(1) - It's not always what you do, but how you go about doing it.

One of the reasons I dislike war is that it's carried out so badly by my terms that I end up laughing at the morbidity. I don't know if it's fully the absurdity of it, or that laughter is all I have left, but take for instance civilian casualties. It's a tragic inevitability of the way in which modern wars are fought. However, consider this article from the New York Times (reg. req.) (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/29/international/worldspecial/29HALT.html?pagewanted=print&position=top):But in the heat of a firefight, both men conceded, when the calculus often warps, a shot not taken in one set of circumstances may suddenly present itself as a life-or-death necessity.

"We dropped a few civilians," Sergeant Schrumpf said, "but what do you do?"

To illustrate, the sergeant offered a pair of examples from earlier in the week.

"There was one Iraqi soldier, and 25 women and children," he said, "I didn't take the shot."

But more than once, Sergeant Schrumpf said, he faced a different choice: one Iraqi soldier standing among two or three civilians. He recalled one such incident, in which he and other men in his unit opened fire. He recalled watching one of the women standing near the Iraqi soldier go down.

"I'm sorry," the sergeant said. "But the chick was in the way." You know ... he was doing alright until that last bit.

Coming Soon! Honesty and justifying wars.

:m:,
Tiassa :cool:

How do you go about justfying a war and there is now right way to go about a war..War is War. period. If two countries really wanna settle out in violence then i say the two world leaders meet up in a neutral country's pizza parlor and duke it out Various arcade games......i.e street fighter, pacman etcc

All I'm after is that if we're supposed to be the "good guys" we ought to act like it.

:m:,
Tiassa :cool:

Did he have to shoot them to save his own life, or just to take out the enemy when he had his chance? The first case it isn't nearly bad as the second. Maybe use tranquilizer guns or sleep gas grenades if the soldiers life isn't in serious danger. But tranqs would probably make the bloodthirsty hawks vomit with disgust.

Actually, I accept the deaths of civilians as a part of warfare; it's one of the reasons I oppose warfare. More to the point, though: The chick was in the way.

He could be a little more dignified about it. Such a colloquial description does little for public perception.

He might as well have said, "The bitch was stupid; the didn't duck."

It's just a little callous, is all.

:m:,
Tiassa :cool:

i had the opportunity to speak with a full-time protester of the vietnam war. he said that having so many veterans join the protest when they came home gave them tons of credibility, something we don't yet have since they have to serve over there at least a year. he also said that for many of them, their breaking point was killing civilians or watching civilians die. if this (above quote) is the attitude of current soldiers, the whole world is screwed.