Yikes

[cjsmith]

I have recently faced the idea that there may be people I have met and liked who honestly believe that attacking the innocent and the powerless, especially girls or young women, is a good way to get things done.

I do not know if I am misunderstanding the person in question. It seems likely. I could be taking things too literally, a common failing of mine.* I could be misunderstanding in some other way. But even supposing this one is a misunderstanding, I've now faced the idea, and it's not at all pleasant.

Maybe I was in the Army too long. (I honestly believe the vast majority of US soldiers hold this value as strongly as I do.) You don't DO shit like that. You don't even THINK about THREATENING to do shit like that.

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* If I'm starting to get ticked off, it could be nothing more serious than my belief that what you say is what you mean. A useful tactic might be to remind both of us of this pattern. Humans are neither robots nor computers, and I forget that too often.

Comments

[apparentparadox]

A few thoughts:

1) Communication is a really tenuous thing. I'm thinking of something in my head, which I translate into words (written, spoken). You then take in those words (possibly mis-reading or mis-hearing) and then translate the whole thing into your own world model inside your brain. Sometimes I wonder at all that communication seems to work (or maybe it really doesn't, but the dis-connects are so small that they don't affect everyday life).

2) The world isn't black and white. You'll find traits that you like in people you don't like and vice versa. It's quite a balancing act to decide whether some set of traits push someone from one side of the scale to another -- and it can be quite disorienting when you discover "bad" traits in someone you like. People generally do things that fit into their world model of "what's right", but may not fit into your model of "what's right". I'm pretty sure that my own "judging" of people is pretty fluid and is predicated on many factors.

In your example of attacking the innocent & powerless, it would obviously make a difference to me if the person was talking about making more corporate profit or if they were using an argument like "bombing Japan in WWII killed innocent people, but it also saved more lives than were lost, because it ended the war earlier". It would also matter to me whether the person had themselves been the victim/target of such an attack. Imagine someone raised by the sole survivor of an ethnic cleansing -- to them, none of the "enemy" are really innocent, and women who give birth to more "enemy" are perpetuating the oppression.

I do, however, question your belief that the vast majority of US soldiers don't even think about threatening to attack innocents & women. I believe that the thought crosses their minds quite often, but is pushed back most of the time. I don't think that they are different from any other US citizen in this manner -- they are just exposed to more situations and deprivation that bring it all out of the theoretical.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

1) I agree. Communication breakdown is a powerful force for problem-causing. :-)

2) I'm often pretty much live-and-let-live about a lot of stuff, particularly if I feel I can make choices that avoid the disagreement areas entirely (as a made-up example, "don't lend a book to CJ because she won't take care of it"). Then there are some things that really get my dander up, and I guess this is one of them.

I definitely agree that the person's past and the goals in mind make a difference. I'm prone to get all angry before I know whether the speaker has survived an ethnic cleansing or is hoping to save lives, and that too is a powerful force for problem-causing. (wry smile)

I'll stick with my thoughts on the soldiers a little longer. Boy, were we ever taught that was seriously wrong. Attack combatants. It's sort of like -- awful example alert -- I really, honest to goodness, don't consider engaging in incest. I just don't think about it. Now I may have a more powerful censor in my head than some folk do, and God knows I haven't been in combat myself, so I'm not the best example to go by. Maybe many soldiers think it but will have a harder time talking about doing it.

WARNING: My knowledge of the military comes mainly from "Asterix the Legionaire"

[shoutingboy.livejournal.com]

'I'll stick with my thoughts on the soldiers a little longer. Boy, were we ever taught that was seriously wrong. Attack combatants.'

I think what makes it blurry is that in unconventional war, it's really really hard to tell who the combatants are. So a soldier out in the field is thinking about attacking innocents all the time--because he doesn't know if they're innocent. Smiling ten-year-old Iraqi is running towards the convoy--the soldier has to be asking himself questions like, "Does he have a bomb? How much time will I need to shoot him if he does have a bomb? What's the longest I can take to work that out?" Then the kid stops running and waves, and the soldier thinks "whew, he was an innocent after all" and throws him a Hershey bar.

That's the sort of thing the Geneva conventions were meant to fix. If all the soldiers wear uniforms, then everyone not wearing a uniform is a civilian, and is safe. The soldiers have agreed to wear "shoot me" signs, to protect the non-soldiers. So if one side stops fighting in uniform, they're deliberately hiding behind the civilians.

Sorry... rant over now.

Re: WARNING: My knowledge of the military comes mainly from "Asterix the Legionaire"

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yes, groups who strap bombs to kids are something I've heard of too. I don't know how I'd respond if I'd been there.