The Will to Kill

I've been doing some thinking lately about what it takes to kill your enemy during war, and keep killing them. I'm sure I have some more thinking to do on the subject (...hey, that's what blogs are for, no?), but I've come to some preliminary conclusions I want to put out there.

In the "Who Defeated the Nazi's" thread, constant reader Phil posted an excerpt from a review of a book by Uwe Timm, a German whose brother died trying to kill Russians, but not before complaining about the way the English were bombing Germany in a letter:

The diary also reveals what Timm regards as German disregard for suffering anywhere except in Germany. [His brother] Karl-Heinz writes, " I'm worried about everyone at home, we hear reports of air raids by the English every day. If only they'd stop that filthy business. It's not war, it's the murder of women and children -- it's inhumane ." To which Timm responds:

"It is hard to comprehend and impossible to trace the way sympathy and compassion in the face of suffering could be blanked out, while a distinction emerged between humanity at home and humanity here in Russia. In Russia, the killing of civilians is normal, everyday work, not even worth mentioning; at home it is murder. . . . I have now read other diaries and letters of the time; some observe the suffering of the civilian population and express outrage, others speak of the killing of civilians -- Jews and Russians alike -- as the most natural thing in the world. The language they've been fed makes killing easier: inferior human beings, parasites, vermin whose lives are dirty, degenerate, brutish. Smoking them out is a hygienic measure."

That strikes me as the essence of maintaining the will to kill: "the way sympathy and compassion in the face of suffering could be blanked out," but whereas Timm feels it's impossible to trace, I feel there must be some identifiable paths to this state of mind.

So I asked myself: If you want to maintain your nation's willingness to kill other people, what emotional strings do you pull? What tools do you use to blank out sympathy and compassion in the face of suffering?

Now you all know I opposed the invasion of Iraq, so I'm not going to pretend I'm objective here. I will attempt to be fair though. I think there are three primary tools nations can use to maintain their populace's will to kill: fear, information operations, and the rhetoric of "the other."

There's a range of benefits to keeping your nation fearful. Fearful people don't relax. They remain suspicious. This skittishness (and the energy it consumes) makes people want someone who can convince them he/she will keep them safe to take charge. They'll surrender a good deal of autonomy in exchange for this. In other words, fear disrupts their calmer, more rational selves. Fear makes sheep out of people. All the chatter about duct tape, terror-alert color codes, and talk of mushroom clouds during the lead up to the invasion of Iraq was very successful in keeping Americans fearful, IMO. And it worked. Despite the fact that Iraq had not attacked the US nor had a realistic means to do so, fearful Americans were perfectly willing to let untold numbers of Iraqi civilians be shocked and awed into oblivion.

"Information Operations" is (rightly, IMO) seen as a legitimate tool of war as it's applied against the enemy, but less recognized is the way it's thereby applied against the home-front. Photojournalist Molly Bingham, one of the only American journalists to tell the story of the Iraqi resistance, offered these thoughts in a speech at Western Kentucky University last month (hat tip wilfred):

[T]his is not meant as any criticism of the military; they have a war to win, and dominating the "message," or the news is an integral part of that war. The military has a name for it, "information operations," and the aim is to achieve information superiority in the same way they would seek to achieve air superiority. If you look closely, you will notice there is very little, maybe even no direct reporting on the resistance in Iraq. We do, however, as journalists report what the Americans say about the resistance. Is this really anything more than stenography?

I find this side-effect of information operations objectionable for a couple of reasons, though. When our nation, through our representatives, agrees to go to war, we don't hand carte blanche to the military to do as they wish. We expect certain conventions to be followed, and it's our responsibility to make sure they are, not only so that we can keep believing we're the good guys, but also so that when our loved ones in the armed forces return home to us, hopefully they're not monsters. Staying informed on what's happening (really happening) in the war is the only way (short of going over there) we can fulfill our responsibility as monitors of our values throughout a war. Keeping us from knowing that truth (because let's face it, war is messy) is another tool the government can use to maintain our will to kill. If we don't know the enemy or how they're really dying, we can't approach deciding whether we would sympathize with them.

And this ties in with the final tool, the rhetoric of "the other." As I noted on the Nazi thread, I recently watched "Hotel Rwanda." The director did an excellent job of demonstrating how the Interahamwe manipulated the rhetoric of "the other," constantly referring to the Tutsis as "cockroaches" or worse. Never by their name, never even in terms of their being human. That's an extreme case, but it demonstrates the general principle.

