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Originally Posted by Abcdxxxx
if you take issue with this, you are admitting to giving a shit, and are therefore pathetic.
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In the words of Quentin Tarranino, "ENGLISH, MOTHERFUCKER. DO YOU SPEAK IT?"
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Originally Posted by Kev
I'm sorry, I could only skim the remainder of the article. The gist I got ws that American soldiers are mentally ill, that everyone else is inately good and honest except for of course American soldiers, and Americans are stupid and in denial.
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That's not what I got from it at all. The author said it doesn't take "an unusual level of mental illness" to carry out a war crime. You take any 10000 people at random (not necessarily soldiers, or even Americans for that matter) and X% will have Y symptoms, and this author is saying whatever passes for "not unusual" (whatever that's supposed to mean - fucking sociologists) is all it takes.
We had something like 130,000 troops over there back in '03 and I dunno how many we have now. What control mechanisms are in place to weed out soldiers with overly violent impluses? Would the Pentagon even have any use for weeding out overly violent soldiers? Isn't being violent
nearly to the point of mental illness pretty much a survival skill for an infantryman? (That may look like a rhetorical question, but I really don't know - the only ex US infantry I know is my graddad, and he wasn't involved in guerilla warfare.)
So while not quite being intended policy, high civillian casualties is likely seen more akin to a write-off. It's viewed as inevitable, I think.
An interesting point to note is that insurgent forces in Iraq right now seem more concerned with fighting other Iraquis. Last month's numbers 31 US troops dead vs at least 1,038 Iraqi civilians died last month in war-related violence, according to the AP.
source
They don't say how many of that number died from American munitions vs. from insurgent bombs and whatnot.
But as Abcdxxxx so ineloquently illustrated, most people don't really care to get into this sort of "psychodrama". Talking about possible alternatives is not pragmatic and just aids the terrorists. You are obviously pathetic if you care about civilian casualties. Innocent people die all the fucking time, just get over it you sissies.
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