Blog of Note
Figuring that the chance of my blog become one of the "blogs of note" on the blogger main page is rather slim, I'll create my own. :) I bummed into this lady's site one day, I kinda like her view point regarding the abuse of prisoner issue, here's an exerpt:
War is hell.
You've heard that saying before, right? Everyone has, right? It's clear what it means, right? So why is everyone acting as if every death, every injury, every bit of bad behavior from emotionally-wrecked military types, and every bit of destruction were some shocking, unexpected thing that needs to be screamed and wept over endlessly?
The entire PURPOSE of war is for people to do their best to hurt and kill others, and destroy their stuff... that's what a war IS. So why is it that we treat every report of perfectly normal and expected goings-on as if it were happening in a quiet suburban neighborhood instead of in a WAR ZONE?
In every war that has ever been, people on BOTH sides have treated prisoners in ways that don't look good when looked at by polite society; when tensions run high, every minute of every day, day after day, week after week, and finally month after month, it messes with people's heads, and if they get power over some of the enemy, who they've been trained to see as evil, who they've been trained to see as less than human, who they've been trained to KILL, who they've been trained to understand are out to kill THEM, who HAVE killed people they knew, what exactly do you EXPECT them to do? Throw tea parties for them? Of course not; they're going to abuse them in some way, at least some of the time. We need to stop being naive and accept that that's the way things are in wartime. No, that doesn't make it right, that doesn't make it ok, that doesn't mean we shouldn't take steps to prevent it and to punish those responsible, but it DOES mean that we have to take these actions IN CONTEXT, and not act as if we have no idea WHY these things happened.
To read the entire entry, go to Every Topic in the Universe(s?).
War is hell.
You've heard that saying before, right? Everyone has, right? It's clear what it means, right? So why is everyone acting as if every death, every injury, every bit of bad behavior from emotionally-wrecked military types, and every bit of destruction were some shocking, unexpected thing that needs to be screamed and wept over endlessly?
The entire PURPOSE of war is for people to do their best to hurt and kill others, and destroy their stuff... that's what a war IS. So why is it that we treat every report of perfectly normal and expected goings-on as if it were happening in a quiet suburban neighborhood instead of in a WAR ZONE?
In every war that has ever been, people on BOTH sides have treated prisoners in ways that don't look good when looked at by polite society; when tensions run high, every minute of every day, day after day, week after week, and finally month after month, it messes with people's heads, and if they get power over some of the enemy, who they've been trained to see as evil, who they've been trained to see as less than human, who they've been trained to KILL, who they've been trained to understand are out to kill THEM, who HAVE killed people they knew, what exactly do you EXPECT them to do? Throw tea parties for them? Of course not; they're going to abuse them in some way, at least some of the time. We need to stop being naive and accept that that's the way things are in wartime. No, that doesn't make it right, that doesn't make it ok, that doesn't mean we shouldn't take steps to prevent it and to punish those responsible, but it DOES mean that we have to take these actions IN CONTEXT, and not act as if we have no idea WHY these things happened.
To read the entire entry, go to Every Topic in the Universe(s?).
posted by cahalan @ 23:32
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