There is also the more fundamental argument that we had no right attacking their country to begin with, and that they have every right, even the duty, to bear arms and defend themselves against invading armies. We never had any right to proclaim this a "war", or to label any opposing forces in their country as "insurgents". It is not our place to do so. Brainwashed soldiers are one thing; brainwashed citizens are another. I'm not sure which is worse, or which is more destructive of freedom.
Let's hope so. Death and destruction are not noble concepts, regardless of what strings are attached. Any attempts to argue otherwise are simply unsubstantiated rationalizations by those who refuse to grow up and leave the cave.
That's what we trained them to do, they have their own methods of dealing with the act of killing. A certain amount of professional pride and "gallows humor" is typical of both the military and police. At the time, they thought their actions were justified, and they were indeed authorized by command. Our military is not to blame here. You don't know what was in their minds after they realized their mistake.
We trained them to *enjoy* taking lives? I think we did not. Professional pride in killing is not typical, either. Most police and military personnel avoid reminiscing the deaths they have caused. Most hate having to had to kill, which is why there are such rates of suicide in those professions. Most do not revel in killing or encourage each other to take part in killing as these dips are surely doing. Your approval of it speaks volumes about your own inner desires, spidergoat.
You think wrong. The US military has, for generations, systematically worked to dehumanize enemies and instill bloodlust in recruits. This was found to increase combat-readiness - in previous conscript wars without such inculcation of violent urges, substantial percentages of fresh troops would freeze up when first confronted with combat, and so be quickly shot dead. These days, racist dehumanization of enemy culture is routine (recruits are openly encouraged to use terms like "sand nigger") as is indifference to, and even embrace of, killing. The myth of humanitarian citizen-soldiers is just that. They are exceptions to the rule, which is a system overtly designed to dehumanize enemies and revel in the employment of violence against them.
I'd like to see that supported with some proof. As someone who served in the USN, I beg to differ. We weren't even aloud to swear, and racist/sexist terminology was a quick way to Captain's mast. I had to take a fucking PC class on gender and racial equality--and this was over a decade ago. My nephew is in the Marines (in Afghanistan) and has bitched and moaned for the better part of his career about how many times he's had to take sensitivity training. ~String
Please provide evidence that this method of training is pervasive. Not evidence that it occurs in some isolated unit somewhere, not that it used to take place more often a long time ago, not that some people somewhere testifyi to being a victim of it... but that it is CURRENTLY and SYSTEMATICALLY widespread. Otherwise, I will be forced to dismiss this as paranoid nonsense from a delusional and bigoted foreign mind.
They thought they were killing the enemies of peace and freedom in Iraq, why shouldn't they feel happy about that, why shouldn't they enjoy doing something so important? Isn't it also possible that their bravado was the result of trying to come to grips with what they were expected to do?
Even in war there ar rules. They are not always followed of course. You could argue that a goup of armed men posed a threat to the US troops, but what threat was there from seemingly unarmed men collecting bodies? It's the mindset of US troops, or so it seems...shoot first and ask questions later.
Go watch "War Made Easy," or read any credible account of USMC recruit training. Or any number of other documentaries and press accounts. They routinely sing racist "Haji" cadences in training, are required to shout phrases such as "KILL!" or even "Kill babies!" during exercises, etc. There's also the systematic employment of 9/11 imagery coupled with gung-ho phraseology: in those contexts, a clear psychological incitement to civilizational revenge, in murderous terms. This has been going on for a long time, and isn't particularly secret. It doesn't need to be, apparently, when most people simply don't want to hear about it and would rather believe whatever comforts them. I get the idea that it's less overt and pervasive in the Navy and Air Force since, y'know, y'all don't really get involved in actual ground combat so much. The Marine Corps is famous for it, and supposedly it's pretty bad in the Army as well. This stuff really is about effectiveness in ground combat: you want people who are primed to kill the enemy without a second thought. Bloodlust and dehumanization are requisites for that - your normal, everyday Joe is not psychologically equipped to summarily kill strangers on command. Often as not, he'll freeze up if put in such a situation, and end up dead. The irony that this stuff is now done in a sanitized environment that lacks even pedestrian profanity has been noted before, including in the above-referenced documentary. You mean as it applies to other servicemembers. And even then, not the Arabs or Muslims. Or gays. "Foreign?" This must be like how I magically became non-white when I observed how ridiculously racist you are. The delusion here is the image of the US military as some kind of humanitarian peacekeeping force, and the dismissal of decades of evidence to the contrary as "bad apples" or "exceptions to the rule." That simply is not the program at the Pentagon, and never was. This is not Sweden.
