aelf
Ashen One
So what makes the Nazi soldiers more clear-headed than this guy?
Lt. William Calley: "Sorry about My-Lai"
- Thread starter nonconformist
- Start date
So what makes the Nazi soldiers more clear-headed than this guy?
What you need to understand is that when people 'snap', they tend to get permenantly angry; you see them putting half a magazine into a single enemy. What the nazis did was not incredibly violent, on the contrary it was almost clinical, where what happened at My Lai was fully of rape and torture, which normal people are almost incapable of.
aelf
Ashen One
So the worse the violations the more chances of them being exonerated? Wow.
And if you read the article I posted, the Nazi soldiers killed those people in revenge. Sounds like a pretty similar situation to me, sans the extra bits of violence maybe.
Looks like the My-Lai guys are even more dangerous than this bunch of Nazi soldiers. I can't stop being amazed that the guy in the OP leads a pretty normal life after 3 years of house arrest while the Nazi guy is being sentenced to life in prison, and you think that that is right. No matter how you twist it, there's a definite smell of double standards here. Should I be shocked?
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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Aelf and Flying Pig, I think that you're both arguing about different things. What leads soldiers to kill civilians during wars (and let's be honest, it has happened and will continue to happen, in all wars) is indeed "temporary insanity" by any normal standard of sanity. In the situation they're put in, I would not be quick to condemn their actions, and certainly not to demand that they be imprisoned later for murder. I've met quite balanced, and indeed in my assessment, good people who eventually told me how they'd taken part in wiping out enemy villages 30 years before. They had their ghosts from that time, but at the time that was a course of action which events pushed on them...
Both colonial wars and occupation wars are like that, the enemy is also the civilian, it's inescapable. And never, for a moment, believe that massacres are done only by one side in such a war, once it stars things easily spiral out of control. Borneo must even have been less bad than Vietnam, at least there the enemy was foreign (indonesians, I believe). In this context it doesn't make sense afterwards to wish to prosecute the soldiers for a situation into witch they had been ordered!
It seems to me that aelf's outrage is also due, in this instance, to this man being the commander in the place where the massacre happened. Blame the commanders then, and the generals? Certainly it makes more sense, but commanders and generals do not exist in a vacuum. They enforce a national policy. Ultimately, blame the government? In a democratic nation, blame the people? Where should the blame game end?
I do believe that blaming someone is useful, convicting someone is useful, to at least make people more reluctant of sliding into that dangerous spiral I mentioned, in the future. But I'm not at all convinced that it would be just. Better to avoid wars altogether, whenever possible - and sometimes it isn't. Failing that, at least avoid getting entangled in other's useless wars and only worsening the situation.
Both colonial wars and occupation wars are like that, the enemy is also the civilian, it's inescapable. And never, for a moment, believe that massacres are done only by one side in such a war, once it stars things easily spiral out of control. Borneo must even have been less bad than Vietnam, at least there the enemy was foreign (indonesians, I believe). In this context it doesn't make sense afterwards to wish to prosecute the soldiers for a situation into witch they had been ordered!
It seems to me that aelf's outrage is also due, in this instance, to this man being the commander in the place where the massacre happened. Blame the commanders then, and the generals? Certainly it makes more sense, but commanders and generals do not exist in a vacuum. They enforce a national policy. Ultimately, blame the government? In a democratic nation, blame the people? Where should the blame game end?
I do believe that blaming someone is useful, convicting someone is useful, to at least make people more reluctant of sliding into that dangerous spiral I mentioned, in the future. But I'm not at all convinced that it would be just. Better to avoid wars altogether, whenever possible - and sometimes it isn't. Failing that, at least avoid getting entangled in other's useless wars and only worsening the situation.
aelf
Ashen One
My points are simple. First, there is such a thing as war crimes, and they cannot simply be whitewashed by claims of insanity. Heck, it doesn't seem to work that way in many situations, except where "The Good Guys" are concerned. Disgusting double standards.
Second, a soldier who committed war crimes under stress may perhaps not be considered equivalent to a civilian serial murderer, but that certainly does not mean that you get only 3 years of house arrest and then become a completely free man after being responsible for the deaths of 500 innocent people who were deliberately and systematically killed. There is no way, as others have pointed out, that such an outcome can be excused by anything.
Remember why a civilised country punishes people - to deter others, to undo the damage, to re-habilitate the offender or to stop him doing it again. None of those can be done, so to punish him would just be an act of sadism. I, by the way, very rarely say that someone in the military has done something evil unless it was ordered.
While he is confined, he cannot murder again. Tough punishment for the act instead of a slap on the wrist could serve as a deterrence for others. And punishment for punishment's sake (when the law is broken) plus retribution are still a part of the theory of criminal justice in civilized countries.
No it isn't, not unless the rednecks have their way. You can't have a deterrant, because it's not a rational act, and he won't murder again anyway
aelf
Ashen One
Evidence of the rehabilitation programme, pls.
And no, just rehabilitation for having been in combat is not enough. Rehabilitation for having been insane enough to be responsible for deliberately and systematically killing 500 innocent people. That's got to imply some major issues.
Flying Pig said:
Yet another proof that you believe in military exceptionalism.
nonconformist
Miserable
Milgram would disagree with you there.
No; I've just seen so much of war and how people react to it that I don't feel safe calling on something unless I see that it's a rational person doing it. People don't do horrific things if they're normal; hence why most of the men involved tried to get out of it
Have you listened to anything I've said so far?
