thedrifter
08-21-06, 07:17 PM
Published: August 21, 2006 10:22 am
Marines accused of rape, murder a product of training, war
Ellen McDaniel-Weissler, LaVale
So Marine Steven Green and his buddies, with premeditation, go into a house in Mahmudiyah, Iraq, rape and murder a 14-year-old girl and shoot her mother, father and 5-year-old sister. America is appalled, the Pentagon chagrined. How could this have happened?
Forget that Green was a known druggie with a history of personality disorders, incautiously recruited into a desperately overstretched military. Leave aside the politics of this war. The question is not, "How could this have happened?" but "Why haven't we learned?"
Thrust a human into a culture where killing is not only required but exalted, drill into them that the enemy is subhuman, evil, and deserves to die, pound out of them any semblance of human sensitivity (compassion takes the "edge" off) - turn a human into a killing machine, and it is going to kill. Stalked by death 24/7, a killing machine will respond to its training. How can you expect it to differentiate between "acceptable" and "unacceptable" murder? Simply put, how can you expect a human to retain his humanity?
From the ancient Punic Wars of Greece to the present, for reasons of necessity and patriotism, armies have been trained to slaughter. That is what wins wars. That IS war. The military conditions humans to kill, to see the daily body count as a triumph, even keeping score for bragging rights. Their reward has been not trial and imprisonment, but medals and honor. Murder on the street corner is a crime. Murder on the battlefield is an achievement.
Crimes like that of Steven Green and his pals have plentiful precedent, from the American frontier to Mi Lai and in every war before or after. Nowadays kids win popularity and acclaim in school from holding the highest number of kills in graphically bloody video games; they see rampant carnage daily as entertainment on their movie and TV screens; they live in real time through horrors like 9/11, and so they enter the military already conditioned to seeing destruction and slaughter as what the "good guys" do to expunge the "bad guys." Dress it up in a "just cause" and murder becomes nobility. Recruiting posters tout educational packages, world travel, serving your country. In the world of Arab fanatics they are more honest. We may be shocked by "Join the Army - kill Zionist Westerners," but at least it's calling a spade a spade. America prefers euphemisms like "collateral damage" and "non-combatant casualties." "Innocent dead babies" doesn't work for military PR. We don't show the torn bodies on our TV screens, or keep track of the defenseless dead. "Join the Navy, see the world - meet exotic foreign people and kill them" may be a sick joke, but it's the truth.
So no more baloney about "how could this have happened." Killing machines kill. They do so thoughtlessly, coldly, remorselessly, because we condition them to do so. In our culture killing is commonplace and graphically portrayed, humans are desensitized even before military training makes them robotic. Lessons in "winning hearts and minds," are simultaneously negated by constant instruction in destruction. We reward soldiers for slaughtering and praise them for brutality, blurring the gray area between just war and simple carnage. The murders in Mahmudiyah are just a close-up of what our massive aerial bombing does daily - it's just that you can't see the blood from the air. Maybe that's what startles us. To kill from a distance is easy - but how can one kill while looking into the victim's eyes? Simple. Ask Steven Green.
Military service may be necessary in a world where grownups haven't learned the skills they preach to their children - getting along and negotiating. ("Don't take his toy away, Billy. Don't hit her, Susie. Play nicely together!") But if we are going to excuse our brutality with "He started it!" then we shouldn't be shocked when the killer robots we create kill. Let's stop fooling ourselves. The military doesn't exist to educate, or act as cruise director; it exists to destroy. If we'd once remove the blinders of patriotism and self-righteousness and admit that armies slaughter, maybe we'd stop feeling superior to our enemies and see ourselves reflected in them - and then maybe we could learn to get along.
Ellie
Marines accused of rape, murder a product of training, war
Ellen McDaniel-Weissler, LaVale
So Marine Steven Green and his buddies, with premeditation, go into a house in Mahmudiyah, Iraq, rape and murder a 14-year-old girl and shoot her mother, father and 5-year-old sister. America is appalled, the Pentagon chagrined. How could this have happened?
Forget that Green was a known druggie with a history of personality disorders, incautiously recruited into a desperately overstretched military. Leave aside the politics of this war. The question is not, "How could this have happened?" but "Why haven't we learned?"
Thrust a human into a culture where killing is not only required but exalted, drill into them that the enemy is subhuman, evil, and deserves to die, pound out of them any semblance of human sensitivity (compassion takes the "edge" off) - turn a human into a killing machine, and it is going to kill. Stalked by death 24/7, a killing machine will respond to its training. How can you expect it to differentiate between "acceptable" and "unacceptable" murder? Simply put, how can you expect a human to retain his humanity?
From the ancient Punic Wars of Greece to the present, for reasons of necessity and patriotism, armies have been trained to slaughter. That is what wins wars. That IS war. The military conditions humans to kill, to see the daily body count as a triumph, even keeping score for bragging rights. Their reward has been not trial and imprisonment, but medals and honor. Murder on the street corner is a crime. Murder on the battlefield is an achievement.
Crimes like that of Steven Green and his pals have plentiful precedent, from the American frontier to Mi Lai and in every war before or after. Nowadays kids win popularity and acclaim in school from holding the highest number of kills in graphically bloody video games; they see rampant carnage daily as entertainment on their movie and TV screens; they live in real time through horrors like 9/11, and so they enter the military already conditioned to seeing destruction and slaughter as what the "good guys" do to expunge the "bad guys." Dress it up in a "just cause" and murder becomes nobility. Recruiting posters tout educational packages, world travel, serving your country. In the world of Arab fanatics they are more honest. We may be shocked by "Join the Army - kill Zionist Westerners," but at least it's calling a spade a spade. America prefers euphemisms like "collateral damage" and "non-combatant casualties." "Innocent dead babies" doesn't work for military PR. We don't show the torn bodies on our TV screens, or keep track of the defenseless dead. "Join the Navy, see the world - meet exotic foreign people and kill them" may be a sick joke, but it's the truth.
So no more baloney about "how could this have happened." Killing machines kill. They do so thoughtlessly, coldly, remorselessly, because we condition them to do so. In our culture killing is commonplace and graphically portrayed, humans are desensitized even before military training makes them robotic. Lessons in "winning hearts and minds," are simultaneously negated by constant instruction in destruction. We reward soldiers for slaughtering and praise them for brutality, blurring the gray area between just war and simple carnage. The murders in Mahmudiyah are just a close-up of what our massive aerial bombing does daily - it's just that you can't see the blood from the air. Maybe that's what startles us. To kill from a distance is easy - but how can one kill while looking into the victim's eyes? Simple. Ask Steven Green.
Military service may be necessary in a world where grownups haven't learned the skills they preach to their children - getting along and negotiating. ("Don't take his toy away, Billy. Don't hit her, Susie. Play nicely together!") But if we are going to excuse our brutality with "He started it!" then we shouldn't be shocked when the killer robots we create kill. Let's stop fooling ourselves. The military doesn't exist to educate, or act as cruise director; it exists to destroy. If we'd once remove the blinders of patriotism and self-righteousness and admit that armies slaughter, maybe we'd stop feeling superior to our enemies and see ourselves reflected in them - and then maybe we could learn to get along.
Ellie