Why..? Are they delusional..? Do they believe they are promoting freedom for people... by liberating them from their very lives? Certain other people throughout history performed killings and justified it under the pretense of serving some higher good as well. Nazis, for instance. Japanese war criminals in Unit 731, too. Check it out: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! This Japanese scientist thinks he's serving his country. This is how he enjoys it. Back to reality... The last time that we as Americans were attacked by a foreign nation was in 1941. We weren't "defending our freedom," when we decided to invade Iraq, which is the biggest and most insidiously deceptive lie that one hears from the military these days. Defending my freedom only happens when a bunch of foreigners are marching down Main Street, U.S.A. Running off to some foreign land to destroy people who have never attacked us is barbaric. Anyone who willingly signs up for that kind of service is a thief, a murderer, an international terrorist and a pig. Behaving like a thief, a murderer, a terrorist, and pig simply because you were told to do so, or because you want to pretend to believe in a cause that might justify it, does not absolve you of that truth. If someone tells you to kill people who never did a single bad thing to hurt anybody, and you do so without even verifying that, then you are a murderer. There can be no walking away from that.
Better safe then sorry, but they should have checked to make sure. Blame the terrorists for disguising as civilians. During combat people get edgy and tense, that is a fact. Trigger-happy troops, they are never good but they are always around.
Query: have we met in another thread? I don't recognize you. Alternate query: who in this thread has portrayed the US military as a humanitarian peacekeeping force..? For what reason do these nutjobs being exceptions to the rule suggest that the US army is a humanitarian peacekeeping force? You seem to be thinking in extremes.
Who blames them for making foreign policy..? The soldiers carry the blame for something much worse: for making that foreign policy a reality. They are the ones who CHOSE to sign up for military service and therefore carry out the murderous orders they are given. All of them are enablers and in most cases, they are the party MOST directly responsible for murder. They have a conscious, and they are the ones doing the actual killing. They are not "weapons" or "tools" who have no choice, as some insist on pretending in order to expiate their guilt. They are people, who are supposed to know right from wrong. What you have been doing is trying to apply the Nuremberg Defense. Historically, that is the same defense that Nazi officials used when they were punished for crimes against humanity after the end of World War II. We as Americans have set a precedent that "just following orders" does not relieve you of responsibility for immoral actions, provided a moral choice was before you as it surely is for soldiers in the military. We need to continue to apply that principle.
The Targed Acquisition/Designation Sight (TADS) of an AH-64D was designed to image armored vehicles in a Soviet invasion of Western Europe during the Cold War. Its thermal optics can render big metal cans with a combustion engine running inside of them in all kinds of obstructing environments. But its sensitivity, resolution, and contrast don't produce the greatest quality video with people, though. The captions in the video seem plausible to me, but even if they are there still isn't enough context to support the use of the word "murder". Regardless of opinion here this video is useless for a verdict. Maybe if there was a Predator, which has a daylight color camera that can render shadows and facial features. Better yet, eyes on target. Unfortunately resources like those are more limited, so sometimes the sledgehammer is the only thing left on the peg board and you get events like this. Then there is the context that video like this needs to be interpreted in, which isn't available on the internet, but is dutifully reconstructed during official investigations. With that said, there are two easy lessons here. One is that close air support assets require an observer on the ground to be of any use in urban operations. In most cases they are, but as I said, personnel limitations are a crippling reality of this type of warfare. Also, the Fulda Gap slug fest the AH-64x was designed for makes it come across as one of those Vikings in the Capital One commercials trying to perform brain surgery. CT/COIN operations require different tools, and we don't have enough of them.
Several of them, in fact. In the course of which we established that I'm a white male American, BTW. That rhetoric was over the top, I'll admit. But you did assert that the rule is professional standards that abhor killing. This simply isn't the case - although I note that the remainder of your rhetoric is very much in line with that, so I'm a bit puzzled.
