While I don’t like it when anyone gets hurt, on the other hand I find it difficult to work up sympathy for a bunch of people who are dead now because they promised an organization that in return for a minimum of $350 a week (as an enlisted) or $664 per week (as an officer), they’d help kill anybody they were asked to.
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you make it sound like soldiers are glossed over murderers. I can’t help but be horribly offended by this attitude. regardless of where you stand on the pacifism spectrum, or even the morality spectrum, I would hope that you would see a qualitative difference between murder and soldiering. What the shooter at fort hood did was murder. what soldiers do isn’t. besides, what did these soldiers do to deserve death? nothing. they were signing up to be soldiers, but they hadn’t even killed anyone yet, as far as we know. I give them full sympathy as they were gunned down in cold blood by a murderer.
You have a naive view of history, brother mine. Historically, soldiering and murdering are basically the same seeing as how looting as generally been considered an unavoidable part of soldiering. See, for example: the 30 Year War, the Roman sack of Carthage, Sherman’s march to Atlanta, World War I, World War II, Vietnam, etc. The modern American army is rather unique in its determination to be violently non-violent. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that soldiering is an inherently noble profession. It’s not.
As Maj. Hasan apparently believed himself to be a jihadi, these soldiers died because they were soldiers — his enemies. The real tragedy isn’t that they died. It’s that they were disarmed and betrayed from within. It’s that they died because they were unprepared. That’s the outrage and the tragedy.
I hope you are never in a situation where the desirability of an army’s existence becomes obvious to you, because such circumstances would only occur in the USA after presently unimaginable social change. Indeed, the military you hold in comtempt is responsible for the peace and security you enjoy. Its members are, on average, paragons of virtue compared with their civilian peers. Their selflessness is one of the reasons they serve for that paltry salary you mock. Believe me, they understand the world and the nature of evil alot better than you do. To the untrained eye, sheepdogs and wolves look alot alike.
Phil: they weren’t signing up to be soldiers – they were support personnel. While they weren’t on the front lines, they were still components of the army, so I can’t see any reason why they aren’t valid targets.
And yes, they are glossed-over murderers. And sometimes killing somebody else is necessary, and I have no problem with the idea of hiring a bunch of mercenaries with which to whack our society’s attackers. But Joe hits things on the head by noting that being a soldier isn’t inherently noble. Being willing to kill for us doesn’t make them heroes – it just makes them our employees.
VT: A couple fast comments on your own…
“They understand the world and the nature of evil a lot better than you do” isn’t necessarily true, not only because you really don’t know anything about me but also because for all the mystique we’ve surrounded “seeing the elephant” with, it doesn’t “make you older”, automatically conferring wisdom or grand insight. And incidentally, the most decorated American soldier in history (Smedley Butler) wrote a book on what he learned in the battlefield, but it was entitled “War Is A Racket”.
And I admit that I get a lot of benefits from the US military – being a citizen of the dominant superpower in the world has its advantages – but the organization fails my “Are you a good samaritan?” test. My test is a simple question: am I able to refuse their help? If I don’t want to pay for those benefits, if I’d rather politely decline, am I free to? Or would I be thrown in a cage for tax evasion, possibly beaten up or shot in the process?
Today’s army has a method of working that should seem familiar: the Mafia works in the same way. By offering “protection” and suggesting that you darn well better pay for it if you know what’s good for you.