As Bingham noted:

And many American journalists often refer to those attacking Americans or Iraqi troops and policemen as "terrorists." Some are indeed using terrorist tactics, but calling them "terrorists" simply shuts down any sense of need or interest to look beyond that word, to understand why indeed human beings might be willing to die in a violent struggle to achieve their goal. Pushing them off as simply "insane, wild Arabs" or "extremist Muslims" does them no service, but even more, it does the U.S. no service.

On that last point, however, she is wrong. It does the U.S. a very important service in one respect. It keeps the insurgents distant. They remain not like us. We might actually take up arms and try to defeat an army that invaded and occupied our country, but we're not "terrorists." They are different. They are "other." As "other" it's easier for us to maintain the will to kill them.

Intellectually, I understand why the leaders of a nation at war would try to use these tools. Having the home-front start to grumble makes getting the job done that much tougher and in some respect, as war supporters like to claim (with too much hyperbole at times, IMO), this does help the enemy, in that it pulls the military back from that more carte-blanche-esque degree of power it otherwise has when there's less grumbling at home. It's a constant struggle for balance, but, again, I don't believe the military should have that kind of power, because of its potential to corrupt.

Still, of the three tools listed here, the only one I find truly offensive is "fear." Like I noted, I don't think the US has even approached the level of "other" rhetoric the world has seen employed (being totally honest, I feel calling someone a "terrorist" who fights with terrorist tactics, while possibly designed to dehumanize them, doesn't stretch the truth in any significant sense even if it does prevent us from knowing their side of the story...so long as they're using suicide bombers, I don't really want to know their side of the story) and "information operations" have the unfortunate side-effect of leaving the home-front in the dark, but that's where the media should work harder, not the military work dumber.

But the manipulation of "fear" toward this end (toward maintaining a will to kill) is unforgivable in my book. If the threat is real, the populace will be fearful enough. If the threat is not that scary, then the leaders need to work harder to convince the nation that killing is necessary.

Comments

[cleek]

It does the U.S. a very important service in one respect. It keeps the insurgents distant.

it does an even more important service: it relates them to the people who pulled off 9/11. that allows light thinkers to say things like "we had to invade Iraq so that we could engage them on our terms in their land. better in Bagdhad than Boise." and then they can keep on feelin good about the Iraq war.

[Macallan]

Not necessarily a correct thesis. Fear very often has the opposite effect on will. People make "fight or flight" impulses in response to fear, and it has often as not caused capitulation or surrender rather any will to fight. Many of the rationales against war are as grounded in fear as some rationales for war are.

Interesting post though.

[Edward_]

. Fear very often has the opposite effect on will.

If you're actually being attacked, yes. I agree. But if you're only fearful that you might be attacked, I'm not so sure flight is a more typical response.

[SomeCallMeTim]

Mac:

If you are actually afraid, as an American, of tin-pot dictators in the ME, you are afraid of Life. It's hard to think of a smaller threat to national security that we've faced. At least in Grenada, we could claim worries about the Commies.

[dmbeaster]

I think you are confusing the motivations of the soldiers doing the killing with the motivations of the supporters of war. The military has spent years figuring out how to instill the will to fight and kill in basic training, and the basic technique (as I understand it) is the "band of brothers" psychology. Soldiers bond with their small unit and fight to protect one another more than anything.

Fear, IMO (i.e., propoganda) and the "other" are more for manipulating the home front. I recall that the "other" was found to be a poor motivator in reviews of WWII basic training and fighting performance, and is not stressed these days. In any event, soldiers typically develop an acute case of this whether or not they are trained to think this way.

What I think is most offensive these days is the extent of IMO to support war fever; i.e., the rigged Saddam statute toppling, Tilden, Lynch, endless officers giving press briefings that the latest offensive has broken the insurgency, etc. And this does not refer to the unseen efforts to suppress the negative stories.

[Anderson]

I was thinking about the "will to kill" after the WW2 thread as well. How do we drop bombs on Dresden & Tokyo, or exterminate millions of European Jews, when killing large numbers of civilians is so obviously wrong?

