It's highly "subjective"
How We Learned to Kill
111–120 of 154 posts
Re: How We Learned to Kill
#112Imagine if we took the commandment "Thou shall not kill" to heart. Imagine if instead of killing those men on the roadside, it was the job to the soldiers to incapacitate them but take them alive. Is it possible? Of course it is possible. Perhaps harder, but possible. Here's the funny thing about killing. Somehow we continually find excuses for doing it. And the easiest excuse of all is that the other guy did it firs…
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Re: How We Learned to Kill
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most people have not killed anyone. (This is probably more true for people alive today than it is for all humans that have ever lived)
Not directly. Indirectly, we all kill, all the time. It's an inevitability of life.
> Indirectly, we all kill, all the time.
How?
Re: How We Learned to Kill
#114I find it very strange that people talk about soldiers as if they had some special moral responsibility for what happens during a war. Sure, they should be thinking about the implications and ethics of their actions, as we all should, and yet they also signed up to serve the nation, and to do what their nation thought necessary and just. Do people think that democratic nations should not have armies, and it is an eth…
When you volunteer as a soldier to be deployed to a war zone and kill people (or directly support other soldiers killing), you have a special moral responsibility for what happens during a war.
and to do what their nation thought necessary and just.
The US did not think that invading Iraq was 'just'. Iraq was a defeatable foe, and the war in Afghanistan wasn't producing results. There was nothing 'just' about the invasion of Iraq by the US - if the US did invade places because the dictator is nasty, they'd be a lot more militarily involved in Africa.
I don't understand why Americans don't hold people who volunteer to go fight overseas to a stricter moral questioning. It's a total cop-out to say "well, I was doing it for my country, and my country wanted to go do it". The comments you make about refusing to serve are not appropriate; there was no conscription.
it is all of our responsibilities, as voters and citizens
In a four-year election cycle, how does a voter have an effect on a war late in year 3 started because of an unrelated-but-significant event in year 1?
Basically the buck stops with the soldiers for the same reason that soldiers should decline to follow an immoral order. Otherwise you absolve them morally of anything their nation requires of them: hello Auschwitz guards. It's also an oversimplification, a false binary choice, to say that the buck can't stop in multiple places. It stops with the soldiers. It also stops with the politicians. It's not like there's only one entity responsible for something like this.
Re: How We Learned to Kill
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is war. A place of snap decisions, unfortunately. Sure, I personally would like US soldiers, or for that matter my own country's soldiers, to wage war like United Federation of Planets - diplomacy, diplomacy, and if that fails, set phasers to stun. But we don't have phasers. Nowdays, if you run at your enemy with a taser, you'll get shot to death before you're halfway there. I'm not defending the atrocities many…
"you can't blame soldiers for using lethal force against a perceived lethal threat." Did you realise how that phrase is incredibly dangerously close to this other one: "You can't blame a Government for preventively imprison or kill someone because some of its bureaucrat has perceived threat" ? You bliss the first one and you have nothing left to contain the other one from happening Unless you are a believer of the ca…
> Did you realise how that phrase is incredibly dangerously close to this other one
It's not. Because soldiers are thrown into battle and forced to make snap decisions that determine whether they'll live or die the very next second, while the Government has both more time for deliberation and much, much wider range of possible actions to take.
> You bliss the first one and you have nothing left to contain the other one from happening
This does not follow. My point was - if they're shooting at you and you're not allowed to run, what can you do except shoot back? The problem is with those who put you in a position where you're getting shot at.
> Unless you are a believer of the capability to self-refrain of an ever expanding Government.
Of course I don't. I just feel that focusing on front-line soldiers is the wrong place to start solving this problem.
Re: How We Learned to Kill
#116So when are we going to learn to bridge the gap, forgive and flourish with our enemies-become-friends? Or, is that just too darn hard?
It's very hard to do if the other side won't agree to sing campfire songs with us too. Especially if they'd rather violently impose Sharia through a worldwide caliphate, to use one contemporary example. Gotta pay the Dhimmi before we can forgive and flourish. Yes, there are a lot of reasonable people on the other side of the line. But the leadership of those reasonable people can, depending on who you're talking abou…
Especially if they'd rather violently impose Sharia through a worldwide caliphate, to use one contemporary example.
What a weird example. ISIS wouldn't exist today if it weren't for the US destroying Iraq as a regional power.
Re: How We Learned to Kill
#117I want to ask Timothy Kudo if there was anything else he knew about the men digging by the side of the road that indicated to him that they were planting a bomb. Because if not, he's just a murderer. By the description in that article, he did not have nearly enough information to decide that those men should die. America was founded on the principle of "innocent until proven guilty". Timothy Kudo was acting as judge…
The concept of "innocent until proven guilty" is generally not used in warfare. This isn't an American thing; it's long been part of the customary / traditional rules governing lawful conflict.
