[lit-ideas] Re: Willie Pete's Role Reversal

  • From: John Wager <johnwager@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 16:02:17 -0600

Eric Yost wrote:

Eac> The ethical aspects of when to shoot and when not to shoot is a very hard one. But, remember that the military that is in Iraq has NOT had years of training on how to deal with some of Those situations.

JE: Of course. Also soldiers under attack and possibly in shock may be trigger-happy.

EY: Or more likely, they are facing dangerous and ambiguous circumstances in house-to-house fighting, such as when insurgents use women and children as human shields while firing on troops.


Most of the front-line soldiers making these decisions are VERY young; all are volunteers. In Vietnam, there were at least a few draftees among the volunteers; the draftees typicallly had more questions about the war and how we were fighting it.

But the circumstances of when to shoot and when not to shoot are similar.

In Vietnam, many of the very young men had never thought about moral issues and acted purely on instinct. This got them through their year tour of duty.

But upon returning to the U.S. those unasked and unanswered questions about whether to shoot caught up with them, giving a whole generation the broad stereotype of "disturbed" Vietnam vet. There was a lot of truth to that stereotype.

With even fewer in the military asking or answering these questions, we should be ready to help returning vets deal with their unasked questions for many years to come. This is an inevitable cost of war, one that war planners can predict and know will happen, even if it's not a cost that politicians want to make public before the war begins.

Just today, a Marine Corps general criticised the President for cotinued cuts to veterans programs.


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