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

[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.