US Army Kill Team in A-Stan.

[Edi]

Thanks for the links, jegs2. Yeah, not good. Well, at this point we just need to wai to see how it all plays out.

[White Haven]

Looks like Morlock plead guilty in exchange for 24 years instead of life. Bit late to develop a conscience, but at least it should make convicting the rest easier.

[Zed]

He's eligible for parole in seven years. Sometimes you wonder.

[White Haven]

Eligible? Theoretically. Chance of actually getting parole? Far less.

[Elfdart]

Eligible? Theoretically. Chance of actually getting parole? Far less.

Supposedly he's going to testify against his NCO, so maybe he'll be let off easy if he tells the truth and they nail his old Sgt's nuts to the wall.

[Darth Yan]

This is awful. Also, apparently even Fox News is unable to justify what happened.

[K. A. Pital]

One of the things that made the Nuremberg trials a lot easier was the strange desire of Nazi soldiers to make pictures with the Jews, Poles, Soviets etc. they butchered, hanged, tortured, burned to death and otherwise killed and injured in a myriad ways. Pictures of Germans posing with hanged civilians, with shot civilians, in front of burning villages and towns, in death camps and so on and so forth.

I always thought this was a very strange desire to picture yourself in front of your atrocity, the one you're commiting right here right now. No matter how long I was thinking about it, I couldn't really get inside the mind of people who make abundant self-indicting pictures for fun.

I truly wonder, though. It seems to me this tendency to make atrocity pictures for fun is quite common to world militaries (as well as commiting atrocities, another ugly feature of militaries which people don't like but live with it). Strange as it is.

[Zaune]

I think the most likely explanation is the simplest. As far as they're concerned, it's only an atrocity when it's the other side doing it.

[The Spartan]

I truly wonder, though. It seems to me this tendency to make atrocity pictures for fun is quite common to world militaries (as well as commiting atrocities, another ugly feature of militaries which people don't like but live with it). Strange as it is.

It's not even necessarily limited to militaries. When lynchings were still an "acceptable" thing to participate in people would pose for pictures in front of the victim, even going so far as to send them as postcards.

More broadly, think of what used to happen during public executions. At various times and places they were treated almost like we'd treat spectator sports today. And souvenirs, i.e. body parts, were occasionally taken from the corpse afterward.

Makes me wonder if, in the appropriate circumstances, a given person will see this as the thing to do even when that person would otherwise be horrified...

[Thanas]

I truly wonder, though. It seems to me this tendency to make atrocity pictures for fun is quite common to world militaries (as well as commiting atrocities, another ugly feature of militaries which people don't like but live with it). Strange as it is.

IMO it just affirms that the most horrifying thing about the whole atrocity angle is that it is not done by mustache-twirling villains, but "normal" humans. Kinda like how most of the Einsatzgruppen members were actually typical middle-lower class Germans, with families and well integrated into society.

[Darth Yan]

that's human nature though. If you can find a way to justify atrocities committed, it will be phenomenally easy to do so even if you are from the supposedly educated branch of society. it wasn't just lower middle class in the Einsetzgruppen. A lot of educated upper class germans were also gleefully participating in those crimes. In Austria, it was largely the same (in fact, the more educated you were back then, the more likely you were to be a racist due to all the prejudice in the curriculums).

[Thanas]

that's human nature though. If you can find a way to justify atrocities committed, it will be phenomenally easy to do so even if you are from the supposedly educated branch of society. it wasn't just lower middle class in the Einsetzgruppen. A lot of educated upper class germans were also gleefully participating in those crimes.

Lower-middle class means lower to middle class. The Einsatzgruppen were largely composed of the SS, with a lot drawn from the police forces. They were not composed of upper class germans in any percentage that was unusual. Heck, even the officers were not upper class in the majority.

In Austria, it was largely the same (in fact, the more educated you were back then, the more likely you were to be a racist due to all the prejudice in the curriculums).

Source?

[salm]

I truly wonder, though. It seems to me this tendency to make atrocity pictures for fun is quite common to world militaries (as well as commiting atrocities, another ugly feature of militaries which people don't like but live with it). Strange as it is.

I guess it´s the same mechanism that makes hunters pose in front of their kill. It´s display of power that can be used as a status symbol.

[Darth Yan]

My source is the politics of hate by John Weiss. He also claims that Austria and Poland were the single most rabidly anti-semitic nations in Europe

[Lagmonster]

I truly wonder, though. It seems to me this tendency to make atrocity pictures for fun is quite common to world militaries (as well as commiting atrocities, another ugly feature of militaries which people don't like but live with it). Strange as it is.

Isn't 'posing with your kill' basically one of the common themes in the history of art? I can't be positive, since I didn't study art history, but I was under the impression that painting/carving/drawing a picture of the heroes tromping over piles of dead people was basically the principle thing to do in post-victory military art. Or is that just Hollywood, with its pagan gods depicted in statuary as dancing on piles of skulls...and basically everything drawn for the Warhammer franchise?

[Winston Blake]

I truly wonder, though. It seems to me this tendency to make atrocity pictures for fun is quite common to world militaries (as well as commiting atrocities, another ugly feature of militaries which people don't like but live with it). Strange as it is.

Isn't 'posing with your kill' basically one of the common themes in the history of art? I can't be positive, since I didn't study art history, but I was under the impression that painting/carving/drawing a picture of the heroes tromping over piles of dead people was basically the principle thing to do in post-victory military art. Or is that just Hollywood, with its pagan gods depicted in statuary as dancing on piles of skulls...and basically everything drawn for the Warhammer franchise?

