April 12, 2004

• For some very sad reason this doesn't surprise me. Maybe I'm just too much of a pacifist to think that anyone that signs up to "protect" their country and then willingly goes into a war on a country that didn't attack us could care quite less about innocence or guilt. But hell, I still support the troops, at least the ones that think twice before pulling their trigger.... :\
• This isn't the first time that the differences between the two armies have been reported.
• amerika must fall! that's right! A K but seriously same place fucking mcnamara messed up. He did not know his enemy so he did not respect it.
• Maybe I'm being willfully niave, but I found the term "untermenschen" shocking. It's just hard to stomach.
• Shocking coming from a British officer, that is.
• For some very sad reason this doesn't surprise me. Maybe I'm just too much of a pacifist to think that anyone that signs up to "protect" their country and then willingly goes into a war on a country that didn't attack us could care quite less about innocence or guilt. My brother is one of those "anyones". He joined the Marines after graduating from college into the present shitty job market, spent a year and a half as a waiter because he couldn't land a job in his chosen field and signed up because he believes it is an honorable organization and a way to build character and discipline. He will have no choice if he's deployed to Iraq -- just like every other Marine -- so I find your point about "willingly" going to war puzzling. I have two friends who are Marines who recently returned from Iraq, and another who is an Air Force technician and has been on tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan in the past three years. All of them are stand-up guys -- educated, disciplined, serious and compassionate people. I know I'm offering a purely anecdotal assessment of military types, but nonetheless I believe it's an important point to bring up in light of the way you generalize our soldiers. In regard to the link, calling U.S. soldiers "Nazis" is disgusting. Especially coming from a "senior Army officer" who doesn't even have his name attached to the quote. Yes, I feel strongly about this issue. Anyone with family and friends potentially in the line of fire in this situation would feel much the same way.
• I wonder if the US military will respond to it. Nein! Zum Weitergehen veranlassen Sie, es gibt nichts zu sehen hier .
• I'm in the "wait and see" camp. I can't imagine WHO wins if we start to villify our troops a la Doyle's so-called "tiger Forces" during Viet Nam (these American soldiers targeted civilians expressly to cause terror in other civilians, thus brutally violating umpteen rules of various Conventions). Antiwar types (like myself) are not anti-soldier, we're anti-WAR, so that eliminates us. Pro-war types are rightfully proud of the superior training and fortitude of our "heroes", so they won't be swayed by this news. Maybe it is designed to be consumed overseas, so other countries will find it difficult to work with the US Bullies, thus shortening the war if we go it all alone? This story, and the story behind it, is just getting started...
• de Carabas, I admit my assesment was a little harsh. I however cannot agree that they had no choice. You ALWAYS have the choice to say no. If your job hands you a gun and tells you to kill the man across the street you have a right to assess the situation and say no. Get fired, go to court, whatever the consequences may be is another story. I realize there are harsh consequences for soldiers that refuse to go to duty. I also admit that I might be somewhat naive but I prefer to look at this at it's very basic. No one is ABSOLUTELY FORCED to do something when they sign a dotted line saying they want to be a soldier. I won't buy that argument. That being said I do support the troops and I am not against war, just this one. I had no problem with Afghanistan. I apologize for making generalizations about soldiers, the article pissed me off. But I also don't like pretending that soldiers are these poor people that had no choice but do what their master commander told them to.
• What the officer is bringing up is the issue of the attitudes towards the enemy held by the US army, which are not really about the soldiers themselves, but about the institutional culture. Institutional cultures can be very powerful - they change the way individuals act and think. If the institutional culture of the US forces is invested in dehumanising or depersonalising most Iraqis as "the bad guys", it will have an effect on the ways in which US troops respond to Iraqis, whether combatents or not. I have seen this happen among police, who begin seeing the world as divided absolutely between "good guys" and "bad guys" when, of course, reality is always far more complicated. None of this is a statement about individual soldiers in Iraq, but rather much needed discussion about the ways in which we train soldiers, and the attitudes supported by their commanders and by the organisation as a whole, from the President down.
• Maybe it is designed to be consumed overseas, so other countries will find it difficult to work with the US Bullies But it's in the Telegraph, which has been very pro-war so far. If it had been in the Guardian I wouldn't have been so surprised.
• Far from the first time differences in the ways US and British troops are trained to deal with occupation and insurgency, though, homunculus. Recall in particular one article in The Guardian a few months ago where the way American troops are expected to remain on base unless doing an exercise, and the way Brits expect troops to circulate and make acqaintances if not friends in a community, were contrasted etc. Also pointed out Brits had more experience in dealing with these situations in the Irish context and in a personal context, while American troops tend to rely on equipment, etc. Sorry I didn't bookmark it now.
