What I'm going to say is that war is the worst possible display of inhumanity you're ever likely to imagine in your darkest nightmares.
I have several friends who have all served in elite military units. I have a photo of myself with Dick Marcinko from a few years ago. I've never served with any of them but I've spent good time with them and talked.
The reality of war is so horrible and dehumanizing that many never fully recover. I have a short list of friends that cannot sleep without chemical aid. One friend drank not a sip of water for over two years, instead drinking himself to a state of numbness until he was able to finally recover. He's killed many many men.
So I'm going to temper my own judgement of these men's actions with the knowledge that we train, equip, and expect these men to plan murder for our benefit. We expect them to inspire fear. And we send them into far off lands, away from their homes and loved ones, expose them to unimaginable cruelty to the point where their psyche is forever scarred, and then forget about that sacrifice once they've destroyed enough of themselves and others to satisfy us.
We command these men to look into the abyss and forget just how much the abyss is staring back into them.
What are my options, as a regular citizen, to exclude myself from this "we?"
I don't want to send men to such destiny and I do believe that in 9 out of 10 cases only economic elites benefit from all this destruction, dehumanizations and suffering.
I never agreed to send them, but I do share the responsibility, expenses and repercussions / guilt.
And they have relied on treaties with, or protection by proxy from a former colonizer or nearby superpower. In other words, they rely on others for defense.
The human race is a brutal and tribal species. The capacity to do horrible things in the name of our own survival, rage, hatred, jealousy, and fear means that no society ever created by men can escape war.
It's also why those that have seen war and it's cost are the best among us to speak of its horrors. The little-known secret is that the USA's biggest doves work at the Pentagon.
I have more details, sourced from someone who is also a writer (as well as a retired special operator) and broke stories like this as part of his work as a journalist, but I'm not going to share those stories here. What was done to the bodies of our servicemen who died on that ridge would leave you speechless.
If it had been done to one of your family, you'd almost assuredly do the same to them.
Very few of us will ever encounter the brutal murder of one who is close to them. As much as I'd like to believe in the better nature of men, I'm also no fool to believe that vengeful rage will never enter their heart.
Once these men knew who they were dealing with, it was "eye for an eye." They cared little if it damned them to hell.
I'd still like to think that there is a real chance of Tony Blair being convicted of mass murder and dying in jail. And of George Bush and John Howard not daring to set foot in Europe again.
This was all preventable: it's quite unlikely that Al Gore would have started it, or that John Kerry would have allowed it to continue. Bush's ruthlessness, and the lack of value he placed on human life, was apparent at least a decade before he was president.
I share your overall dissatisfaction with the USA's disastrous foreign interventions, and while I agree that Gore probably wouldn't have invaded Iraq, I'm quite certain he would have invaded Afghanistan. And I see no reason to believe Kerry would have taken a much different path than Obama has. Speaking of whom, is there a reason he was left out of your critique? He seems pretty fond of both mass surveillance and drones.
The contents of this article notwithstanding, I'm not sure I feel comfortable with that kind of broad generalization. I'm sure there are a number of reasons why individuals would chose to serve in such roles, and like any large organization or industry, I'm sure there are people who fall within a wide spectrum of ethics or morality. I wouldn't necessarily think there are any more psychopaths in the military than there are in Silicon Valley.
As a counter point, albeit one steeped in personal anecdote, one of my best friends whom I've known since childhood, served a number of years in an elite military unit, and continues to do so in a slightly less elite Air National Guard unit, and he's probably the most honest, charitable, and fiercely loyal person I've had the privilege of knowing.
I read half or quarter of top 500 public companimy ceos are considered psychopaths clinically. I think for anyone to reach such high level of achievement, you are crazy to begin with.
I think it would be worth providing a reference with a claim like this, as a courtesy rather than as proof, so to speak. If it's interesting enough to post in a comment, it's likely interesting enough that others would want to read more about it.
"Australian study has found that about one in five corporate executives are psychopaths – roughly the same rate as among prisoners.
The study of 261 senior professionals in the United States found that 21 per cent had clinically significant levels of psychopathic traits. The rate of psychopathy in the general population is about one in a hundred."
Let's not beat around the bush here. These guys are government authorised death squads. Many of them are psychopathic or deeply scared by what they've seen and done. They learn to treat the enemy as subhuman. That leads to a lack of respect of the dead and any war conventions. Is it really so surprising that this was the outcome?
