Everyone has the potential to dehumanise someone they perceive as "the enemy". Every time I catch myself gloating over the number of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine this week, I have to stop and remind myself that these figures represent so many more young guys who won't be coming home to their families.
Everyone has the potential to dehumanise someone they perceive as "the enemy". Every time I catch myself gloating over the number of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine this week, I have to stop and remind myself that these figures represent so many more young guys who won't be coming home to their families.
Thank you for this. I wonder how long this war would last if Putin and his closest supporters had to be the ones actually fighting in the fields of battle.......
I often thought when I was in college, that if the leaders of countries had to fight it out in an arena, we would have less wars. It is tragic when presidents send our military to fight in order to line the pockets of the military industrial complex, rather than to preserve our democracy. I couldn't understand how someone like George Bush or Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld could send soldiers to die for the reasons they manufactured. This to me, is another example of seeing a group of people as less than human. Yes, soldiers signed up for their jobs, but not with the idea that they were expendable because someone wanted to get rich with wartime profits or wanted to throw their weight around because they had the power and had seen too many John Wayne movies. Our leaders should be more mature and moral than that. We are lucky to have so many dedicated and talented people in the military. They should not be sent to war unless the president felt the war was important enough to send their own loved ones into that battle.
I read an opinion piece decades ago speaking to this issue and suggesting that contentious leaders unable to resolve issues diplomatically simply be forced to a duel or similar, period - eliminating all the nasty, heartbreaking, and unnecessary losses and associated aspects of all-out war. It made so much sense to me! Still does. In reality, things wouldn't be all that simple, but at the very least, it may make most "leaders" think twice..
Everyone has the potential to dehumanise someone they perceive as "the enemy". Every time I catch myself gloating over the number of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine this week, I have to stop and remind myself that these figures represent so many more young guys who won't be coming home to their families.
The enemy I faced in the jungles I finally realized was not the enemy. He was just trying to kill me because I was just trying to kill him.
Pat,
Sounds like you must have been in Vietnam. Yes, you were stuck in a bad spot for bad reasons, no doubt, but, thanks for your service.
Definitely, it was not your fault.
Well said. Thank you for going when you had to.
Talia, exactly. My boyish fantasies about enemy annihilation are tempered by my geezers' empathy with the loved ones left behind.
And ther are always loved ones left behind, unless you look at the Nazis who killed their children before themselves.
Thank you for this. I wonder how long this war would last if Putin and his closest supporters had to be the ones actually fighting in the fields of battle.......
тАЬItтАЩs always the old who lead us to the wars, always the young who fallтАЭ - Phil Ochs
The young are taken advantaged of. And the old know it.
I often thought when I was in college, that if the leaders of countries had to fight it out in an arena, we would have less wars. It is tragic when presidents send our military to fight in order to line the pockets of the military industrial complex, rather than to preserve our democracy. I couldn't understand how someone like George Bush or Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld could send soldiers to die for the reasons they manufactured. This to me, is another example of seeing a group of people as less than human. Yes, soldiers signed up for their jobs, but not with the idea that they were expendable because someone wanted to get rich with wartime profits or wanted to throw their weight around because they had the power and had seen too many John Wayne movies. Our leaders should be more mature and moral than that. We are lucky to have so many dedicated and talented people in the military. They should not be sent to war unless the president felt the war was important enough to send their own loved ones into that battle.
I read an opinion piece decades ago speaking to this issue and suggesting that contentious leaders unable to resolve issues diplomatically simply be forced to a duel or similar, period - eliminating all the nasty, heartbreaking, and unnecessary losses and associated aspects of all-out war. It made so much sense to me! Still does. In reality, things wouldn't be all that simple, but at the very least, it may make most "leaders" think twice..
Or fell out of windows.