Ethics training during war????

[tocqueville]

wonderful rant from a yahoo poster


Ethics training during war????
by: indygrrl87 06/01/06 09:38 am
Msg: 764990 of 765002
1 recommendation

Let me see if I've got this straight.

We invade a sovereign nation, who did not attack us, under false pretenses.

We destroy the infrastructure of that country, so that basic needs cannot be met.

We fail to provide for the security of the occupied people, which is our explicit and incontrovertable responsibility under international treaties and U.S. law.

We repeatedly inflict "collateral damage" which is the official term for "killing innocent human life because we screwed up somehow".

We repeatedly attempt to cover-up our misdeeds so that the Bush administration and the Republicans don't take any political heat for their failures of judgment and leadership.

We institute a involuntary military draft, called the stop-loss program, which only punishes and embitters those who patriotically volunteered for service in the first place.

We fail to provide our troops with adequate supplies, including food, water, body armor, and ammunition.

We give our troops no useful mission, and instead make them do useless "patrols" into increasingly hostile urban guerilla environments with the sole purpose of simply trying to make it back to base alive so that they can do it again the next day.

We make our troops first-hand on-the-ground witnesses to the utter failure of the invasion and occupation, and then expect them to place their lives on the line for what they know is a lost cause.

We give them unspoken approval of illicit and criminal methods and practices, so they will not mutiny, because everyone involved knows these practices are the only way that our troops, being hated and vastly outnumbered, manage to not get killed.

Then when a routine situation like Haditha slips through the cloak of military censorship (which is also a strong sign that we a really losing control over there) our corrupt political leaders decide that "ethics training" is the solution.

Ethics training.

Let me see if I've got this straight. Our 'leaders' are saying that our troops need to take a moment of pause and reconsider the proper role of ethics as manifested in our fight against a civilian rebellion defending their homeland against an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation launched under false pretenses.

Can someone explain to me what proper ethics are in that situation, and how this differs for the accusation of "situational ethics" launched routinely by conservatives against liberals?

- indy

[Chiyo-chichi]

1. You go to war with the ethics you have...

not with the ethics you wish you had.

[sweetheart]

2. war finds you and teaches you ethics

Only by conflict do we learn what we stand for.

Like how a plant grows stronger in the wind and is uprooted by too much wind,
when people get blown over, ethics is not an issue, it is survival, rationalized however.

Yet even in survival, there are choices. YOu are driving , suddenly for whatever
reason another car is coming straight at you head on and is going to hit you in a
split second if you do not turn away. If you turn off the road, you will die hitting
a concrete stantion. If you stay on the road, you will probably kill the mother and
her daughter sitting in the car headed straight for you.

No time for thought, do you turn off? War is everywhere, everything is life or death,
nobody is spared.

[TriSec]

3. Rebellion.

"Let me see if I've got this straight. Our 'leaders' are saying that our troops need to take a moment of pause and reconsider the proper role of ethics as manifested in our fight against a civilian rebellion defending their homeland against an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation launched under false pretenses."

Wouldn't a soldier's ethics include questioning any and all orders that were unconstitutional? Don't soldiers swear an oath similar to the president to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution of the United States?

Seems to me that a soldier's ethics would include leading an armed insurrection against the illegal fascist dictatorship that's destroyed everything they're supposed to defend.

Hitler had the military on his side, too. When that happened, Germany was doomed.

[realisticphish]

7. Soldiers have a responsibility

to disobey illegal orders. The problem is determing what, exactly is illegal

[kestrel91316]

4. Kestrel's Instant 30-Second Military Ethics Lesson:

Don't murder women and children who ain't pointin' a gun directly at you.

Now, was that so hard????????

And it was more like 15 seconds.

[Poiuyt]

5. "Rules? In a knife fight?"

[enid602]

6. shooting

No shooting after the first trimester. You know, culture of life and all.