• de Carabas: Your brother still had a choice about becoming a Marine. I'm sure he can't have failed to notice this involves going to way - the US has been quite active since 1990 with deployments to Iraq (twice) and Bosnia, as well as Somalia. I realise that may sound a little cold, but if you don't want to get shot at, don't sign on the dotted line.
• rodgerd: I don't think de Carabas' brother has any problems with getting shot at (anymore than he expects as a soldier, of course), it's getting reviled for doing a job he signed up to do that's the problem. Don't blame the men on the ground for wrong policies, and the flaws in organisation. They signed up to be soldiers, and that's what they do. How they do their job is not up to them to decide. Any deviation from prescribed behaviour is mutiny.
• Alnedra: You paint a grim picture of our current soldiers. Mindless drones with the inability to speak their voice. So what if it's mutiny? If your commanding officer tells you to fire on someone who you know is an innocent Iraqi bystander, what's your choice? Mutiny or not, one should be able to make decisions on HOW they do their job when it's a matter of someone's life or death. On another note, I agree with jb that this thread has perhaps derailed, and I feel I might have contributed to that. The deeper problems lie in the organization, not the soldiers on the ground. I too am anxious to see how this will turn out and whether or not there even is a semi-productive solution....
• I think a lot of the problem stems from the fundamental differences between the military and the police. It may be that outside of the US that the military are often used as a policing force, and are trained particular to that mission. But in the US, the military (especially the Marines, ask one) are trained to do one thing very VERY well: Destroy. They are NOT trained to police, or safeguard, or even play nice with the other kids - they are trained to blow up your city, shoot you as many times as they can before you fall, and to not let anything or anyone get in their way, whether it's an armored column attaining an objective or a quick trip to the PX for milk. imo, we'd have been better off sending 5,000 NYPD street cops to Baghdad and surrounds rather than 20,000 marines and paratroopers. But now of course it's a shit sandwich of a thousand bites, and the sooner we extricate ourselves from the entire region the better, to my thinking.
• I'm still in favor of sending table-dancers there.
• I'm no scholar of Islam, but I'm pretty sure that'd be considered some sort of affront. Especially if they were from, ah, less discriminatory houses of choreography.
• genial, soldiers are trained more than anything to follow orders because that's were the true power of an army comes. If soldiers where given the opportunity to mutiny without consecuences everytime they disagree with whoever is over them in the chain of command there's an increasing risk that they will never be able to accomplish anything. In this case the whole responsibility for what happens in the front, or Iraq for this matter, falls in the hands of the officers and generals. And soldiers can't be blamed for the blood they sheed under orders. Of course, they can always blame themselves. But it's up to them and their own morals.
• Fes: That is a very good point about sending police rather than soldiers for this post-immediate action period (not really post-war). I had hoped that was the theory behind peace-keeping missions, that the soldiers were trained differently, but I don't know how often this happens. Though it is true that the British have more experience, as beeswacky et al have noted, because of Ireland.
• Zemat: I guess we disagree then, but note that I never said there weren't consequence to disobeying orders. I realize the consequences, I just think it's a pitiful job and a sad state when you will mindlessly become a killing machine for your country and never question for yourself innocence or guilt as if that's not your job. It is, in my opinion anyway, if you're holding the gun.
• Fes: I'm glad you suggested the NYPD, rather than the LAPD. But still, aren't they a bit trigger happy? I ind the idea that US troops are no good at dealing with these sorts of situations a bit odd, though. New Zealand, Britain, Australia, heck, even France, have all spent quite a lot of time with troops learning how to behave in complex situations like Bosnia, Northern Ireland, the Ivory Coast, East Timor, and so on. If you look at the patterns of the last 10 to 15 years it seems fairly obvious an army which only knows how to kill and blow shit up has very limited value - it'll win wars OK, but lose the peace. That suggests to me there's a bit of a deficiency in how the US is training its armed forces. Zemat: Depends on the country; German soldiers are required to challenge orders that are unconsititutional. But Germany has some experience with where that whole "blind obedience" thing can lead.
• Nice hearing about that, rodgerd. My point is that only soldiers are entitled to make judgements over their own actions while following legitimate orders. Other people can't come and criticize them for not acting against those orders. Soldiers follow orders because they suppose that those above know better. Not because they are mindless individuals. Of course, generals and officers must gain thrust and respect from his soldiers, or mutiny will ensue.
• err, trust, not thrust...
• Of course I realize that the mayority of those who enter the armed forces, especially the youngest ones, don't realize what they are getting into and will follow orders mindlessly. But we are not entitled to think that that's the way all things work inside the military.
