Don’t look away

Sacrifices by people of conscience are invitations for the rest of us to finally start paying attention

Yesterday, 25 year-old Aaron Bushnell lit himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC. As an active duty U.S. service member, his sacrifice is particularly jarring and should draw the world’s attention to the need to finally, as he exhorted with his dying breaths, “Free Palestine!”

This was a young man who swore his life to defend the security of the United States, only to see it degraded by the decisions of civilian commanders unapologetically committed to a genocide targeting a civilian population.

[Aaron’s statements] are not the words of someone suffering from illness, but rather those of a lucid being responding to the illness of an ignorant and belligerent civilization that refuses to heed either the demands of international rights or the sacrifices of the veterans who secured them.

Aaron’s profound act of sacrifice demands observation.

A lucid act of self-sacrifice in defense of human rights

Some might argue that Aaron was mentally ill. Others will describe his act of protest as suicide. They all would do well to grapple with the lucidity of his thoughts, and his words as he gave away his life to defend others.

Aaron’s self-immolation was neither an act of despair, nor one driven by confusion. It was an act of moral desperation undertaken by a person whose thoughtful concerns deserve to be heard.

Aaron explained his sense of moral urgency. Before lighting himself on fire, he said:

"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 am 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."

These are not the words of someone suffering from illness, but rather those of a lucid being responding to the illness of an ignorant and belligerent civilization that refuses to heed either the demands of international rights or the sacrifices of the veterans who secured them.

Reality more compelling than any fiction

Several ironies about Bushnell‘s act of sacrifice deserve to be noted.

First, many outlets have discussed Aaron’s sacrifice while suppressing the video featuring his own words in his own voice. Many have claimed to have censored the video because it is disturbing.

It is indeed disturbing—but no more so than the images of Palestinians digging the bodies of their children out of the rubble of what were their apartment buildings.

Aaron intended for his sacrifice to be seen. That’s why he recorded it. Despite efforts to hide the video of his self-immolation from the public, it remains available and is worth watching. 

Next is the bizarre absurdity documented by the video, which captures a militarized police officer drawing a weapon on Aaron as he lit himself on fire, before another officer explained that “I don’t need guns, I need fire extinguishers!” This moment not only encapsulates the characteristic response of the American “justice” system to any particular problem.

What drove Aaron to self-sacrifice was the belligerence of U.S. foreign policy and its disregard for human suffering. That same callousness is also reflected in domestic policing, and the institutional tendency in both contexts towards escalating violence at the slightest—or even imagined—provocation.

Finally, another irony emerges when considering the limited rights of U.S. service members, particularly given their legal obligation to follow the orders of civilian commanders. When pledging their lives to defend national security, U.S. service members give up rights enjoyed by civilians under the First Amendment. They are still allowed to vote, but the farcical nature of the 2024 presidential election reduces that choice to meaninglessness.

Interestingly, international law requires members of militaries to refuse to follow orders that are illegal, regardless of where they are in their chains of command, and who issues the orders. There is no legal justification for following illegal orders, such as those violating human rights, nor can the defense that “I was just following orders” overcome a charge for complicity in human rights violations.

That was all established at Nuremberg, after our nation played a critical role in liberating Europe from Nazi aggression and winning the Second World War.

Those principles require servicemembers to consider ethics and the context of the orders they are given. That is precisely why Aaron’s declaration—that “I will no longer be complicit in genocide”—is so important.

Considering Aaron’s limited rights to speak out about his concerns, and legal obligations to follow the orders of a genocidal leader with no concern for international law, his act of self-sacrifice may have seemed like the only course for him to pursue that would allow his voice to be heard.

For instance, one might suppose that he could have dissented and refused to follow orders in relative silence. That would have exposed him to a military court martial, and the ignominy of likely imprisonment without any public awareness of his position. However principled such a decision might have been, it would have amounted to silence.

He chose an alternative that would invite his neighbors to reconsider their complicity and silence, at the cost of his own life. Given his circumstances, his act of sacrifice might be seen as one among only a few ways to publicly dissent from mass murder funded by taxpayers.

Bearing witness also means speaking truth to power

Americans who enjoy First Amendment rights continue to speak out prolifically to champion the same principles that motivated Aaron.

On the same day that he lit himself on fire, thousands of activists in San Francisco seized control of a major interstate highway. Others came together to voice public dissent not only up and down the west coast, but also in cities including St. Louis, MO and St. Paul, MN.

Yet still, elected leaders from Washington to Sacramento continue to ignore their concerns, as well as the requirements of international law. 

The world will do its best to forget Aaron Bushnell. Even if Americans have no effective control over our nation’s belligerent and criminal foreign policy, we can at least each remember the moral heroes who have tried to draw our attention to the horrors that continue to unfold in plain sight.

Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc immolated himself in 1963 to draw attention to the brutality of the US-backed South Vietnamese government. Popular outrage with the regime’s abuses helped precipitate the country’s liberation struggle and Washington’s invasion and decade-long campaign to suppress it.

Paid subscribers can gain access to a few stories about some other inspiring heroes from St. Louis to Tunisia, including two who challenged Washington’s military industrial complex and did as much to expose its corruption as anyone else in U.S. history.