I think that "info operations" and "the Other" are strategies for doing the same thing. The more we know about our victims, the more difficult it becomes to kill them (barring sensibilities like that of the Illinois fellow who stabbed his daughter & her friend to death). Sympathy, let's call it (along with Edward), perhaps a subtle form of identification. We could argue about the psychology involved, maybe even productively, but I'll assume we acknowledge it exists.

(I'd hypothesize that a lot of the regulations of Jews in the Nazi camps had at least a partial purpose of preventing the formation of sympathy between the Germans and their victims.)

Another way to forestall such sympathy is to construct the Germans in Dresden as "the Other." One needn't worry about the feelings of the women & children being firebombed, or piled into bits at Babi Yar, because they don't feel it like we do, they're not like us. They may even be positively dangerous, pathogenic; one may feel a little regret at having to sterilize Europe of the (German-militarist/Jewish-Communist) "bacillus," but it's a dirty job someone has to do, and so on.

So I would argue that these are two forms of the same thing, "info ops" and "Otherization." As Edward notes, the less info we have, the more easily our always-handy notions of Otherness can fill the gap.

(Sorry if all this was obvious from the post; like I said, I was thinking along these lines too, & now Edward's post has jarred it loose.)

PS to dmbeaster--there is no "us" without an implicit "them."

[Edward_]

I think you are confusing the motivations of the soldiers doing the killing with the motivations of the supporters of war.

I think you're right...I have done that to some extent. Thanks for pointing that out. I was trying to focus on the home-front's support for the war.

What I think is most offensive these days is the extent of IMO to support war fever; i.e., the rigged Saddam statute toppling, Tilden, Lynch, endless officers giving press briefings that the latest offensive has broken the insurgency, etc.

I see that as part of information operations. It strikes me as normal. Again, I see it as the media's responsibility to flush those stories out and give us a better overall picture. Manufactured propaganda is sort of the military's job, no?

I recall that the "other" was found to be a poor motivator in reviews of WWII basic training and fighting performance, and is not stressed these days. In any event, soldiers typically develop an acute case of this whether or not they are trained to think this way.

That's interesting. I think it only takes seeing one of your buddies killed to have this happen. You want to find differences between you and the people capable of such evil.

[Macallan]

Mac:

If you are actually afraid, as an American, of tin-pot dictators in the ME, you are afraid of Life. It's hard to think of a smaller threat to national security that we've faced. At least in Grenada, we could claim worries about the Commies.

I'm sure you know what the hell your talking about with that nonsense, but that makes one of us.

[sidereal]

Fear above all clouds judgement. That's what it's designed to do. To kick in at those times when judgement is too slow or too prone to failure and force the hand. Of course that means it's inherently irrational and it's totally inappropriate to factor into policy decisions which are by design subjected to judgement and rationality. I don't think I'm going too far out on a limb by suggesting that any policy decision in which fear is given a role is necessarily inferior to a decision without fear.

But I don't worry most about fear. I worry about dehumanization, or the 'other' rhetoric as Edward calls it. It's an easy tool. All non-sociopathic humans exhibit empathy for other humans, and that empathy is the kernel around which social relations are built. It's also the kernel around which most ethics and most religion are built. So it's pretty important. It's also oddly flexible. People extend the ambit of their empathy to include animals, sometimes plants, and even decidedly non-living things like dolls and boats. One of many cases where something evolved to a particular purpose gets tricky under diverse stimuli. The unfortunate thing is that it's also flexible in the other direction. It is depressingly simple to push people outside the ambit of your empathy, most easily by dehumanizing them. 'Animals', 'cockroaches', 'Paleswinian'. . every genocide is built on the same tools -- rhetoric designed to rip the veil of humanity from your opponents, so they are disqualified from human empathy and decency.

[Edward_]

Not to disagree with SomeCallMeTim, but this line I'm stealing:

I'm sure you know what the hell your talking about with that nonsense, but that makes one of us.

[Macallan]

But if you're only fearful that you might be attacked, I'm not so sure flight is a more typical response.

It is the typical response. In the case of nations, rather than "flight" it's usually called "appeasement" or "containment" or even "negotiations" and finally "surrender".

[Edward_]

I see what you mean Mac. Perhaps it should be clarified to suggest that fear is useful in getting people to allow you to take charge, to surrender their autonomy. I mean, I don't honestly feel Bush, Rumsfeld, or Cheney were afraid of Hussein, but they needed the country to be.

