Psycho's point about YOUNG soldiers does have SOME merit. While I disagree that our soldiers enjoy killing anyone I would tend to think that when young men are trained, they do tend to be followers and not thinkers.
I remember being told repeatedly when I was a young sailor to do this or that. Failure to follow a lawful order was a court-martial offense. Great emphasis was placed on following orders. Maintaining military bearing depends on it. Leadership skills are learned later. Not as a striker. Having said that one must place themselves inside the psych of a sedventeen year old who is in the military. A young boy of this age is already VERY impressionable to begin with. Uprooted from wherever he may come from, inserted into a military setting and transformed (in only a few weeks) into a soldier is quite an experience. My point: The rah rah of having just been trained to be a killer is an awesome burden to deal with. All of a sudden he is in a situation that would require much more experience in life than a 17 yr old is capable of and FOLLOWS his comrades in moment of indecision to commit an act unbecoming of him and all of a sudden it is too late. Now, my argument to Psycho is this, How guilty is this young man? He claims as written previously in this thread that the LEADERS are mostly at fault. I think that this is only partially correct. Remember the above, LAWFUL ORDER.
In the military we are taught not to just sit and scrutinize every command and when in doubt, FOLLOW the order! Where is that imaginary (and it certainly IS imaginary) line that seperates our duty from our conscious. Making a mistake in the heat of the moment does not necessaryily make the young man a criminal in my opinion. If at that time and moment the soldier FOLLOWS the LEADER he has been trained to follow and commits an act unbecoming of his military obligation in battle, well, Psycho is then right. The leader should be held accountable for his contemporaries actions.
But............................
When he is holding his weapon squarely on an individual who is incapable of harming him and pulls the trigger, it dosen't matter if he was told to shoot by 16 generals, he is a murderer.
Gunny has always offered what I think is an honorable opinion when concerning military issues. My guess is that he served our country honorably. Having read hundreds of his posts concerning military issues I have almost always if not ALways found myself to be in agreement with him. He was very clear the other night about what he thought concerning the possibility that soldiers in Iraq had committed any atrocities and what should happen to them if that was the case. Soldiers who "go over the line" certainly shame their comrades and cause many of the heroic acts of past soldiers to be overshadowed. We all admire the heroism displayed by the special soldiers who do their job well and somehow manage to locate that imaginary line rather well and adhere to a military standard while bearing a personal one in unison.
The soldiers are not the planners of war. They serve. Their duty is honorable and we should appreciate their sacrifice. Rather we believe in a war or not we should ALWAYS support our soldiers at all times. In the same regard, disagreement with the cause of war does not represent unpatriotic behavior. We should not be ready to stew our soldiers however without bringing in all details and allowing the system to explore them.
The "cover your ass" philosophy which was previously implicated by Psycho, well, it does exist. Gunny, you know it does. It does not mean however that in the end the ass will be covered. Merely looking for the answers could be said to attempting to cover ass in essence. The military has a high degree of difficulty as it applies to PR. Frankly, keeping things out of the press and away from the naysayers for a period of time allows for proper investigative time for the military to see what the fuck really happened! This can be a dangerous activity because the press is always going to say that it was an attempt at cover up. It is human nature to first try and rectify a mistake when you make one. Hell, as a kid, if you break a window you immediately start thinking about how to explain it to the powers that be. In the end, it could be decided that you just broke the window. Rather you meant to or not might just require some investigating by the powers that be before a proper decision can be made. While Mr. Jones is trying to get to the bottom of things, Mrs. Jones might not be so understanding about the baseball lodged in the breakfront of her DeHaviland china cabinet. She just wants to get her hands on the little bastard that hit the ball. Maybe a strange anology but it is all I can think of at the moment.
We all tend to do this. In a traffic accident we run up to the guilty party and begin to release our frustration, it's a natural reaction.
In this war, we have those who ARE NOT reacting naturally. There are those who just look to exploit what ever has happened and spin it as close to their anti war platform as possible even if it means accusing young soldiers of murder even when they don't know shit about what has really happened. They read the anti war press stories (no shortage of those) and then add a little spin. I wonder if news reporters in their hurried effort to produce news really care if their work is accurate or not so long as it produces low rate inaccurate versions of what took place so people will watch. It just stirs the shitpot.
SOS.
