Posted this in another thread, gonna post it here, too.
“Looking another human being in the eye, making an independent decision to kill him, and watching as he dies due to your action combine to form one of the most basic, important, primal, and potentially traumatic occurrences of war.”
It’s an unpopular take, but I recommend everyone read the book “On Killing” by Dave Grossman. It’s obvious that what Israel is doing is very much a genocide, but I stand firm in my opinion that their boots-on-the-ground infantryman are also victims of the Israeli political machine.
but I stand firm in my opinion that their boots-on-the-ground infantryman are also victims of the Israeli political machine.
Sure, but couldn’t the same be said for many of the literal guards at Auschwitz? A lot of those people were just kids who were drafted and were simply following orders. Even many of those who were there willingly only did such things after being subject to years of ruthless Nazi propaganda.
At some point, regardless of what circumstances led you to that moment, you become responsible for your own actions. There is no set of circumstances that can make murdering innocent civilians justified. And if you do that anyway, you bear full moral culpability, regardless of what may have happened in your life before that point.
We literally hashed this out during the Nuremberg trials. It doesn’t matter what propaganda you were subject to. It doesn’t matter how you were raised. It doesn’t matter if you were “just following orders.” It doesn’t even matter if you yourself would face execution for refusing to kill innocent civilians. It is never OK to kill innocent civilians, to perform genocide, or commit ethnic cleansing. If you do that, you deserve to hang for it. Full stop. No excuses.
It absolutely could, and should. I’m not saying that the crimes should be forgiven, but it is not a purely black and white area. It is very grey. To ignore the fact that they were ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, just because it’s uncomfortable to think about, would be a disservice towards efforts to prevent things like this in the future. People are complex.
Dave Grossman is full of shit. This is independent to the potential trauma from killing people (there’s a wide range of reactions to that experience). Dave Grossman is full of shit.
Humans are not made to kill other humans. And those who fight the wars of the mighty, are those who are among the ones who suffer the most.
War is really stupid. And it’s astonishing how we continue to be such a stupid species. Given how far we’ve come, one would think that we’ve finally realized how much humanity could achieve if we were working together instead of killing each other.
By the way:
It’s obvious that what Israel is doing is very much a genocide
The international court of justice has not ruled on this yet, but continues to observe and investigate whether such genocide allegations could apply.
However, I am not a fan of anyone who practises or participates in wars and so easily tolerates the deaths of innocents.
Lmao are you really trying to act like it’s not a genocide because some bureaucratic board has been bullied into being quiet about it?
but I stand firm in my opinion that their boots-on-the-ground infantryman are also victims of the Israeli political machine.
Caramel Marks, I mean Karl Marx, would probably agree with you.
Sympathy for the devil
and if he had refused to do as commanded would he have been shot himself?
I hope these IDF soldiers wake up. You can’t kill people without killing part of yourself.
“cop needs therapy after shooting unarmed child”
“So, there is no such thing as citizens,” he said, referring to the ability of Hamas fighters to blend with civilians. “This is terrorism.”
Fuck the IDF
Well when he said “this is terrorism” he was correct. Just that it’s the IDF terrorizing innocent people.
Yeah, I suppose it was traumatic, bombing food relief convoys and hospitals. You could have avoided a lot of that PTSD by refusing to follow illegal orders.
Also, get farked, CNN.
My interpretation of this is that some mid-level staffers at CNN pushed the story knowing exactly what was in it. Their bosses wouldn’t let them do obvious things, so they got a little subtle.
Some have labelled Israel as a rogue nation, but their actions are explicitly and implicitly condoned through other nation’s support and silence.
I don’t think that’s really the case though? I’m pretty sure most nations condemned Israel except for USA, but USA blocked all attempts from anyone to do anything. And when USA says that commiting genocide with their weapons is on the table, I doubt any country wishes to find out what would happen should any concrete action against Israel be taken. It’s a big part of the reason why everyone calls USA complicit in genocide of Palestinians.
