Did Manning act out of loyalty to the United States when she released the footage in the video? Do her actions constitute a moral or immoral case of whistleblowing?

The youtube video titled “Collateral Murder” discusses the leaking of a series of military videos of the US air force firing at Iraqis. Within this discussion, it is addressed that the military could have been acting out based on adrenaline and fearing for their lives, so they ultimately decided to target all potential threats without hesitation. They bring many experts on these types of situations to explain the events within the video, such as Ivan Eland and Julian Assange. Both of them believe that the footage has significant importance because there was no real evidence in some of the footage that they had the right people or the right location. Despite that, The videos do show that the air force said some distasteful things to the Iraqis and laughed about it afterwards. These people would later be investigated and cleared, but the video still brings up the discussion of how ethical/unethical their behavior was, at the time of the war. In this case analysis, it will argue that what Manning did was not loyal to the United States and her actions show a moral case of whistle blowing through using the moral tool of the ethics of care. 

Vandekerckhove’s article titled, “Whistle Blowing and Rational Loyalty” is about how the concepts of whistle blowing and loyalty are not mutually exclusive to each other. He points this out with “organizations are complex because they tend to be constituted by different parts that do not share..the same underpinning logic.” To add on to this, he brings in multiple examples of evidence from many different people, who also discussed this topic. For example, Duska which claims that “employee loyalty to companies is a category mistake because companies are not proper objects of loyalty.” (Duska, 1990).  He then goes on to state “Hence, within the context of companies, there is no conflict between the duty and loyalty and the duty to blow the whistle simply because there is no duty to loyalty.” (Duska, 1990). Duska made up objections, which include, loyalty is dependent on the ties of self-sacrifice without reward and it requires granting businesses the status of a person. However, Corvino refutes his argument by stating that companies are groups of people, not objects. He also denies that the reward should not be expected because just like any other relationship that requires teamwork, it can be said that rewards are expected. 

The ethics of care focuses on the Euro-American theories of morality through justice and impartiality. Duska and Friedman both have similar arguments that businesses do not have responsibilities because they are not in the category of things that can have responsibilities. Yet, Druska defines “loyalty” and “owed” within the context of employees and how a company doesn’t necessarily owe them it. In this context, it could be argued that business ethics do not cater to the interdependence or “mutual-flourishing” of the company itself and the employees, simply because they feel as if they do not owe them loyalty. Whistle blowing however could come into question when thinking about the ethics of care because it would not really fit in this case. The ethics of justice would be more reasonable because based on universal rules/principles and the impartial manner of being fair to everyone it would be iffy to think that whistle blowers care about others. Usually, whistleblowers can be seen as “snitches” who tell corporate businesses about illegal activities. But what if it is something that can bring up discussions of concerns for the safety of people and/or countries. It does also bring in the question of how people can bring attention to these types of things in a more ethical manner without self-justification.

The right thing that could have been done related to the article is as Vandekerckhove addressed, is that companies should practice the replication of loyalty and employees learn how to be loyal in a more rational manner. Also, whistle blowing is not necessarily immoral because if someone is not doing the right thing within their job, then raising concern about it will not rectify their wrongdoings. 

In “Care and Loyalty in the Workplace”, it brings up the question of “Should employees be loyal to their employers?” and the authors’ arguments are on the question of whether or not employees should be loyal to employers. The article talks about the traditional approaches of loyalty in a business setting. According to the multiple sources that Oxley et al. has taken from, there are many approaches to define loyalty such as the psychological approach and the normative approach are all of the ways that businesses have defined loyalty. The normative approach defines loyalty as “an obligation based on fiduciary duties and the law of agency”(Corvino 2002; Bok 1983), meaning that employees should act based on the interests of their employers rather than themselves. The psychological approach is different from the normative approach because it defines loyalty as “a feeling that is desirable but not obligatory.” (Hoffman 2006; Rosanas and Velilla 2003; Randels 2001; and Soloman 1998), while others define it as a “psychological contract”. These definitions can help us give a clear view depending on how businesses run, the loyalty would either be built on psychological reasons or based on the best interests of their employer(s). 

If employees were to think in the ethics of care, of course most of them time loyalty would not be questioned because people think that in order to keep their job, they should be loyal to their employers even if they are terrible. Employees should not have to base their loyalty on only what the employer thinks is best, but it should be based on the interdependence of both the employee and the employer. This would best ensure that the organization is kept up to the best standards of everyone involved. 

In conclusion, although what Mannings did was unloyal to the United States, it can be seen as a moral example of whistle blowing because it sparked up discussions concerning how the military treated others during the war and really how justifiable their action had been. Her action to leak the footage of the air force shooting at people they thought were a “threat” to their safety brought many to question the members of the air force and their motives. Some would argue that Mannings shouldn’t have leaked the footage because it contained content that is disgusting and graphic in detail. But they would add that the leaking of the footage would prove her to be unloyal to the United States as a whole since she had worked for the US military and basically showed everyone the wrongdoings of some members of the military. Though this can be partially agreed on, there was a moral reason behind what she did. She did this to show how some of them purposefully targeted innocent people without confirmation of whether or not they were actually even a threat to them or not. Leaking the information was disloyal, but it proved to be the right thing because it made officials question  the ethics of how the air force handled the situation and how they let the air force off scot-free with no consequences.