More like 'posing with any object of achievement', which successful kills of anything were, for most of human history. It's all the same thing really: kids proudly standing next to their dioramas, business executives standing next to tabletop models of new buildings, fishermen holding up fish for the camera, a hunter posing with a dead goat, a cop photographed holding an infamous criminal, etc. And then there's telling stories, about how it did this and that, about how you wouldn't believe how big this one was, etc.

Further, remember that members of the Kill Team had cover stories for each murder. They could brag about how 'then I saw this insurgent about to throw a grenade, but I got him, see, I have a photo, that's me - I've been in the shit so many times I've got 7 confirmed kills', while the other soldier says 'whoa man'.

'And he would have killed us all if it wasn't for me!'

[The Yosemite Bear]

I'm reading the Rolling Stone ARticle right now, and I'm reminded of Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now

[Edi]

I'm reading the Rolling Stone ARticle right now, and I'm reminded of Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now

Thanks for pointing out that they have a story on it.

Linky

And no surprise at all that Morlock is being scapegoated while the "investigation" is just another whitewash coverup intended to blame everything on a few low level grunts and sweep everything else under the rug.

Abu Ghraib, the various killings in Iraq, Guantanamo, Bagram etc, at this point it is clear that the US military will always actively cover up war crimes whenever possible and whitewash them with a few scapegoats if it can't be covered up completely.

[Thanas]

There also was an excellent documentay called "the wounded platoon" on BBC which among other things showed US soldiers sexually harassing Iraqi women (with footage shot by the US soldiers) and as well as several soldiers admitting on camera that they had killed Iraqi civilians at will. Of course, the US army found no real evidence for either.

It just goes to show that the US Army is just like any other army in history in my opinion.

[The Yosemite Bear]

I think it says something about Newsweek that I actually subscribed to Rolling Stone & Playboy because they actually have competant analysis of whats going on...

[Winston Blake]

Interesting summary of attitudes in the U.S. military, by Ben Griffin, ex-British-SAS trooper who refused to return to Iraq:

As far as the Americans were concerned, the Iraqi people were sub-human, untermenschen. You could almost split the Americans into two groups: ones who were complete crusaders, intent on killing Iraqis, and the others who were in Iraq because the Army was going to pay their college fees. They had no understanding or interest in the Arab culture. The Americans would talk to the Iraqis as if they were stupid and these weren't isolated cases, this was from the top down. There might be one or two enlightened officers who understood the situation a bit better, but on the whole that was their general attitude. Their attitude fuelled the insurgency. I think the Iraqis detested them.

The rest of the Wikipedia article is worth a read.

[Thanas]

Holy crap.

EDIT: Especially this linked article is telling.

[Wing Commander MAD]

Interesting summary of attitudes in the U.S. military, by Ben Griffin, ex-British-SAS trooper who refused to return to Iraq:

As far as the Americans were concerned, the Iraqi people were sub-human, untermenschen. You could almost split the Americans into two groups: ones who were complete crusaders, intent on killing Iraqis, and the others who were in Iraq because the Army was going to pay their college fees. They had no understanding or interest in the Arab culture. The Americans would talk to the Iraqis as if they were stupid and these weren't isolated cases, this was from the top down. There might be one or two enlightened officers who understood the situation a bit better, but on the whole that was their general attitude. Their attitude fuelled the insurgency. I think the Iraqis detested them.

The rest of the Wikipedia article is worth a read.

That such attitudes exist doesn't really surprise me, although I have a feeling he's probably generalizing a large group of people based on far too small of a sample size. The military, particularly the US Army has been pushing the "join up and we'll pay for your education", "become part of an elite group", "the army will prepare you for success in the civilian world"* angles fairly hard for what seems like the last decade or so. Honestly, it seems they've pushed those angles harder than appeals to duty, defending the country, etc. and tend to gloss over the whole fighting in a war bit or at least that's how it's seemed to me. Regarding the crusaders, it doesn't necessarily surprise me a whole lot either. Whether or not the top end of the military support such an attitude I don't know, but I believe they've been suffering manpower shortages. I wouldn't be surprised that even if they didn't support such a position, that they may be easing up on recruiting standards. I may be wrong, but I believe the Bible Belt is also more heavily represented in the military than other demographics in the US as well, not to mention the number of National Guard units deployed which I believe are generally considered worse soldiers than regular Army.

If any of the board's recent or currently active members can correct any misconceptions I might have, please do so.

Actually, this clip from the animated sitcom Family Guy, while obviously an exaggerated parody, should help give an idea of what I mean about recruitment ads seeming to gloss of over warfighting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXPaoAh_JNY

*Note: Not that not true, it just seems to me that it should be considered a benefit of having served, not a primary reason to serve in the first place.

[The Yosemite Bear]

we've had years of our entire media telling everyone that the whole population of the middle east are nothing but sub-human terrorists. So having a Mai Lai type shit happening should not suprise us. Still officers need to be prosecuted, because as Frank Serpico said about curruption in the NYPD "These things couldn't happen without those at the top turning a blind eye to it."

[Winston Blake]

I wouldn't be surprised that even if they didn't support such a position, that they may be easing up on recruiting standards.

The recruiting problem has been going on for a long time now. Since the 9/11 patriotic fervour died down, America has been fighting two long wars with no draft. Getting hold of warm bodies has become a serious problem.