Teh interesting (non-PHL-related) news stub thread

[Twin-Skies]

^More details on that video:
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/05/wik...backg.html

And apparently, one of the commenters said this insightful post:

Ahem. As a Marine myself, and an enlisted veteran, I'd like to point out a few things to all the knee-jerk anti-military types floating about.

First of all, you are correct in saying that war requires a certain type of desensitization. It is, in many respects, a terrible thing. Killing has an awful effect on the human psyche, as does any program designed to reduce or delay this effect.

But war-- killing other real people with real guns-- is a necessary evil if good people or (is such a thing possible?) good nation-states are to survive. There will always be someone, barring a truly effective world government, that can and will decide to take what is not rightfully theirs through military means.

Either they can be stopped, or you and what you love can die. And often to be stopped, they must be killed. Someone has to do it. It's an awful job. But there is honor in doing it. Killing is evil, but that does not mean that all people that do it are evil. (There's a philosophical point to be made here about evil acts, evil people, and necessary evils-- but I've not the time.)

I don't defend the people portrayed in this video. I don't know anything about the situation, and neither do you. I don't know enough to prosecute or defend them in the moral sense; nor do I have an idea how much bravado is sadism and how much is something much sadder and maybe necessary to do what they do.

Tangentially, military people don't choose their own wars, nor often their own targets. (In the sense of those who actually pull the trigger.) Your democratic government does. Both political parties do. Your Congress does.

And that is a fundamental fact and blessing of democracy. Military dictatorships-- without the serious divide between military and political authority-- tend to be...well, you know what they tend to be.

But to protect against it, you remove from your military men and women the freedom of choice. They enlist under a contract, which is negated only if they object to all wars, to defend their nation as their President and Congress see fit. So if you're going to hate and lament, do it for the political types who don't have to bleed or watch those they love do so. They're the ones who get you in these messes, these wars of agression.

The rest of us are just down on the ground trying to do the right thing. Be patriots. Be good to all those we can be-- that includes foreign nationals like Iraqis. But we have a hard job and it's not always clear what's right and what's wrong.

...Solid Snake, is that you?