I don't think that's a valid conclusion - the experiment proved, as far as I see it, that when an expert tells you something you believe it
Have you listened to anything I've said so far?
I don't think that's a valid conclusion - the experiment proved, as far as I see it, that when an expert tells you something you believe it
It's not just rednecks, it's your standard prosecutor. I've got a current case where a prosecutor is being very stubborn about reducing a Class B trespassing misdemeanor down to a Class C disorderly conduct (standard reduction for a first time offense with many prosecutors). The main difference in punishment is that a Class C can be expunged and a Class B can only be nondisclosed(with expungemnt, your record is cleared, with nondisclosure, law enforcement and state and federal licensing boards can discover your record). A Class B would permanently close off certain career paths (financial industry, prosecutor, certain medical jobs) for a 19 year old girl who just wanted some alone time with her boyfriend and used some bad judgment. If I took this case to trial before a civilized, surburban jury, I likely wouldn't talk them into nullifying the Class B (where there is technical guilt) down to a Class C (which is "justice"), even though such an action is legally within the jury's range of action. It is entirely within the prosecutor's perogative to stick with the Class B, thus stinging my client with a lifetime punishment, basically for punishment's sake. 90% of jurors in my civilized county would agree with the prosecutor, even non-rednecks.
You're American right? 
In that case, the actual aim is to make an example of him and to deter others.
In that case, the actual aim is to make an example of him and to deter others.
nonconformist
Miserable
Milgram showed guilt disassociation via authorities; i.e that someone feels exculpated of the potential guilt and such if a higher authority asks them to do so.
This has been extrapolated to give an explanation of why so many people were so willing to do horrendous things in war; particularly with regards to the Holocaust.
aelf
Ashen One
Yeah, and what do you have to show for it? It must take someone with major problems to do something like this and yet he's treated like any ordinary person who committed a run-of-the-mill crime that is not serious enough to even warrant time in an actual jail.
Good, but it only counts if they were ordered to do so, in which case they aren't really acting normally since they are under massive pressure to do so
These major problems normally clear up the minute you get out of the battle area. Very rarely it's chronic, but then this guy would be in jail as a thug, not living a normal life.
aelf
Ashen One
He should still not have served only 3 years of house arrest. Actually, life in prison sounds like a good deal, as long as he's not actually insane, in which case he should be admitted into an institution.
And I'm sure it's great for the battle for hearts and minds for people in combat zones to know that a great number of soldiers from 'civilised countries' are crawling amongst them, soldiers who may just round them up and kill them if they like and not receive any meaningful punishment later because they can claim temporary insanity.
In view of that I may actually support attacks against troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, terrorists or not.
Go home. I'm not sure if you're wilfully missing the point, but you seem to be taking almost no notice of me
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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There is something essential which you are missing: while My-Lai may have been indeed an act of insanity (no orders to do it and no rationale for it), the killing of civilians in war has been, and unfortunately is likely to remain, a standard tool of war. How can a state throw those responsible for My-Lay into prison, and at the same time ignore those who had been ordered to bomb, say, villages which were not paying taxes to the local corrupt puppet government (to use the other situation quoted above), on obviously flimsy excuses that they were harboring enemies? How could, for a more current example, NATO bomb civilian targets in Serbia to force the closure of that war, and then put in trial the pilots of the planes for the civilians killed? Or how could both the russians and the georgians fight their little petty recent war and achieve their goals without terrorizing civilians with bombings? How can the US keep Afghanistan unstable and its puppet government there without bombing also civilians, regardless of how they're all classified in press releases? "collateral damage", "unfortunate accidents"... it's all crap - it's part of the business of war, and avoiding it would mean, for the planners, failing the goals of war at the time.
So, should we judge the killing of some civilians, but not of others? Use an utilitarian criteria, perhaps: killing civilians is justified for the furthering of military goals, or as "collateral" results, but not gratuitously? But once you start using utilitarian criteria you've already renounced moral criteria! Morals and the practice of war don't really mix. I'm not saying that it shouldn't be tried, that it isn't useful precisely in keeping soldiers "sane" throughout a war (there were reasons for that contradiction of having chaplains in armies...) but it would be deeply hypocritical to be, judicially, harsh on soldiers who killed civilians as part of an activity where killing civilians is (let's be honest!) a regular "tool of the trade". So the practice is to, whenever a scandal breaks out, find some low-ranking scapegoats and punish them mildly, never venturing into the dangerous ground of what officer may have ordered what and what methods had been used in war, lest the whole war be questioned...
aelf
Ashen One
Oh, I'm taking notice alright. I'm taking notice that you continue to hide behind the excuses of combat stress and combat-induced insanity to defend an extremely disgusting outcome where a man who deliberately and systematically conducted the slaughter of 500 civilians only had to serve 3 years of house arrest and be considered a normal person and can lead a normal life afterwards.
Doesn't jibe with your claim that these people have serious combat-induced issues, which would certainly warrant much more psychological attention, nor any normal sense of justice for the victims. You even sing a different tune when the doer is on the enemy's side.
Simply disgusting.
Doesn't jibe with your claim that these people have serious combat-induced issues, which would certainly warrant much more psychological attention, nor any normal sense of justice for the victims. You even sing a different tune when the doer is on the enemy's side.
Simply disgusting.