I have no reason to believe Germany’s government condemns Israel’s actions right now, and the way they always point out its right to defend itself, I suspect they actively condone them…
Yeah well Germany does seem a bit anxious for some reason when someone mentions Israel and genocide in one sentence, but if anyone in the world should have any reasons to be unreasonably pro-Israel, that would be them. And even then, their performative support pales in comparison to USA. IDF literally murdered USA citizens and USA congratulated them for that. That takes real dedication to the cause!
Just to be clear, everyday US citizens do not condone this shit.
Well in Idaho, just about everyone I know who lives there supports Israel. And in Texas there are a bunch of people criticizing Kamala and our state’s Democratic candidate for Senator for being radically pro-Hamas.
Both major parties and most US citizens absolutely condone this shit.
Oh, took a poll did you?
Didn’t the US use to invade countries for much, much less of a reason than that? Sheesh.
These days I’m finding myself agreeing with the Iranian government more and more often because of Israel’s crap. I don’t like agreeing with the Iranian government.
No, human rights and that stuff hasn’t been the actual reason for any invasions for a long time. It might have been used as an excuse, but it’s generally really about power and/or economics.
Read about what actually happened in places like Guatemala, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Nicaragua, and Panama. Think about what the actual reasons are for opposing communism, especially considering the timeline of what was known when recruiting Nazis for the opposition to (former ally) USSR, invading Korea, and invading Vietnam.
If you only want to dive into one of those, just look up Guatemala and Edward Bernays (a massive piece of shit).
I find myself asking “How did I fall for this? How did this seem normal my whole life until now?”
We didn’t hear the whole story during the Holocaust. Now we’re getting live videos and firsthand accounts of steam rolling crowds.
What the fuck is wrong with a person to be OK with this at all.
We didn’t hear the whole story during the Holocaust.
come again?
“We didn’t hear the whole story during the Holocaust.” (emphasis mine).
It seems meant in the sense of back then people weren’t hearing about what was going on in near real time, and only afterwards was the full dimensions of the horror discovered.
Mind you, I don’t think we are hearing the whole story of this Holocaust in near real time either: it’s not for nothing that Israel has blown up the Hospitals (were the dead were counted), has murdered over 1000 journalists and is blocking them and aid organisations from entering Gaza - all of which stops people outside from discovering the full scope of what the Israelis are doing in Gaza.
We are hearing enough to know its a Genocide, but the full dimension of the thing (possibly with it, in scope and in methods used, already being or well on its way to be a new Holocaust - I mean, just look at how this piece from CNN unwittingly reveals how they’re sistematically using buldozers to turn the appartment buildings they blew up into in situ mass graves for the victims, dead or even still alive) will only be discovered later if at all.
Just a bit of history, in WWII the Allies didn’t know for certain that the Holocaust had occurred. Remember that it was the 1940s, information could travel quickly but only so much. It wasn’t as easy for them back then to pickup the metaphorical ‘signal’ of the Holocaust happening to the ‘noise’ the rest of the war was making. So while there were rumors of mass executions of Jewish people as early as the summer of 1941, it’s often said that the Allies didn’t know about the Holocaust until winter 1945. Now when the Allies went from ignorant, to suspicious, to all but certain but with doubts and finally to certain without a doubt has been debated for decades and will probably be debated until the sun expands and swallows the earth whole. There was definitely a lot of hateful rhetoric being spouted about Jewish people in the 1930s that maybe should have been stopped before it nearly took over Europe, but looking back at history we have the advantage of hindsight.
I’m hoping they mean that we were using slower forms of communication without immediate evidence and we still stepped in to help…
But I’d rather them say that.
Aceticon and InputZero both did a good job elaborating.
Nobody of the normal populace knew. Do you really think the jews would get on those trains without putting up a real fight? Bringing their belongings, jewellery in suitcases to Dachau, Auschwitz?
Does that sound like actions of someone who knew what was going to happen?
Yes, a lot of people knew what was going on. A lot of people, more people, didn’t know shit. The problem was not that. The problem was that they didn’t care.
You might well be right but I find it troublesome at best.
I mean, the gestapo simply couldn’t have rounded up that many Jewish people without huge help from the local population, as the area they had to cover with such small numbers made that impossible.
