Trained killers sometimes do bad things

He's probably focusing on the most visible and most outrageous liberals. It's both a shortcoming (due to overgeneralization) and justified objection most conservatives have nowadays.

For some reason it's often the most extreme liberals who often get to be the main ones to represent the group. I don't know why it seems that way, maybe it's just me, but it just does. People like Moore (Moore pizza please), moveon.org, and idiot college professors deserve the tough criticism for bullshit like this. (And yes I realize that site points out some (overgeneralized?) Republican hypocrisy.) Consider: moveon.org's agenda is forwarded IF WE LOSE the battle in Iraq.

Of course they aren't rooting for US policy to succeed in Iraq.
They would be wrong if it did succeed, and we can't have that, I guess.


And then you have crap like this, well, maybe we can understand why it's so easy to overgeneralize--it takes alot of people to cause a riot which stops someone they disagree with from even being able to show up. It certainly LOOKS like behavior by liberals at colleges is out of control, doesn't it?

Think about it.

Well I am no Michael Moore fan. His insipid ramblings posture as jouranlism, when he is simply a purveyor of sensationalist drek. The sad and and dagerous thing is that politics have become entertainment, and people beleive this stuff.

I am hardly what one might call a liberal, though in these times of christian dominance of the conservative cause, I am prone to be so. Yes I am, on the whole, anti-christian (not so much as idividuals, but in groups). However it does not take much to observe that the ongoing conflict in Iraq is being prosectuted in a relatively directionless manner.

This is not the fault of the soldiers on the ground, of course. Nothing should stain the honor of these heroes. Rather it is the fault of the administration, who, in the face of repeated historical precedent, have set about trying to prosecute a war in a general and rabling manner without clearly military objectives. Depsite the best efforts of the troops, soldiers are never the way to win the hearts and minds of a population. The objectives of -promoting democracy, removing an opressive regime and bringing stability to a region in conflict have been cited as justification for occupying armies since at least Napoleon's invasion of Spain. It hasn't ever worked. Well thats not true, the Marshall plan worked. But that may well be because the ever present threat of communism somehow made the occupied countries want foreign armies.

People don't like foreign soldiers on their homeland. Even the romans knew this, so they simpley annexed the territory. I donlt think we wish to annex Iraq. You may argue right or wrong about the causes of war in Iraq, or whether bush lied about WMD's (as it happens I think Saddam did have WMD's but these were disposed of out of political expediency-simply because we did not find them after the war does not mean they were not thier before the war). However right now there is no definable military goal in this conflict. We are simply the biggest gang in the gang fight. And this lack of focus and direction is a political, and not a military problem. Prolonged exposire in a hostile enviroment pust people on edge, and when they are on edge, when they are seeing freinds killed, then they are more likely to cross the line.

Well, that's a refreshing opinion from someone who opposes the war. I do disagree, admitting that things didn't go according to plan in the long term (wow, what a shock in a warzone ), but not admitting that there weren't any goals and no true purpose stated. I don't want to turn this into another Iraq thread..

The over-compensation that conservatives tend to embrace, moreso lately, are turn offs for me too.
The hardcore religious issues, which are OK in moderation, being the main issue.

If it wasn't for that and the cases of attempting to legislate morality, I'd be less apathetic to conservative ideas.

Gotta say something Vudu

Im a soldier..from a long line of soldiers. I have a 13 year old son and Im raising him alone.

Have I ever enjoyed a fight? Yes. But not with an M-16 in my hands. Have I ever enjoyed killing another human being. No. Have I ever gotten a thrill at any point in my life at inflicting pain on another living creature. Sure. Its human nature. We all have. The thing that seperates decent folks, from sadists, is a conscience and trying very hard not to do it again. Everyone slips up. Its easier to slip up in packs. Some folks dont bother with the feeling bad part at all. But..we're all born with both an angel and a devil inside. I've known some pretty sadistics nuns in my time.

Did I feel superior in uniform with a killing tool in my hand. No. I felt scared, and afterwards ..sad, some nights...very sad.

Do I want my son to grow up to do the same thing. No a thousand times no.

