Lt. William Calley: "Sorry about My-Lai"

[Flying Pig]

In a nutshell, yes. Nobody else does anything close to it. No other job involves that sort of thing - most people with whom I talk about what we had to do in Borneo and everywhere else are visibly scared.

This is one of those arguments getting nowhere, unless we have any other vets about

 

[aelf]

Yeah, coz only soldiers and vets have any authority to judge a soldier's deeds. Everybody else can screw off. This is the real fascism in the house, yo!

And we have a new army recruiting slogan - Soldiers: above any law when they're in the jungle.


PS: Utterly disgusting, but I'm not surprised coming from this poster, the consistent bastion of wisdom.

 

[JollyRoger]

If vets are so screwed up that they can't be held criminally culpable for their actions, we should just institutionalize them all for our own safety when they return from the battlefield.

 

[Flying Pig]

Yeah, coz only soldiers and vets have any authority to judge a soldier's deeds. Everybody else can screw off. This is the real fascism in the house, yo!

And we have a new army recruiting slogan - Soldiers: above any law when they're in the jungle.


PS: Utterly disgusting, but I'm not surprised coming from this poster, the consistent bastion of wisdom.

All I'm saying is don't think that this man is a monster; he's just unlucky really. I'm not saying that soldiers are above the law; but equally I don't believe in punishing people who have not wilfully done anything evil, and I've seen how people can be changed. The problem I have is that you're convinced that everyone, in any situation, acts rationally and normally, because using corpses for blankets and killing men at three feet range doesn't affect anyone

If vets are so screwed up that they can't be held criminally culpable for their actions, we should just institutionalize them all for our own safety when they return from the battlefield.

Perhaps I'm not making myself clear - 90% of people who go out to the most horrible warzones are fine the whole way through, and 90% of the rest get over it when they have a chance to sit down in the quiet, but the rest of them are mental cases as bad as they come. Why do you think the forces are so prevalent in prisons?

 

[aelf]

All I'm saying is don't think that this man is a monster; he's just unlucky really. I'm not saying that soldiers are above the law; but equally I don't believe in punishing people who have not wilfully done anything evil, and I've seen how people can be changed. The problem I have is that you're convinced that everyone, in any situation, acts rationally and normally, because using corpses for blankets and killing men at three feet range doesn't affect anyone

Sure, being irrational is a very good defense after having committed murder.

Being insane just at the time is also a very good defense, apparently. Many bonus points if you wear uniform.

 

[Flying Pig]

I think being insane just at the time is a defence in most courts, is it not? CF incitement or provocation? Also, being irrational makes you not evil. I don't care what the courts say, that's my word on it

 

[JollyRoger]

Perhaps I'm not making myself clear - 90% of people who go out to the most horrible warzones are fine the whole way through, and 90% of the rest get over it when they have a chance to sit down in the quiet, but the rest of them are mental cases as bad as they come. Why do you think the forces are so prevalent in prisons?

I just think you're perhaps using the 10% as cover for some of the criminal acts by a portion of the 90%.

 

[Flying Pig]

I'm not saying that the 90% are saints, but particularly brutal or sudden crimes tend to happen when the person doing them isn't quite with it - for example, almost everyone who stabs someone is drunk or something.

 

[aelf]

I think being insane just at the time is a defence in most courts, is it not? CF incitement or provocation?

Such that you'd get 3 years of house arrest after killing a whole lot of people? I don't think so.

Also, being irrational makes you not evil. I don't care what the courts say, that's my word on it

Then I'm glad you're not a legal expert.

By the way, according to Flying Pig, this guy should get like weeks of house arrest at most:

German commander jailed for life in Nazi trial

A 90-year-old former German infantry commander has been jailed for life for ordering the murders of 14 civilians in an Italian village in 1944 during the Second World War.

In one of Germany's last Nazi war crimes trials the court found Josef Scheungraber ordered his troops to shoot dead three men and a 74-year-old woman in the street before driving another 11 men, aged between 15 and 66, into a barn and blowing it up.

Just one survived – 15-year-old Gino Massetti, though he suffered terrible injuries. Some 65 years later, Mr Massetti gave evidence at Scheungraber's trial in Munich.

The massacre of the civilians, in the Tuscan village of Falzano di Cortona, was revenge for an attack by Italian partisans that left two German soldiers dead.

Scheungraber denied ordering the killings, claiming he handed the civilians over to the military police and that he "never heard what happened to them".

An Italian court in Spezia had already sentenced Scheungraber in absentia to life imprisonment, but Germany does not extradite its citizens without their consent.

Scheungraber, who commanded a company of engineers called the Gebirgs-Pionier-Bataillon 818, had lived a free man in the Bavarian town of Ottobrunn, near Munich until the trial began last September.

He ran a furniture shop, took part in marches for fallen Nazi soldiers and even received a recent award for his service to the community.

His conviction and sentencing brings Germany a step closer to closing a legal chapter in its history. Scheungraber's was one of a handful of former Nazi trials left pending in Germany.

One of those remaining is the trial of John Demjanjuk, 89, whom prosecutors allege is the former death camp guard "Ivan the Terrible".

