In presenting its 2024 award, the Sam Adams Associates says it salutes Aaron Bushnell’s courage in performing a vital public service at the greatest cost — martyrdom — for truth-telling.
Vigil on Feb. 27, 2024, outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington for Aaron Bushnell, a U.S. airman who self-immolated to protest the Israeli genocide in Gaza. (Diane Krauthamer, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
A notice from the Sam Adams Associates:
The Sam Adams Associates are pleased to announce United States Air Force Senior Airman Aaron Bushnell as the recipient of the 2024 Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence.
Bushnell was a cyber defense operations specialist with the 531st Intelligence Squadron at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland. He was assigned to the 70th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing at Fort Meade in Maryland.
Senior Airman (SRA) Bushnell martyred himself when he walked up to the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 25, 2024, while streaming himself as he approached, and then self-immolated in protest of what Israel is doing to Palestinians, the most extreme form of protest. He was 25 years old and had been on active duty since May 2020, according to the service.
He had stated as he approached the embassy:
“My name is Aaron Bushnell, and I am an active duty member of the United States Air Force. 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.”
In an earlier on-line post, later identified as from SRA Bushnell, he’d written: “I have been complicit in the violent domination of the world and I will never get the blood off my hands.”
In advance of his burning, Bushnell posted this message on his Facebook page:
“Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide? The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”
As he was consumed by flames, SRA Bushnell’s last words were, “Free Palestine,” said repeatedly.
This was not an act of suicide, as some would have us believe, though SRA Bushnell acted out of despair of any other means of protest having an effect in stopping Israeli genocide and U.S. complicity in that. He obviously suffered the moral injury that so many U.S. service members suffer from when they come to realize their role in, as SRA Bushnell put it: “I have been complicit in the violent domination of the world and I will never get the blood off my hands.”
Feb. 26, 2024: A vigil in Washington for Aaron Bushnell, the active-duty member of the U.S. Air Force who self-immolated outside the Israel embassy to avoid being complicit in genocide. (Elvert Barnes, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0)
But in SRA Bushnell’s case, his actions made him a “Whistleblower,” in the finest tradition of many of the other Sam Adams Awardees, in that he was acting in opposition to what the Israeli Defense Forces and the Israeli government describe as “Cognitive Warfare.”
Or the “Battle for Consciousness,” of the world’s population, which accompanies Israel’s illegal treatment of the Palestinians being held under illegal military occupation, in denial of that illegality. Here is how it is described in an Israeli book on that “Battle for Consciousness,” or “Public Diplomacy”:
“The IDF speaks about consciousness: ‘The strategy of limited conflict is to win a decision of ‘consciousness in the society with the help of military means. The battle is for the society’s consciousness and for national resilience. Decision is achieved through maneuvering to raise doubts and generate a sense of persistent uncertainty.'”
Senior Airman Bushnell seriously upset the preferred narrative in Israel’s so-called “Public Diplomacy,” or more correctly, “Cognitive Warfare” as the “Battle for Consciousness.”
In that, in his opposition to genocide, SRA Bushnell was acting in the finest tradition of past U.S. heroes who took it upon themselves to undertake missions knowing the only possible outcome was certain death, in sacrificing their life for a noble purpose.
That’s not “suicide.” It’s martyrdom, in the spirit of the most exalted people in history.
Perhaps inspired by Sr. Airman Bushnell, numerous other government employees have sacrificed their careers in protest of Israel’s genocide and U.S. complicity in that. We honor all of them too, with this Award, though presented in Aaron Bushnell’s name.
The Sam Adams Associates wish to salute the courage of Aaron Bushnell in performing a vital public service at the greatest cost — martyrdom — for truth-telling.
We urge an end to U.S. complicity in the ongoing Israeli genocide taking place before the world’s eyes, and legal accountability for all engaged in that genocide, Israeli and American. To that end, the public’s right to know about their government’s wrongful actions — including the adverse consequences of policies carried out in their name — must be respected and preserved.
SRA Bushnell is the 21st awardee of the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence. His distinguished colleagues include Daniel Ellsberg, Julian Assange and Craig Murray, who have all paid heavy prices for truth-telling.
But Senior Airman Aaron Bushnell voluntarily paid the highest price, a price we wish no one to pay. But in endless U.S. wars “in the violent domination of the world,” we must expect our service members to feel the righteous despair that Aaron Bushnell wrote of: “I will never get the blood off my hands.”
Other fellow Sam Adams Award alumnae include NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake; F.B.I. 9-11 whistleblower Coleen Rowley; and GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun, whose story was recounted in the film Official Secrets.
Sam Adams was a C.I.A. whistleblower who exposed the U.S. official lie about the strength of Viet Cong forces.
The full roster of Sam Adams awardees is available at samadamsaward.ch.
