Sadly, I never believed for a moment that he wasn't real. But I still maintain, that just as he is a man of character in the middle of a war that he doesn't believe in...as are many others...the soldiers he describes likely were not worth much here either...and one must remember, probably worth less when they get home than when they went. That is a frightening thought.

lmpaulsen
 

"the soldiers he describes likely were not worth much here either".
Likely is correct. No one knows what they were worth before. Until you have lived in someone else's shoes.....

"War changes men's natures. The barbarities of war are seldom committed by abnormal men. The tragedy of war is that these horrors are committed by normal men in situations in which the ebb and flow of everyday life have departed and been replaced by a constant round of fear and anger and blood and death. Soldiers of war are not to be judges by civilian rules." - Breaker Morant


http://www.swwwim.org/War-Workbook/excerpts_war_wrkbook.pdf

eayny
 

Good point...and civilians shouldn't judge. I just still can't see a soldier of solid moral strength and character succumbing to some of the barbaric behaviour described (that doesn't include laughing at C-SPAN...that's probably normal). Why then, don't they all succumb and they don't. I realize war changes men but could it not also teach greater respect for life, for home and country and freedom, for what is really important, because of being surrounded by blood and fear and death or am I being too idealistic and expecting too much.

lmpaulsen
 

Impaulsen: Well, it's good to be idealistic. It's charming quality. But my intention was not to validate all war crimes and atrocities but only to assert that sometimes war creates criminals from what otherwise might have been upstanding members of society. As this blog has discussed below, if your friends can help influence you to be fat, it is an easy jump to think the violence in a war zone can influence what might have been a placid individual to be violent. Why even Alcoholics Anonymous encourages recovering alcoholics to change their friends to help ensure sobriety. Those soldiers should still certainly be held accountable for their actions (if they are proven true), but perhaps just perhaps the war pushed them to that end. I have compassion for all of those men and women, because I didn't have to be there. Just a thought.

eayny
 

I have a bit of insomnia tonight obviously. But I was just stuck with the thought of my high school biology class. In it we were dissecting animals. Starting out with a clam, then a worm, a frog, and then lastly a rat. The last dissection being removing the brain of the rat for extra credit which I did. I wanted my A+. Now if I was asked to do that at the beginning of the year I never would have been able to start. It would have been horrifying. I had a pet gerbil at the time and I loved it. I'm a big animal lover. Still am. But because of the slow progression of the dissection in a class with my peers, I had no problem completing the task. But today if asked, I would firmly refuse. I'm not used to it any more and would not do it.
But if you equate this little scenario to the soldiers in Iraq, they have been hired and trained and do kill people all day long. Is then having some of them desensitized to running over dogs such a surprise? I think not. Their moral viewpoint has already been tampered with and skewed. I think this is how it happens with some people but of course not all. It's a slow progression to the previously unimaginable.

eayny
 

I like your overall point, eayny, but the analogy is pretty far off. The moral component of a dissection is no bigger than that of eating meat (not nothing, but you don't describe yourself as a vegetarian) -- and there's definitely no difference between dissecting a rat brain and dissecting a rat liver.

For a better analogy look up the Milgram obedience experiments -- here --

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

This is an imprecise analogy too, because there's a clear authority in this case requiring cruelty, whereas in Baghdad it's a more diffuse cultural thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

Off to enjoy my favored Egghead Breakfast of rat brain on toast.

SE
 

Interesting comments, I fall somewhere in between Impaulsen and eayny. Actions that can never be excused may yet be explained (hard news to deliver and to receive).

I would add only that very view American soldiers "kill people all day long," eayny. Thankfully, the vast majority of soldiers never kill at all.

-SEg
 

Squatting Egret has it exactly right: "actions that may never be excused may yet be explained."
Let us end this sad discussion on that note,
 

Oops, should have said "can never be excused."
 

Okeydokey. Thanks for the feedback though, SE. Very interesting links.

eayny