until 24 hours after the final notification is complete.
But he live-streamed it and said his name. He is Aaron Bushnell, a brave man who knew he wouldn’t survive the protest he felt he needed to carry out.
I cried when I watched the video. The man inhaling lungfuls of flame and smoke to chant “Free Palestine!” was painful. I hope his family may find some small comfort in the pride they should feel for his courage.
It will be all for nothing if the people don’t unite in demanding that US stops supporting genocide and if they have to, go to the streets and stop this war crime by force.
No, it won’t be nothing. It will always be something. Ineffective, perhaps. Ignored, maybe.
But it’s always something when someone tortures themselves to death for a reason.
Don’t assume it means nothing just because it doesn’t result in what you want.
Comfort? Their loved one is dead. And for what? It would be hypocritical of me to disagree with monks doing it.
All these comments are so okay with it. Like oh well, it was for a good cause! No it fucking ain’t? This is some fucked up glorification of martyrs when in reality, all we accomplished is more pain. His family won’t recover from this, ever.
But hey! All Israel has to do is stop the offensive and all will be dandy! Oh? Ignore those daily non stop dumb fired missiles and if they attack again? Oh well. What’s another 1000 people killed or raped?
I’m sick of people pretending this is an easy fix. As long as hamas exist, Israel won’t stop. Cease fire fixes nothing. But no one here sees past the tip of their nose. Same people were chanting to allow immigrants in because we fucked them up decades ago, because the system can take it! And now will complain about the state of the country, the shortages of food… I have a friend advocating for supplying Africa with means to farm instead of investing into our own farming so we can buy the food from Africa since we can afford it!
I’m just so tired of stupid people. Absolutely zero foresight and jump at first upvoted comment like it’s gospel.
All Israel has to do is stop the offensive and all will be dandy! Oh? Ignore those daily non stop dumb fired missiles and if they attack again? Oh well. What’s another 1000 people killed or raped?
You’re acting like there’s no middle ground between “do nothing” and “murder many thousands of Palestinian women and children (and men who have nothing to do with Hamas).”
Collective punishment is a war crime. Bombing indiscriminately, sniping EMTs and 6-year-old girls, killing people waving white flags with their hands raised just trying to help their families evacuate, telling people to leave their homes with barely any notice and then bombing not only their homes but also the places they told them to evacuate to?
These are not the behaviors of a nation concerned with self-defense. These are the behaviors of a nation trying to eliminate a population.
And all this does is create more extremism. If you managed to survive your family being killed and your home blown up, your entire life being destroyed, when you and your family were just trying to peacefully live your lives, I imagine you’d find it difficult not to wish for the deaths of your oppressors.
I’m sick of people pretending this is an easy fix. As long as hamas exist, Israel won’t stop. Cease fire fixes nothing.
Cease fire stops the bleeding. If we’re being charitable and we decide to take Israel’s obvious bullshit at face value, a ceasefire lets them re-evaluate their targets and lets their intelligence have a chance to actually find Hamas rather than indiscriminately murdering an order of magnitude more civilians than Hamas did. And if we’re not being charitable, a ceasefire makes them stop murdering civilians in revenge for a terrorist attack.
You’re right, I let “better” be the enemy of a perfect solution which likely doesn’t exist in this mess.
Gaza is going to be beyond alienated, if hamas strikes again and they will… The next follow up will be absolute.
Situation is fucked no matter how I look at it. But cease fire would buy Gaza more time, Hamas will strike again and then the wrath is going to be 10x worse. Do you agree or is that too pessimistic?
I appreciate your time to spell it out like that, that did strike home.
…Well good. Living through stuff like that is awful.
Free Palestine. RIP Aaron Bushnell.
Poor guy. I admire his courage and conviction to protest this genocide, and I cannot imagine how painful that must have been.
Rest in Power. I pray we can somehow ensure your actions aren’t in vain.
Has anyone else noticed a surge in social media posts using history stories about US teenagers under the ago of 18 that signed up for military service illegally, but the stories have these folkloric and heroic side that we never afford child soldiers of other nations and conflicts ?
So weird.
No but I’m not sure where I would consume such content. Is that Facebook or something?
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RIP, I respect his anti war ideology but people shouldn’t be hurting themselves to make a point. I highly doubt this is going to make the impact he thought it was going to do. He might have had mental health issues and felt suicidal.
This form of protest goes back a long way - famously by Buddhist monks during the Vietnam war.
It’s also very similar to hunger strikes, in my opinion. There was Bobby Sands and his comrades, of course. There were hunger strikes protesting the brutal conditions at Guantanamo Bay, resulting in force feeding techniques condemned as torture by the international community.
Do all of the people performing acts of self harm in protest to bring attention to a situation they consider intolerable suffer from mental health issues? Do people who join the Marines and put their lives at risk in the infantry because they think they’re “defending their country” have mental health issues? Do drone pilots, who in no way put themselves at risk of harm but who absolutely and knowingly end up killing arbitrary civilians have mental health issues?
If you ask me, I’d say yes to all of those. I’d say the same about politicians who pass laws to ban medical care to patients, and I’d say the same about the people who vote for them.
So people protesting via self-immolation, protesting via hunger strike, joining the military in a role that risks death are suicidal. People joining the military in a way that causes death, or who pass legislation that causes death, or who elect politicians who pass legislation that causes death are homicidal.
What should we do about all of that?
Sure made a hell of an impact on me.
Self immolation started the Arab Spring.
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