[lit-ideas] Re: Willie Pete's Role Reversal
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 18:22:01 -0500
I think Marlena inadvertently brought up a good point, the contradictory
way we unconsciously think about soldiers, when she called soldiers "young
ones". Let's think about this. Soldiers are in fact young and very young.
When the body counts come back, however, the dead aren't listed as "young
ones" but as "soldiers". To me, "young ones" stay at home with parental
controls on the television. Soldiers kill people on command and are the
ones who commit the atrocities. It seems to me that to support war that
isn't 100% defensive is to lose the right to think of soldiers as "young
ones" or else by definition admit children are being sent out to kill and
to come back shell shocked.
In my opinion society wants young soldiers because they're innately more
aggressive; think school yard. It's something of a disappointment when
leadership, who should have mellowed out with age, still thinks a good slug
fest, last man standing, is the answer. Kinda just proves that people are
violent regardless of age or class or time/place in history. And equally
uncaring of their young people. I think if everyone were recruited,
regardless of age or sex or occupation, with a cut off of say, 70, with no
deferments for health status, war would lose a lot of its support real
quick.
Andy Amago
> [Original Message]
> From: John Wager <johnwager@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 11/13/2005 5:02:23 PM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Willie Pete's Role Reversal
>
> 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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