• make that: ...that's the way all things are supposed to work inside the military.
• Of course, generals and officers must gain thrust and respect from his soldiers, or mutiny will ensue. Ew!
• generals and officers must gain thrust I thought that was in the Navy.
• Who here is or has been a soldier?
• Not me. And I'll never be. I just can't follow orders, heh.
• Not me. And I'll never be. I just can't follow orders, heh. I second that(if it weren't yet obvious) :)
• Nope. I hope you aren't going to suggest the millitary ought to be above the judgement of the citizenry. That way lies Imperial Japan.
• Nope, just curious.
• Small side-issue - it's the Telegraph writer, not the British officer here who brings up the whole Nazi thing. Untermenschen isn't the Nazi term for "sub-humans", it's the German word for "under-people", and one should still be alowed to use it in that sense. Maybe the British officer was using it in the Nazi sense, but that doesn't seem to square with the rest of his comments. As I understand it, the term (as with its corollary Ubermensch) is a more subtle and complex conception than a simple branding of a person or people as "sub-human" - there are echoes of class determinism and personal will, etc. While the British officer clearly has problems with how the US troops view the Iraqis as a class, to suggest he's branding them Nazis - when he may just be a scholar of nineteenth-century naturalphilosophie and its descendants - seems a bit unfair. But perhaps somebody who knows more than just what he was told by a German philosopher down the pub could help clarify this... On the wider issue, it took one afternoon's misuse of an army to fulfill a policing role - in the Bogside, Derry, on Sunday January 30th, 1972 - to create 25 years of willing murderers for the IRA. I must admit to being worried about what the current approach in Iraq will be doing, both to justify current hatreds and fuel entire new ones. Never been a soldier, never could. Those uniforms look so ill-fitting.
• Never been a soldier, but every male relative of mine (and male friend) was in the National Service for at least two years. The army really does try to strip you down and build you back up again. Disobey even the most niggling little order and you're punished (at least with push-ups, laps etc.). I remember one anecdote my friends told me. A sergeant would tell one chap (usually the smart-mouth or the rebellious one) run several hundred meters at full speed to the top of a hill and tell him whether there were flowers on a particular tree there. The chap will run back and say no. The sarge will say, "My mama told me that tree had flowers. You calling my mama a liar?" And the chap will run back up the hill again. Too slow, and the sarge will make him do push-ups before repeating the task. And so on. It's just a very mild example of what they do to break down the individual's will so that they follow orders implicitly (not necessarily mindlessly). I'm not saying that there aren't sadistic, criminally-minded or murderous soldiers out there. But give them the benefit of the doubt. An officer tells them to shoot at a woman. To the soldier that's a direct order. For all he knows, that woman is a suicide bomber, or a terroist. Children as young as six or seven have been known to be recruited into terrorist organisations and carrying arms. So your officer tells you to shoot, and you shoot. He knows better - or is supposed to. The benefit of the doubt, that's all I'm saying.
• Going back to the topic at hand. My impression is probably not helped by the fact that pretty much everyone I know personally who went into the armed services (with one or two exceptions; hi Phil!) are (a) not that bright and (b) have a fixation on shooting stuff. About as far away from the "best and brightest" as it's possible to be. Sadly, the NZ millitary are starting to use career/training hooks in their recruitment. From what I gather about the US services, this has long been the case over there. I do wonder how much abberrant behaviour comes out of people who don't expect to fight and then become inordinately upset when they get shot at (as opposed to someone who's got a better idea of what they're getting into).
• I don't think they try to hide the fact that you'll have to shoot (perhaps the career hook "You'll just be a 'technician'" would be the exception), but they sure don't show it. I abhor the commercials on TV showing young men climbing mountains with rock music in the background, as if that's what being a part of the Armed Forces is all about. But, at the same time I can understand why they do it. As it is, recruitment is struggling in the U.S. for obvious reasons.
• 'I didn't join the British Army to conduct American foreign policy'
• Prisoner of conscience: RAF doctor who refused Iraq service is jailed
• "Those who wear the Queen's uniform cannot pick and choose which orders they will obey." -- Assistant Judge Advocate Jack Bayliss Nay, don't menschen the Nuremburg trials here, m'lad!
• Off-topic somewhat, but I just remembered after reading genial's comment about the advertisement of the young men climbibng mountains. I remember the Singapore Air Force had an ad where they showed young dashing pilots going to Australia for training....and shopping. Yes, strapping young men in uniform, carrying shopping bags and crossing the road, swinging those bags.
• Untermenschenables?