OnPoint: Iraq, from the air
252 Responses
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a moral man , not anymore
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Morgan, you points are utter bullshit.
"How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause. Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?"
- Sophie Scholl.
Or, if you seek something perhaps more germaine, a US Army helicopter pilot who knew right from wrong, try Googling Hugh Thompson, Jr.
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i blame the devil
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Tom, I care about those distinctions because what we do depends on them.
Should the soldiers who pulled the trigger carry the blame? Should it be the commanders who gave the green light? The generals who authorised the Rules of Engagement? The politicians who put them there in the first place?
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Thanks Morgan, pretty much agree. While horror and anger are perfectly natural responses, there's little to be gained by indulging a sense of moral superiority.
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bring back hugh
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So, that's it? You want to throw the book at two guys?
You don't care about the commanders who authorised engagement after asking "They're picking up the wounded?", and when it was confirmed, *then* said they could engage?
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You don't care about the orders that placed them there in the first place, looking for insurgents? You don't care about the rules that govern the soldiers, that allows them to sit in the cockpit of an attack helicopter?
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the army is a brutal state paid gang, let's never forget that
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Joe: thanks for making me express myself more clearly, which forced me to think more clearly.
I feel like I have to add that I don't think the people who pulled the trigger are morally in the clear. There are certainly soldiers who wouldn't have done what these ones did. But as for deciding how much guilt goes where - I put more of it on the situation. (And try and avoid going further than that, because that sort of decision seems way too difficult.)
Edit: but Keith is making the same point better than me so I'll be quiet now.
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Keith, it is all of them. But surely the most enduring warning from the holocaust is that following orders, rules of engagment, protocols, whatever is no defense for the individual if those rules pervert morality. The individual stands guilty of his crimes.
When I watched that video, the words of Jacob Bronowski came powerfully to me:
"WE HAVE TO CLOSE THE DISTANCE BETWEEN THE PUSH BUTTON ORDER AND THE HUMAN ACT"
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morgan, you made perfect sense
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well join the army tom, it sounds like they need you.
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Jeremy, I think you'll find the shallow end is that way. You'll find it more to your liking.
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beware the fundamental attribution error
Worth noting that we're wired as observers to explain away problems as being a result of individual behaviour rather than systemic choices.
And that combat training perverts the way soldiers reason and morally experience the world - so that they are capable of killing.
All human though.
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i think what morgan is saying is anyone could end up in the american armed forces , so many paths would have lead there.....morality in a death fight environment is unstudied but all studies even in lesser intense environments leads to a suspension of one of the ten commandments.
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Joe: thanks for making me express myself more clearly, which forced me to think more clearly.
Hey, totally undeserved. Appreciate your insights, thanks for taking the trouble.
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rules of engagement - where is beheadings in that shit
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the middle east hasn't even worked out proper rules of hanging out
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and we're not there either
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Keith, it is all of them.
That's a trite answer, and it contradicts what you said an hour ago:
Oh I just want to be clear where the guilt lies here. It doesn't lie with the US military system - as much as they have lost their moral compass. It doesn't lie with the so-called "rules of engagement". It sits squarely on the man who pulled the trigger. He is solely responsible for these killings.
And once again, we come back to my point. If you don't approach the facts with an open mind, if you don't take care to interpret the nuances and the details, to consider alternatives, then you're just pissing in the wind, wildly casting accusations about. What good does that do anyone?
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When I watched that video, the words of Jacob Bronowski came powerfully to me...
Speaking of video:
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iraq - what a fuck up..........those godamm liberals were right after all.
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Should the soldiers who pulled the trigger carry the blame? Should it be the commanders who gave the green light? The generals who authorised the Rules of Engagement? The politicians who put them there in the first place?
The blame lies squarely with the politicians who got us into this debacle. The US president holds the title of commander-in-chief for a reason.
An army is a tool that is wielded by government.
The blame also lies with the decision-makers in the pentagon, who have failed to create a flexible, adaptive, intelligent armed force capable of acting both as a conventional army and as an effective peacekeeping force, despite the fact that asymmetric warfare has been the prevailing operational scenario since around 1960.
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Apparently DemocracyNow was on the ground the next day
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/8/exclusive_witnesses_describe_deadly_2007_us
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