Talya wrote:
I kinda agree with Taskiss's point, though.
They're trained to fight at the will of another, to kill on command. Essentially, they become mere weapons, with politicians and generals aiming them and pulling the triggers.
1) He's right in that they kill on command, but that's kind of a "duh" thing to say. Of course they do.
2) Generals have nothing to do with it, in any NATO/western country such as Japan, SK, or Australia for example. Ok, what about colonels? Majors? Lieutenants? That general was a lieutenant at one time, and was right there aiming his own weapon personally even while he was leading his men, and he gets "aimed" just as much as the men underneath him do. General Petraeus did not choose to go fight in Afghanistan or Iraq; he was told to go there. He decided
how to fight, and the recommendations of generals and admirals as to how to fight and what we can feasibly do in that regard do shape policy, but in this country, in your country, and in all of our major allies, the generals have learned that society is a lot more pleasant to live in when they leave the politics to the politicians, and generals want to live in a prosperous free society as much as anyone else, and want their legacies to reflect the values they learned as children and young adults. I'm sure some are exceptions, but given the consequences for such mild gaffes as McChrystals, any officer with serious political ambition resigns his commission if he wants to pursue it lest he be declared surplus under far less favorable circumstances.
Quote:
For millenia we have trained soldiers to be weapons weilded by their patron nation. A gun has no conscience, a gun has no remorse. It is just a tool. A person cannot become just a tool...when you put aside conscience and remorse, and take that step of killing another human being, no matter how justified, it's gotta break something inside you. Obviously, some handle it better than others, but you've gotta dehumanize the enemy for your own sanity. And once you view the enemy as less than human, respect for their corpses is a joke. Why would you respect their corpses when you didn't respect their living bodies?
This is quite true, and is one of the aspects of PTSD. Most human beings (roughly 98%) have a psychological "safety catch" against killing; this is why so many primitive cultures practiced "war" in which few or no people got killed, or why single combat among champions was common; not only did it keep the death count down but it also ensured that the champions fighting would fall into the 2% that don't have qualms about killing.
This is why Viet Nam resulted in such massive instances of PTSD: Soldiers need psychological cushions to deal with what they have had to do. Dehumanizing the enemy is one of them. Another is knowing that whatever they did was societally sanctioned. Ultimately, society, not politicians, generals, or common soldiers bears responsibility for what happens either by electing leaders that get them into those situations or cowering in their homes and allowing a dictator to run rampant. When you have such post-Viet Nam disgraces as people wanting to spit on young privates returning from a war, that simply piles the burden that ought to be born by society onto the soldier.
The only thing above that isn't necessarily accurate is respecting the enemy. Not all enemies get dehumanized to the same degree. Compare the Eastern and Western Fronts in WWII. While the western front was hardly a model of gentlemanly combat, the general attitude was that one's enemy was a brave man serving his country and a reasonably sporting opponent on the battlefield, even the discovered horrors of concentration camps largely notwithstanding. On the eastern front, it was damn near a mutual goal of annihilation of the other. The only thing that stopped the Germans from annihilating the Russians was the fact that they couldn't, and the only thing that stopped the reverse was the fact that all-out revenge genocide against Germany would have resulted in WWIII following 5 minutes after WWII with Russia's new opponents proceeding to nuke it into oblivion as fast as the things could be built.
Quote:
Honestly, I don't think The Taliban and their ilk should be considered human anyway. They're not even animals - they're monsters that need to be put down; demons that need to be exorcized; crap that needs to be flushed. Just look at how women were treated in afghanistan before we invaded, as a simple example. Or rewatch 9-11 videos and remember they thought such actions were justified and protected the group that claimed responsibility.
The expression "putting them down like dogs" affords them too much dignity. I'm not inclined to overly fault these soldiers.
I don't think we want to go down that road, lest we blind ourselves to our own excesses. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for **** them up, in detail, until they understand their beliefs need to stay inside their own borders, but we need not get the idea we're inherently "better".
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