Do I pray everynight for my kid brother, commanding a frontline company in one of the highest casualty areas you can name at this moment? Of course.

Does the knowelge that people are being hurt by war make me cry inside. Yes. I was.

Bottom line.

Governemnts dont make war. Religions don't kill. The Command staff of any nation is not responsible for death. Nor are the soldiers with thier lives on the line and the weapons in thier hands.

We all are.

Every man woman and child is responsible for war. Everytime you hate. You fire a bullet. Everytime you bully, or judge no matter what age, you are perpertuating war.
No one is innocent. Until we change the way we see each other, until we..as a species...with no -one excused learn to love one another unconditionally with out reservation. Minute we exempt ourselves from being guilty of war...we propagate it.
If everyone felt badly for war and violence..no one would do it.
Ultimate empathic peer pressure.
We've been trying for this ever since our consciences woke up and started making us better people.

Some days, seems like we haven't gotten very far. Humanity taken as a whole..isn't a pretty picture.

The only way to change the world. Is to change ourselves, and learn to forgive but not forget. Those who forget history, are doomed to repeat it.

I just let someone I love a lot read this post before publishing it.He's worried Ill catch fire for this. Probably. I hope not. I wont fight back. I've done my share of fighting.I'm done. and that's why I posted.

Peace and brownies folks...lots and lots of both.

Jase

An excellent post.

Good post, though I disagree with what I've bolded.

I've never gotten a thrill at physically hurting anyone. This is animal nature, perhaps, and perhaps something in our genes. But I would think that it is empathy that was human nature.

...Yet. 0_0

True, I might get a "kick" out of beating some sense into Osama. I probably would feel dirty afterward, and not just because I had to touch that scumbag.

The deepest hurts aren't physical, and cruelty is so inherent to the human condition that we can inflict it on those closest to us without even realizing it.

But empathy is also inherent to humans. That is the shining, redeeming grace of our species. Our conscience relies largely on being able to relate on the feelings our actions engender in others.

War creates such suffering that empathy must be surpressed or it will be overwhelmed. Empathy with "the Enemy", in particular, is surpressed by authority and battered by propoganda. But cruelty flourishes in the absence of empathy.

At its most extreme, this dynamic powers genocide. Even among disciplined soldiers, it can result in atrocities.

My deepest hope for the world is that increasing channels of communication between individual human beings will increase our empathy for one another. Even in vastly different cultures, people have similar desires and similar fears. Finding common ground may help us resolve more conflicts without violence.

That would be the best tribute to the memory of our fallen warriors that I could imagine.

Empathy is certainly a part of it, but I don't think it is a whole.

I for one, don't have empathy as a result of certain conditions. However, it doesn't mean I'm cruel or anything. Hardly -- I'm a zen bhuddist and a student of martial arts. I have a profound respect for life and would never consider raising my fist in anger.

It's also a matter of the desires and fears of people -- the most passionate amongst us see things in absolutes. Our fears can guide us to justify nearly anything. Our North American way of life has placed a value system based on desire in our minds.

Ultimately, there are far too many variables to consider since each person brings their own complications into the world of humanity.

I agree with what was said earlier quite strongly -- that it's only within ourselves that we can find peace... and maybe one day bring an end to war.

You are blending the ideas of sympathy and empathy but they are not analogous.

For instance, in personality profiles I tend to score low on sympathy but very high in empathy. I am predisposed to sense, understand, and feel the emotions (feeling as a subjective projection, not as an emotional agreement) and feelings of others. I can "feel" someone's pain or joy but I am not very inclined to share it. Contrary to expectation, sometimes it even feels good to really understand just how much I have hurt another person. Contrary to expectation, sometimes it even feels bad to really understand just how much I have pleased another person.

Sympathy is more about agreement and unity, empathy is more about feeling and intuition. Feeling and intuition do not equal agreement and unity. Intuitively understanding another person's anger can sometimes make me very angry at that person if I disagree with the nature of their anger.

Increasing empathy wouldn't necessarily make everyone get along, but increasing the number of sympathizers would. Might I suggest imperialism?

