Taking Aaron Bushnell at His Word (and Deed)
The airman who set himself alight on Sunday signed up to sacrifice himself for the greater good—only to discover that he had become an accomplice to evil.
I will leave it to others to discuss the precedents for Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, from Thích Quảng Đức to Norman Morrison to Mohamed Bouazizi to Irina Slavina to Wynn Alan Bruce. Yes, this has happened before. The world has been a terrible place for too many for too long, and for that reason, the rare few most inclined to feel that terror, to breathe in its ashes, have found no other option but to set themselves on fire in protest. So that others may be forced to breathe in some of those ashes too.
A debate has erupted about how best to interpret Bushnell’s last act. Was it heroic? Pointless? Another opportunity to opine on the need for more robust mental health services. Or to scold those who have dared to take Bushnell at his word. After all, he was anything but inexplicit: “My name is Aaron Bushnell. I’m 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.”
When someone commits an act like this, and leaves us with words like that, I feel obligated to take the person at their word. And the words couldn’t be more instructive.
Bushnell begins with a pertinent self-identification, as an active-duty member of the United States Air Force. Given the sincerity of his last moment in uniform, it seems he was also announcing his vocation. He was someone who had signed up to sacrifice himself for the greater good, only to discover—as so many of us, myself included, have discovered—that he had signed up for the opposite: to become a willing accomplice to evil.
Bushnell doesn’t spell out the precise nature of his complicity. But the mere mention of his branch of service suffices. The US Air Force has played a significant part in the killing spree in Gaza, assisting with intelligence and targeting. It has helped build Israeli airpower for decades now, and shares the same suppliers of aircraft, missiles, and munitions that have contributed to what the political scientist Robert Pape has called “one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history, [now sitting] comfortably in the top quartile of the most devastating bombing campaigns ever.”
The airman goes on to call the crime by its name: a genocide, an attempt at destroying a people. Their homes and farms and orchards and entire means of subsistence. Their schools and hospitals and universities. Their journalists and professors and teachers and students. The whole of their intelligentsia and their children—so many of their children. An unprecedented number, an almost instant mass killing of children too grotesque to even fathom for more than a second. Their museums and archives and age-old mosques and churches. Hundreds of registered ancient sites. Their past and present and future. Even their cemeteries, their last and only resting place.
Bushnell concedes that his protest is extreme. And yet it pales in comparison to the extremism it is protesting. An extremism not just of everyday death and destruction, but one that qualifies as colonial domination. It is not only that the Israelis or their patron, the Americans, determines which Palestinian lives or dies today or yesterday or tomorrow. It is that they—we—decide how they get to live or die. With or without shelter or food. With or without gainful employment or a loved one or the capacity to move across this or that otherwise invisible, arbitrary line. It is impossible to connote in a single paragraph the depths of this humiliation, of having one’s bare existence leashed to the whims of an undeserving, self-satisfied master. I enforced a related, humiliating relationship in Afghanistan almost a decade and a half ago, as one of many uniformed humiliators. I still haven’t figured out how best to communicate that vice. I don’t have it in me to say Bushnell has found a better way. The implication of that conclusion is too dark. But I do hope he’s done it better.
I’d be remiss without noting Bushnell’s penultimate sentence on this earth, right before the necessary “Free Palestine.” He curses our ruling class for making all this normal. All of it. The spoken and unspoken. The sometimes beautiful and joyful but often needlessly cruel world that’s been built in our name. For our purported security. It’s a plea for the rest of us, those still living. Bushnell’s fellow service members specifically, many of whom entered their service with similar doe eyes. Veterans like myself. (For good or ill, we enjoy a certain discursive power most don’t. And with that, as the cliché goes, comes responsibility.)
I doubt that Bushnell would have wanted us to follow in his footsteps—at least not by dousing ourselves in gasoline before a sad and enraged farewell. But he no doubt was counting on us—and not just us service members or vets—to convey and make use of the sadness and rage in our own ways. In manners that burn and last. Beyond the man-made firestorms in Gaza. Beyond the all-encompassing fire.
Lyle Jeremy Rubin is the author of Pain Is Weakness Leaving the Body: A Marine’s Unbecoming. He is a veteran of the war in Afghanistan who writes about capitalism and U.S. empire. He has a doctorate in history from the University of Rochester and has contributed to a variety of publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Raritan, and n+1. When he is not working or reading, he likes to pay attention to the birds.
THE NATION
US veterans burn uniforms during Aaron Bushnell's vigil
In a poignant gesture of protest, a group of US veterans burned their military uniforms at Aaron Bushnell's vigil in Portland, OR in the US hosted by Veterans Against the War. Aaron Bushnell, an active-duty member of the US Air Force, passed away on Sunday from injuries sustained when he self-immolated outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC. His final words were 'Free Palestine,' in a video he recorded and live-streamed. '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 colonisers, it's not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal,' Bushnell explained in the video he streamed before he set himself on fire.
February 29, 2024
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PORTLAND February 29. 2024 (Saba) - Former soldiers in the US Army have burnt their official military uniforms in a protest demonstration in the city of Portland in support of occupied Palestine and in solidarity with Gazans in the Gaza Strip.
Local media reports reported on Thursday that participants described this gathering as an influential act of solidarity in support of the ceasefire, as veterans burned their military uniforms, in a protest hosted by veterans against the war.
This was after very influential speeches, including a speech by a Vietnam War veteran, who was part of the Social Democratic Party and organized many anti-war events, according to the American activists' accounts.
A protest was organized in honor of the spirit of American pilot Aaron Bushnell, in front of the Zionist Consulate in Los Angeles, California.
On Sunday afternoon, the American pilot set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, in protest against his country's policy of supporting the aggression against Gaza.
“I will no longer be complicit in genocide,” Bushnell, who was wearing military uniform, said in a video broadcast live on the Internet, after identifying himself as a soldier currently serving in the US Air Force.
On his way towards the Zionist embassy building, he added: “I will organize a very violent protest now, but my protest is not large compared to what the Palestinians are experiencing at the hands of their occupiers.” Then he set himself on fire while shouting, “Freedom for Palestine.”
The American newspaper "Politico" considered the death of the American soldier the culmination of the growing wave of dissatisfaction against the White House's policy regarding Gaza.
The American newspaper expressed the ruling establishment's fear that the Bushnell incident would lead to the crystallization of more public actions by state employees or elements in various branches of the armed forces to express their feelings against current policies.
A number of protesters wore clothes that read, “Stop shooting now.” They stressed that American foreign policy financed and armed genocide in Gaza.
H.H
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