Home
Forums
New posts
Search forums
What's new
New posts
Latest activity
Members
Current visitors
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
New posts
Search forums
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Home
Forums
Brown Cafe Community Center
Current Events
For the American Soldier, Not a Good Storyl!
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Jones" data-source="post: 349135" data-attributes="member: 4805"><p>Americans have committed what we would now call war crimes in pretty much every major conflict we've ever been involved in (so has every other country). Probably 99% of these go unaddressed. It's really a by-product of the act of war itself, which is in many ways a crime in the first place because you are being sent to kill people who's only offense is being a member of someone else's armed forces. Yes, there are often justifiable larger goals, but you accomplish those larger goals by killing people who aren't in charge, who likely have no say in the workings of their government, and in many cases are draftees who don't have any choice in the matter. And that's a best case scenario. Look at something like the Dresden fire bombings or the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, whose sole purpose was the mass murder of civilians in order to break the will of the enemy. Makes the alleged incidents at Haditha look like pretty small potatoes, no? Who made the decision in those cases?</p><p></p><p>"War crimes", up to and including the intentional killing of innocent people, are an inevitable byproduct of prolonged conflict. By the time it happens it's a forgone conclusion, and prosecuting the individuals who were directly involved often amounts to a form of scapegoating, because it was never their decision to go to war in the first place. Their country trained them to kill, sent them to kill, and then prosecutes them for killing the wrong people. Who's really responsible? </p><p></p><p>I agree with mac's larger point, that the moral culpability for the consequences of war rest squarely on the shoulders of the leaders who make the decision to wage war, because they have to know going in what the outcome is going to be and if they don't then they have no business being in charge. That doesn't mean that war is never justified, but there is a big difference between waging a legitimate defensive war and invading another country to achieve some nebulous foreign policy goals.</p><p></p><p>Having said all that, I don't see any changes coming. We will continue to prosecute the front line troops in the mistaken belief that it is possible to wage a clean, moral, sanitary war if we just get rid of a few bad apples.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jones, post: 349135, member: 4805"] Americans have committed what we would now call war crimes in pretty much every major conflict we've ever been involved in (so has every other country). Probably 99% of these go unaddressed. It's really a by-product of the act of war itself, which is in many ways a crime in the first place because you are being sent to kill people who's only offense is being a member of someone else's armed forces. Yes, there are often justifiable larger goals, but you accomplish those larger goals by killing people who aren't in charge, who likely have no say in the workings of their government, and in many cases are draftees who don't have any choice in the matter. And that's a best case scenario. Look at something like the Dresden fire bombings or the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, whose sole purpose was the mass murder of civilians in order to break the will of the enemy. Makes the alleged incidents at Haditha look like pretty small potatoes, no? Who made the decision in those cases? "War crimes", up to and including the intentional killing of innocent people, are an inevitable byproduct of prolonged conflict. By the time it happens it's a forgone conclusion, and prosecuting the individuals who were directly involved often amounts to a form of scapegoating, because it was never their decision to go to war in the first place. Their country trained them to kill, sent them to kill, and then prosecutes them for killing the wrong people. Who's really responsible? I agree with mac's larger point, that the moral culpability for the consequences of war rest squarely on the shoulders of the leaders who make the decision to wage war, because they have to know going in what the outcome is going to be and if they don't then they have no business being in charge. That doesn't mean that war is never justified, but there is a big difference between waging a legitimate defensive war and invading another country to achieve some nebulous foreign policy goals. Having said all that, I don't see any changes coming. We will continue to prosecute the front line troops in the mistaken belief that it is possible to wage a clean, moral, sanitary war if we just get rid of a few bad apples. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Home
Forums
Brown Cafe Community Center
Current Events
For the American Soldier, Not a Good Storyl!
Top