To provide an easy to understand example why; you would not have to have a legal proceeding to determine that someone wearing a grey uniform with an iron cross on it was in fact a German soldier during WWI. Visual recognition, even from a distance (of the kind that would cause serious cross-examination in a domestic court), is sufficient to make the call that he is an enemy combatant.
Soldiers are absolutely empowered to act as judge, juror, and executioner, and are given significant latitude in determining who is and is not a lawful combatant.
It is worth noting that this Marine officer was acting under not just US rules of engagement, but also NATO ROEs. Those ROEs would have been vetted by the lawyers of all the NATO members, who already abide by some of the most historically rigorous applications of the laws of war.
As for whether Kudo knew anything else about the men digging on the side of the road. The answer is probably not. But, he also knew a lot about the cultural context in which they were operating, and leveraged that to make an informed judgment call about how to proceed. Regardless of whether you personally think that was moral or not, the fact is that it was legally permissible under internationally agreed upon laws of warfare.
Re: How We Learned to Kill
#118[deleted]
Re: How We Learned to Kill
#119I find it very strange that people talk about soldiers as if they had some special moral responsibility for what happens during a war. Sure, they should be thinking about the implications and ethics of their actions, as we all should, and yet they also signed up to serve the nation, and to do what their nation thought necessary and just. Do people think that democratic nations should not have armies, and it is an eth…
When you volunteer as a soldier to be deployed to a war zone and kill people (or directly support other soldiers killing), you have a special moral responsibility for what happens during a war. and to do what their nation thought necessary and just. The US did not think that invading Iraq was 'just'. Iraq was a defeatable foe, and the war in Afghanistan wasn't producing results. There was nothing 'just' about the inv…
> When you volunteer ... you have a special moral responsibility for what happens during a war.
A responsibility for your actions, or everything that happens during the war? What if your voluntary enlistment was due to false information, or steady conditioning by the state since childhood? Does intent play no role? Do you extend that line of thinking to the justice system where manslaughter and murder are treated differently?
> The US did not think that invading Iraq was 'just'.
Opinion polls were pretty high at the time. The righteousness of the invasion, from a legal perspective, was pretty firm - UN buy-in, Saddam later admitting that he was intentionally trying to make his possession of WMDs uncertain, continuous violation of no fly zones, etc. From a strict moral perspective that observes principles of nonaggression, no - it was not just.
> I don't understand why Americans don't hold people who volunteer to go fight overseas to a stricter moral questioning.
Because the majority of people, not just Americans, don't deeply consider the morality of things like that. Consider the logical conclusion of this line of thinking. Your position is essentially that the state does not have the authority to define righteousness kills. If one were to accept that position, then the state would not have a monopoly on violence - which is pretty much the yardstick for state sovereignty. This is a position that is morally and logically consistent, but obviously not widely held.
> ... how does a voter have an effect ...
How about not reelecting a president to a second term when he started the war in the first term?
> ... soldiers should decline to follow an immoral order.
There is an obligation to refuse illegal orders, this gets back to my point about the majority of people not deeply considering the morality of actions, and deferring to the state.
Re: How We Learned to Kill
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
"a mix of loyalty to my Marines, habit and the urge to survive" I think that is mostly a cliché too though. People stay in bad situations because uncertainty is even harder to deal with. The military generally go out of their way to make any other alternative "uncomfortable". If you're ready to sign away your freedom for glory, you should also be ready to do so for justice.
> I think that is mostly a cliché too though. It is not, not in the infantry at least, where brain wa... er - psychological conditioning is the strongest. For example: just days after my battalion got back from a fairly taxing deployment, the company commander informed us at morning formation that an artillery battalion was preparing to deploy to the area of operations we just got back from. It was part of some pilot…
"The Marine Corps put a lot of effort into building that sort of emotional connection, and it works."
In civilian life, the concept of "I" is so ingrained there is little understanding of idea of "We" in this context. For the 99%, listen to war journalist Sebastian Junger explain this concept along with Brendan O’Bryne (Sgt. 173rd,2BC,503 IR,Rtd.), talk about this brotherhood of men @woodman describes. ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwOAVSprv64
Post deployment, the consequences of moving from the safe world of "We" where you'll be looked after, to the alternative where you are left on your own is stark. [0]
[0] Loren Berlin, 'War Gives Way To Financial Strife For Returning Veterans' http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/05/veterans-war-financ...