The article is about the failure to make something honorable of the worst actions a person does to another. What is so surprising of that fact other than the US spending billions on their Navy SEAL brand and exceptionalism? They could spend trillions on prettying up the act of war on men who only find killing another to be their only solution and they will still have the same problem if not worse.
"Canoeing" itself is a tradition in the US armed forces long before the SEAL Team 6 undisciplined actions. It was common for US military soldiers and Americans to refer to Chinese and Koreans as "zipper heads" because they used to shoot those civilians and PoWs for sport in the same manner as the Navy SEALs practiced in their desecration and mutilation of enemy combatants.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 62.0 ms ] threadHow ... unsurprising, given their choice of occupation.
What I'm going to say is that war is the worst possible display of inhumanity you're ever likely to imagine in your darkest nightmares.
I have several friends who have all served in elite military units. I have a photo of myself with Dick Marcinko from a few years ago. I've never served with any of them but I've spent good time with them and talked.
The reality of war is so horrible and dehumanizing that many never fully recover. I have a short list of friends that cannot sleep without chemical aid. One friend drank not a sip of water for over two years, instead drinking himself to a state of numbness until he was able to finally recover. He's killed many many men.
So I'm going to temper my own judgement of these men's actions with the knowledge that we train, equip, and expect these men to plan murder for our benefit. We expect them to inspire fear. And we send them into far off lands, away from their homes and loved ones, expose them to unimaginable cruelty to the point where their psyche is forever scarred, and then forget about that sacrifice once they've destroyed enough of themselves and others to satisfy us.
We command these men to look into the abyss and forget just how much the abyss is staring back into them.
What are my options, as a regular citizen, to exclude myself from this "we?"
I don't want to send men to such destiny and I do believe that in 9 out of 10 cases only economic elites benefit from all this destruction, dehumanizations and suffering.
I never agreed to send them, but I do share the responsibility, expenses and repercussions / guilt.
What are my options?
The human race is a brutal and tribal species. The capacity to do horrible things in the name of our own survival, rage, hatred, jealousy, and fear means that no society ever created by men can escape war.
It's also why those that have seen war and it's cost are the best among us to speak of its horrors. The little-known secret is that the USA's biggest doves work at the Pentagon.
I have more details, sourced from someone who is also a writer (as well as a retired special operator) and broke stories like this as part of his work as a journalist, but I'm not going to share those stories here. What was done to the bodies of our servicemen who died on that ridge would leave you speechless.
If it had been done to one of your family, you'd almost assuredly do the same to them.
Very few of us will ever encounter the brutal murder of one who is close to them. As much as I'd like to believe in the better nature of men, I'm also no fool to believe that vengeful rage will never enter their heart.
Once these men knew who they were dealing with, it was "eye for an eye." They cared little if it damned them to hell.
Activism.
I'd still like to think that there is a real chance of Tony Blair being convicted of mass murder and dying in jail. And of George Bush and John Howard not daring to set foot in Europe again.
This was all preventable: it's quite unlikely that Al Gore would have started it, or that John Kerry would have allowed it to continue. Bush's ruthlessness, and the lack of value he placed on human life, was apparent at least a decade before he was president.
As a counter point, albeit one steeped in personal anecdote, one of my best friends whom I've known since childhood, served a number of years in an elite military unit, and continues to do so in a slightly less elite Air National Guard unit, and he's probably the most honest, charitable, and fiercely loyal person I've had the privilege of knowing.
I did not say all members of elite military units are psychopaths. Some are.
And after all I've seen, the concentration seems higher in those military units than in the general population. We are talking percentages here.
I just googled "public company ceos are psychopaths" and found http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/13/1-in-5-ceos-are-p... among others.
"Australian study has found that about one in five corporate executives are psychopaths – roughly the same rate as among prisoners.
The study of 261 senior professionals in the United States found that 21 per cent had clinically significant levels of psychopathic traits. The rate of psychopathy in the general population is about one in a hundred."
http://www.inc.com/zoe-henry/one-in-five-ceo-s-are-psychopat...
Great logic.
"Canoeing" itself is a tradition in the US armed forces long before the SEAL Team 6 undisciplined actions. It was common for US military soldiers and Americans to refer to Chinese and Koreans as "zipper heads" because they used to shoot those civilians and PoWs for sport in the same manner as the Navy SEALs practiced in their desecration and mutilation of enemy combatants.