We shall always remember Aaron Bushnell and the statement he left us: hxxps://folkpotpourri.com/a-fire-that-wont-be-forgotten/ He was a true hero in a world that is sadly bereft of them.
There is one other person who is “ complicit in the violent domination of the world “. That is Tulsi Gabbard. She is a Lt Colonel in the army reserve. While she has, commendably, verbally been against US domination and warmongering, by remaining in the military, she is all talk and no action. She should resign her commission immediately. She should also publicly advise all other officers to resign their commissions. Anything less is all talk and no action.
That’s just silly.
If dovish leaders in the military like Gabbard just up and resign in protest, the military will simply promote someone more hawkish and less thoughful into those leadership roles. People like Gabbard need to stay in the military to provide a voice for servicemen who don’t want to get shipped out to latest forever war to die for the profits of the military-industrial complex.
Ask yourself this question … did the military become more or less warmongering after Smedley Butler retired and wrote ‘War is a Racket’? Did it become more or less warmongering since Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex speech? Old warriors issuing warnings of the warmongers in the MIC as they are on their way out the door does very little. While their contributions are welcome, we need more young warriors who are willing to stand up for what they believe while actively serving. Warriors like Gabbard, and Reality Winner, and Chelsea Manning. Gabbard is especially important since she has the protection of being a former congresswoman with many powerful allies on both sides of the aisle. The military can’t just toss her in a dark hole and pretend she never existed like they did with Winner and Manning.
There have been 3 such occasions in front of Zionist consulates in America.
You have made an argument for people in government and the military to stay in service, and not retire in protest to warmongering.
You say they should “provide a voice” and “stand up for what they believe”
As someone who has served in the military, I can tell you from personal experience that anyone serving in government, and especially the military, must carry out their orders on pain of legal retribution.
Providing a voice and standing up does absolutely nothing to change the orders coming from the top of a horrific regime.
There have been a number of people in the State Department and other branches of government who have resigned because of their presence serving this warmongering. They are the type of people who this organization has celebrated.
If all the good people in the military and other branches of government were to resign, then yes, there would be others who could be recruited. But there is nothing else that they can practically do that can marginally block this regime.
Every officer who sees this exchange will have to make their own personal decision. Down the road, at the end of their lives, they will have to justify what that decision is.
A person must be mentally ill to commit suicide as a protest — the pinnacle of “value signaling”.
Aaron Bushnell would be more effective alive and complaining loudly publicly than suicided and getting an award for the gesture.
Bestowing on Aaron Bushnell the 2024 Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence sends the wrong message and might inspire “copy cat” suicides.
Assigning an “Intelligence” award in this case is oxymoronic.
Perhaps Mr. Nelson wanted to experience a level of physical suffering that came close to matching the suffering of Palestinians, and came close to matching the emotional and mental suffering that he felt inside himself, as a natural consequence of empathy and grief over genocide.
Perhaps you are unable to understand this because you lack empathy for the suffering of people whom you do not know. Perhaps you don’t know that we are all connected, and that one person’s suffering is also ours.
No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
As well as if a promontory were:
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were.
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
-John Donne
A lousy and unthoughtful lede for this essay.
Mr Bushnell did not “win” an award.
No one at DOD — nor did the commander-in-chief — respected Mr Bushnell’s action by stopping money to Israel.
The article is the same as “prayer & thoughts” for dead infants, children and citizens of violence and wars.
Action to stop genocide is wanted.
Rachael Devaney (17 September 2024), “Another man with Cape Cod ties sets self on fire by Israel consulate – this time in Boston,” Cape Cod Times, 17 September. Available at: hXXps://www.capecodtimes.com/story/news/2024/09/17/set-self-on-fire-israel-consulate-boston-matthew-nelson-cape-cod/75250067007/ (Accessed: September 19, 2024).
Gross.
We shouldn’t be celebrating a mentally ill serviceman who ended his life, no matter how righteous we may believe the cause. Suicide of a healthy young person is ALWAYS a tragedy and ALWAYS leaves behind victims. Ask his loved ones how ‘proud’ they are for his great achievement. I’d wager they would rather have him back.
I would also argue that suicide is not martyrdom. That reads like something straight out of the mouth of a cleric of a Salafi death cult. You might as well throw in 72 virgins while you are at it. Martyrdom is generally reserved for those who are unjustly killed by a murderous regime or other bad actor, not a guy who willingly lights himself of fire. What’s next? Awards for suicide bombers?
Lastly, his suicide was in the news cycle for a day at most before 99% of the general public forgot about it. It had absolutely no impact on the issue. Israel doesn’t give a flying fig whether an American serviceman sets himself of fire, and Hamas more than likely celebrates it and hope more follow in his footsteps. Instead of lighting himself on fire, Bushnell should have dedicated his LIFE to the cause rather than his DEATH.