He was extradited from the United States in May and charged in July as an accessory to the murders of all 27,900 people who died at Sobibor camp.

Link

Let the mass-murder apologist prepare his defense.

 

[MobBoss]

I feel like I said this enough, but neither was the Libyan guy.

Right. Everyone gets hugs from Mumar once they get off the plane.

 

[Munch]

500 unarmed men women and children rounded up and shot is pretty difficult to 'excuse'.

 

[RedRalph]

In a nutshell, yes. Nobody else does anything close to it. No other job involves that sort of thing - most people with whom I talk about what we had to do in Borneo and everywhere else are visibly scared.

This is one of those arguments getting nowhere, unless we have any other vets about

Here's the thing, and a lot of soldiers seem to miss this - the military is the tool of the state, nothing more. Civilians are your bosses, you exist as soldiers ot serve them, and there is no double standard where the military can tell civilians "you don't understand, so don't poke your nose in". The fact is, the military is to be held to the demands of the civilians, not the other way around. This isn't Sparta.

 

[REDY]

I dont know details about my-lai, but from what I saw in wikipedia soldiers it wasnt only act of insanity. People were rounded, someone said to hold fire to photograph them, some soldier refused shoot so that Calley took gun and shot them by himself, another ones tried torture and rape villagers before killing them and so on.
If was someone insane, it should be found out by trial. The war effect is more excuse for conscripts, hardly for people who chose themselves to be soldiers.

 

[Mise]

Flying Pig is basically right that war puts people in situations where even the most normal and well-adjusted individual will commit the most heinous attrocities. You only have to look at things like the Milgram experiment or the Stanford Prison experiment to see that.

But the correct conclusion is not that we should let those people who commited crimes in wartime walk free. The correct conclusion is that we should not put people in those situations in the first place. And since we know that a significant fraction people who go to war will invariably commit crimes like that when humanity's psychological limits are pushed to the brink, the people who send those men and women to war are just as culpable and just as morally wrong as the people who actually carried out the acts.

 

[Munch]

But the correct conclusion is not that we should let those people who commited crimes in wartime walk free. The correct conclusion is that we should not put people in those situations in the first place. And since we know that a significant fraction people who go to war will invariably commit crimes like that when humanity's psychological limits are pushed to the brink, the people who send those men and women to war are just as culpable and just as morally wrong as the people who actually carried out the acts.

Well said. The broad line of reasoning that is 'well, people do things they regret in war situations' isn't a satisfying one. The question as you say is less about who and how to punish for these acts but rather how can we avoid these things happening again. Better psychological testing in the course of military training, or something like that?

Nevertheless I believe that it takes a special kind of person to round up and shoot 500 civilians, the kind of person who certainly shouldn't be put in that situation to begin with, but who must also accept responsibility for their actions.

 

[REDY]

Flying Pig is basically right that war puts people in situations where even the most normal and well-adjusted individual will commit the most heinous attrocities. You only have to look at things like the Milgram experiment or the Stanford Prison experiment to see that.

Maybe guys should check experiments before joining army and sign "I am taking responsibility for my acts".
BTW arent these experiments related also to other jobs?

 

[jessiecat]

Flying Pig is basically right that war puts people in situations where even the most normal and well-adjusted individual will commit the most heinous attrocities. You only have to look at things like the Milgram experiment or the Stanford Prison experiment to see that.

But the correct conclusion is not that we should let those people who commited crimes in wartime walk free. The correct conclusion is that we should not put people in those situations in the first place. And since we know that a significant fraction people who go to war will invariably commit crimes like that when humanity's psychological limits are pushed to the brink, the people who send those men and women to war are just as culpable and just as morally wrong as the people who actually carried out the acts.

Quite right. And a more complete version of what I was suggesting in the other thread.

 

[Flying Pig]

Maybe guys should check experiments before joining army and sign "I am taking responsibility for my acts".
BTW arent these experiments related also to other jobs?

I was going to leave the argument, but have to come back in. You can't tell how a given person will react because for almost everyone it's a completely new experience. It would be like being allowed to drive after drinking because you said that you wouldn't get drunk. What Mise and Jessiecat are saying is right, but equally in a professional army the unspoken rule is that if you give an order and it happens as you say it, then you take responsiblity for what happens, if not the guy who changed it does. That goes for who gets the medal as well as who gets the blame

 

[aelf]

I was going to leave the argument, but have to come back in. You can't tell how a given person will react because for almost everyone it's a completely new experience. It would be like being allowed to drive after drinking because you said that you wouldn't get drunk. What Mise and Jessiecat are saying is right, but equally in a professional army the unspoken rule is that if you give an order and it happens as you say it, then you take responsiblity for what happens, if not the guy who changed it does. That goes for who gets the medal as well as who gets the blame

So what do you say about the Nazi officer?

Somehow I don't think the concept of war crimes is going anywhere despite what some vets think.

 

[Flying Pig]

See, the way the Nazis did things was very clear-headed. I know the whole 'just following orders' thing, but there does come a point when you have to say that you can't do what you're being asked to.