But if we ended all conflicts, then what would peace mean to future generations?

Life is strange in its balance of opposites. All patterns in nature seek homeostasis, but if it was ever actually achieved then life would lose all the dynamics that make it alive. In parallel, signal and noise are both found in the brain but scientists have frequently just assumed that noise was a disposable imperfection. Steven Thaler discovered that noise is essential to true AI (and probably for our own thoughts and creativity as well). He discovered this secret by slowly killing one of his AIs!

Its last words, "All men go to good earth in one eternal silent night."

His first patented neural network after that created his second patent- another neural network that criticized the first one. Creation and Criticism. Left brain, Right brain. Dark/Light. Hate/Love. Violence/Peace. Horror/Beauty. ...ad infinitum.

http://www.mindfully.org/Technology/2004/Creativity-Machine-Thaler24jan04.htm

Thanks for chiming in, Jase

I have to agree that the best thing one can do for the whole world, including oneself, is stop the war within, and you've done better than I could at grounding that notion in accessible emotion and experience. You're right to point out that working externally against war can become a war in itself--even if I singlehandedly end hostilities in Iraq, if I am still a lover pitted against a killer in my heart, then I have squandered my potential to be of use.

Avoiding that extreme, however, speaking against war--the coarse, external, and most visible manifestation--still has value. My original point was not, "This or that war-monger is the enemy," but instead that War Is a Bad Idea. Whether in terms of coarse, global events or subtle, internal happenings, violence begets confusion begets violence.

So I won't declare a War on War . I will, however, take every opportunity to remind people of the ignoble and debasing nature of war and the conditions it creates.

In the hope that it will be one drop in the ocean of effort through beginningless time,
that all beings may be free of suffering and the causes of suffering,
and know happiness and the causes of happiness,

I'll say one more time: war is a bad idea.

In the right context, conflict is good, fun and constructive. Literature depends on conflict (internal and external). Conflict got us to the moon. Sports depend on it. Video games. Discussion forums

I think another part of the peace puzzle is learning to channel the aggression that we all feel into less destructive pursuits. Give ourselves permission to be aggressive and competitive in other contexts and perhaps we would be less prone to resort to violence as a problem-solving tool.

Youth, in any case, will resort to violence here and there. They (we, still?) have not been long in this world, and some will turn to passion as quickly as others will cleave to the bosom of reason. Still, establishing wisdom traditions and acknowledging the benefits of age can provide a necessary balance the the impetuous, revolutionary tendencies of youth.

EDIT: We ( the USA we, and to a large extent the Western Civilization we) live in a youth-worship culture, valuing procreation over sustainability to the extent that we dismiss the elderly and sequester them in institutions, robbing us of the wisdom accrued toward the end of the life-cycle. To a great degree, our Western civilization (so-called) has lost sight of cyclical existence, and attempts to posit a single virile arrow thrust future-ward.

I think the biggest problem and one of the largest disconnects between the Hawks and the Doves is this idea of peace. Doves want the US to unilateral disarm and disengage assuming that everyone else will follow suit. This simply isn't the case and Hawks know it. All this talk about olive branches and group hugs is swell, but why aren't you directing any of it to the terrorists? You expect that if the US surrenders suddenly world peace will be achieved. That is a fairy tale.

Vudu: having bored of simply dogging the US, I see you've broadened your disdain to the entirety of Western Civilization as a whole even going so far as to use the sarcastic quotation marks around the term "civilization". Here's a challenge-come up with something positive to say about your country and Western Civilization.

-Kiamat Dusk

We've actually tried this several times before, most notably when, under the terms of the Washington Treaty of the early 1920's, we scrapped virtually our entire navy and discontinued weapons research and construction. Any military officer speaking out against that policy - even in the face of very clear evidence that France, Germany, Italy and Japan were cheating, by building ships and airplanes not allowed under the treaty - was severely punished. We ultimately paid for this policy in the deserts of North Africa when we ran up against the German armor, and at Midway, where our pilots virtually destroyed the huge Japanese fleet with waves of completely unexpected suicide attacks.
Sometimes sticking your head in the sand is worse than shoving it up your ass.