People knew that no one came back from the camps people were sent to or were even heard of again.
People did put up real fights where they could. The problem was the collective punishment the nazis used really curtailed much of this. Also, people don’t ever think they’re going to die. We understand it in an abstract way but, in turn, the concept is too abstract for us to fully realise.
Personally, I lean towards it being a far more uncomfortable truth. Although, i understand why others might not.
Mis/under -education (propaganda), lies through omission. Once the realization occurs, it’s a choice to live in denial and ignore it.
Poor guy. Did he also have to murder the little baby terrorists and their sobbing, horrified terrorist moms and terrorist sisters too? Poor fella. I hope he can muster the strength to do the right thing.
Fuck Israel and fuck conservatives (including neoliberals) who gleefully support this genocide. The wrong people are being erased.
There’s no such thing as a “correct” people to erase.
Well, did he have a choice?
Everyone has a choice.
ah yes… “I was only following orders” - Otto Adolf Eichmann
He has a choice now. The choice to end his own pathetic life or burn in mental anguish for the rest of his life. I hope he chooses whichever path leaves him and his the most miserable.
He called the families he murdered terrorists. He’s lying about being “traumatized”.
Every word uttered by a conservative is deception or manipulation. The only terrorists in this story are the settlers committing genocide on the local residents.
This is basically Objectivism.
Wouldn’t it be cool if people who committed violent acts couldn’t actually be traumatized by those acts if they were unambiguously immoral. If people who did Evil were always consciously aware of it. If there was a moral order to the universe manifested in our bodies and in our works. One could then be sure that anyone who committed an act of evil and reported being traumatized by it was really lying.
Yeah you can go to prison
Ah yes, those hundreds of “terrorists” all nicely lined up in the road.
How the fuck do you run someone over with a bulldozer… no matter what i think of it’s not coming up good…
Austin Powers was a war criminal!
Riskiest click of the day. But I’m so glad I clicked it.
You win this thread.
That link stays blue
I swear this is almost trying to parody the title of the article about the 19 year old who was burned alive
I’m sure we’ll soon get an article about how the pilot felt sad about bombing a hospital.
Something about he at the end of a hard day of bombing schoolyards and hospitals filled with “human animals” going home to his young wife and 5 month old baby with a sad look on his face.
In the aughts, once the US torture programs started getting public attention around 2003, I did my obsessive thing on the German Reich and the Holocaust.
During Operation Barbarossa, the SS was experimenting with eradication methods. The most common was the pogrom, endorsing the locals to massacre the undesirables. When they weren’t undesirable enough or it was the whole village, the einsatzgruppen (death squads) had to come do it, usually forcing them to dig a mass grave and then executing them along the side.
It was messy and brutal and gross, and there was high turnover among the death squads (the US has a similar problem with its combat drone operators). And this was a major problem.
The SS experimented with other ideas, including deathwagons that would pipe the vehicle’s exhaust into an enclosed chamber to kill dozens at a time, but even that was too harsh and too slow.
This is how the prototype genocide machine was made at Auschwitz. The program was contrived so no one who interacted with the live prisoners also interacted with the dead corpses. The guy who pushed the execute button was two persons removed in the chain of command from the guy who signed off on the execution order, and none of those people had to face the prisoners or the outcome. The point specifically was to make the process of massacre less stressful for the people involved.
There was a Sonderkommando of Jews in Auschwitz forced calm down inmates before murdering them and to rob and cremate them afterwards. Exactly to keep the psychic toll lower on the SS and to ensure fewer witnesses.
My opinion of humanity was already so low…
It’s funny, I had the opposite reaction, I see this as pretty strong evidence of our decency. It’s really, really hard to get most people to behave this way, and the ones who do wind up fucked up from it (as they should).
True. It’s hard to make people kill, but it’s much too hard to teach soldiers to refuse an amoral order.
reminds me of this bit:
“not only will america go to your country and kill all your people but they’ll come back 20 years later and make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers feel sad.”
For context, this is from Frankie Boyle’s 2016 Hurt Like You’ve Never Been Loved.
I reread that in his voice.
