"fighting to the death"

[liadnan]

How many nails in the coffin now? "Well, he's dead now".

(ETA: Riverbend's reaction here. Says it all really.)

Comments

[itchyfidget.livejournal.com]

Saw the footage on News24 this morning. Tip of the iceberg, no doubt. Ugly.

[brelson.livejournal.com]

I think that this is another side-effect of the American troops in Iraq having been led to believe that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks. This idea must have evolved into "anyone in Iraq who opposes our invasion was behind the 9/11 attacks and we therefore have a personal vendetta against them under which any sort of treatment is justified".

This, of course, was always inevitable, and is also a large part of the reason why there is such strong resistance to the occupation force. There is a massive gap between how Americans perceive their own armed forces and how people in Iraq perceive them.

[itchyfidget.livejournal.com]

I don't doubt that there's something of that at play here. But also, war dehumanises people. And the soldier who shot the guy sounds like he shouldn't have been back on duty so soon after being shot in the face.

[liadnan]

They don't have enough men for the job. They never did...

[itchyfidget.livejournal.com]

Well, that's certainly true.

[eccles.livejournal.com]

war dehumanises people

True, to an extent. I can't remember the study but someone found out that in WW2 and/or possibly Vietnam soldiers were purposefully shooting high to avoid hitting anyone. This lead to changes in training that turned soldiers into thoughtless killing machines. So it's the training that dehumanises them. It probably also explains why US troops can't do peacekeeping.

[itchyfidget.livejournal.com]

I think probably you have to dehumanise your soldiers in training to an extent, if they are going to do the job you want them to do.

Of course, when that job is prosecuting an illegal war and killing all civilians because they are really "insurgents", then I imagine the only thing to do is seek refuge in the assumption that "the enemy is evil".

Which is not to excuse what happened in the mosque in Falluja.

[frankie-ecap.livejournal.com]

Which leads me to think that another argument against this way of waging war is that it's actually quite wrong to do that to your own side, never mind the other side.

Similarly, I've always thought that one of the most powerful arguments against the monarch is that it's quite wrong to allow any human being to be treated the way that they are in all sorts of ways.

[scribeoflight.livejournal.com]

And even if they didn't think the enemy was "evil", they would still be the enemy, and you just don't shoot a enemy soldier if he is wounded and without a weapon.

[boondockeorla.livejournal.com]

*blushes for country*