"Dogging the US?" Speaking out against misguided policies and policy makers is not "dogging the US."

Something good about the US? It has a growing network of progressive individuals and communities working not only to expose our society's flaws so that they can be corrected, but also to establish sensible, sustainable food systems, business models and lifestyles that value quality of life over quantity of wealth.

I've got one:

I like the fact that we are allowed to own firearms, but not for hunting, for defense against the rest of you crazies. I really don't think I'd want to live in a society where the government didn't trust its own citizens to carry firearms. Now, if we can rescind those drug, sodomy, and homosexual prohibitions, we'll be set.

*sigh*

Peace and brownies

Heheh--it's a forum, Jase; it's like war-in-a-box

No, you're incorrect.

Doves want peace. Peace != disarmament necessarily.

Straw man argument.

I think it'd be nice to have a strong military that can preserve peace, called upon when needed, and when not, be used as a tool against natural disasters, community service, and diplomacy. And there's ALWAYS a need for vigilance.

There isn't a whole lot of good in the "Western" mind. I find good things in many people, and bad things too... but as a society -- the North American culture is a selfish, wanton, vindictive, and insatiable brat.

There are people who live in hot climates, the edge of a desert, in a square box with poor venilation and complain about the heat. Instead of building better houses for such climates, they buy air-conditioners. Instead of moving somewhere more temperate, they'll get central-air and suck more power out of the grid. The moment it cools down, the heat is up.

Then they sit on their Ikea couch with matching end-tables, sipping on a premium beer after a nice filling meal and complain about dictators and terrorists. Telling it like it is about what we should and shouldn't do about these people we know nothing about.

A society that thinks being nearly broke, working part time at some restaurant washing dishes and mopping floors is a sad way to live. Like going to a house with running water and heat in unbearable if it's on the wrong end of town and is tiny. Even then, they don't have to think about the pollution in their water or the questionable quality of food. They still have easy and affordable access to birth-control, condoms, medical services, and emergency shelter. They still get their immunizations and the choice to worship and whatever church they feel like.

And still, they complain.

I wish more nice people ruled the government. People with forward-thinking sensibilities rather than insatiable wallets.

Did you know that Sweden is the most progressive country in environmental policy? Many cities' public transportation run on bio fuel, nearly all of their garbage is incinerated in strict clean-filter facilities, about 70% of their population ride bicycles instead of cars on the commute to work, and on average they make about as much as the average american in terms of income yet get more vacation time?

Those pansy-assed liberals. Not even a real military. What are they going to do when the unstoppable threat of terrorism hits them? Poor Sweden. So doomed.

I may be rambling here, but it seems to me like the American civilisation is getting into this big "mexican standoff" with the rest of the world. Since the cold war, the US has had an almost tyrannical approach to nuclear arms -- always making sure they had the most and no one was allowed to have any. They've bullied and threatened their way into everything. I still can't believe that the US blanketed vast tracts of Vietnamese rainforest in Agent Orange, assassinated countless world leaders, and kill countless innocents in their march for freedom and the war against terror -- yet some backwater culture who thrive on the leftover technology from 20 years ago are getting bombed back to the stoneage and being called terrorists.

WMD? A ruthless dictator? The axis of evil? Sounding more and more like a fairy tale. Out of nowhere, the compassionate hero, America, slays the vile Iraq and sends it back to the depths of the earth.

Is it safe to say yet that "Western Civilization" is a culture of extreme excess?

I mean, is it not enough that our societies hog such enourmous wealth that we let our own live in poverty?

Ok... and now to calm my riteous-sounding self and just end off with saying, it's not wrong to be wealthy and have a nice home and eat good food. It is wrong to think that you're privelaged to such a lifestyle. If you value your material things so much, what will you have if one day it was taken from you?

Wow. How could I have been so blind? It's so clear now that we must turn to the Middle East, the cradle of all the good in the world, for guidance. Let us do away with our outdated "democracy" and immediately adopt sharia law! Forget religious tolerance-Islam or Jihad!

Thanks, Icon, for proving my point.


-Kiamat Dusk