[Anderson]

(1) The "band of brothers" idea seems at its weakest in bombing Tokyo or gunning down a line of Jewish civilians in their pajamas. These may not be the phenomena that Edward's particularly interested in, but they're what's implicated in the quotation in his post.

(2) Can we slow down on conceding any fundamental difference between soldiers' & civilians' motivations? For the reason at (1) above, if nothing else.

(3) There's something perhaps revealing about our psychology in Edward's response:

That's interesting. I think it only takes seeing one of your buddies killed to have this happen. You want to find differences between you and the people capable of such evil.

See, now the soldier on the other side, who is quite likely a scared grunt like ourselves, is now "evil" and Other. We're not "evil," are we?

(No dig at Edward; I'm talking about general human psych, and I half-suspect he had a roadside bombing in mind.)

(4) Fear of the unknown has been argued to be the most basic, politically useful kind; does fear fold into info ops/dehumanization as well?

[double-plus-ungood]

That's interesting. I think it only takes seeing one of your buddies killed to have this happen. You want to find differences between you and the people capable of such evil.

I recall the scene on the beach in Saving Private Ryan where the German pillbox that had been massacring US soldiers is hit with a flamethrower, and horribly burning German soldiers are scrambling out of the gun slit. A GI yells "Don't shoot them, let the bastards burn!"

I also recall a discussion with a WW II veteran whom I know who said that Saving Private Ryan was dead-on in its depiction of warfare.

[Edward_]

See, now the soldier on the other side, who is quite likely a scared grunt like ourselves, is now "evil" and Other. We're not "evil," are we?

(No dig at Edward; I'm talking about general human psych, and I half-suspect he had a roadside bombing in mind.)

I agree. I find this remarkable.

Fear of the unknown has been argued to be the most basic, politically useful kind; does fear fold into info ops/dehumanization as well?

Excllent question. dmbeaster gave us a good short-list of the US's attempts to send info ops back home. But I don't immediately see where they included a manipulation of fear.

the rigged Saddam statute toppling, Tilden, Lynch, endless officers giving press briefings that the latest offensive has broken the insurgency, etc.

[liberal japonicus]

Interesting as always, Edward. One should note that a second way of making killing more palatable is technological distance. The cynic in me says that is what drives innovation, but that would probably be too harsh.

A second point that occurs to me is that one underpinning of "Information Operations" (I don't care for the term much, it strikes me as the sort of thing that Orwell would decry) is the American belief that everyone wants to be like us (with the corollary that if they don't want to be like us, they obviously have something fatal flaw) With that foundation, it is far easier to create the climate that we have now.

I also have to point out Mac's interesting twist, which is that flight is obviously the poorer option and we must equate attempts to solve problems peaceably without resorting to threats (my admittedly jaundiced reading of the invocation of ""appeasement" or "containment" or even "negotiations" and finally "surrender"") with flight. First of all, it seems that the whole purpose of having two options was to, well, have two options, and it wasn't that one was always superior to the other. And when he extends 'negotiations' into 'flight', I really have to wonder if he lives life where 'flight' is the denigrated option. Mac, if you really live your life that way and you say you are married, one of the propositions ain't true ;^)

Speaking of Omaha beach, there was a WaPo article about the German Machine gunner who may have been responsible for a large fraction of the American casualties. Here is a blog post that has the article (it's supposed to be by the Dean of Mass School of Law, but he don't have much respect for IP law, I guess) and a second one from the London Daily News.

[bob mcmanus]

An empirical question rose to my mind. If there was a general process of "Otherization" employed against the Japanese(e.g.) in WWII, how long did the effect last? Factoring out pre-existing and indelible(?) racism and xenophobia, I am thinking it did not really even last a full decade. Which, if true, is interesting.

I was also thinking of what any process of "otherization" means in reference to Iraq. Hard to exactly determine who we are fighting in a sense that could be generalized to a xenophobia...not that it doesn't exist, but the people we cheered as they went to vote aren't all that different, ethnically, religiously from the ones who are shooting at us.

It is not impossible to hate someone for their political opinions but it is a little hard, all else being equal, to put a face on such an enemy.

[Macallan]

I also have to point out Mac's interesting twist

I think you mean your twist lj, given that it has nothing to do with what I wrote. Extra points for creativity though.

My point however, was that fear is a capricious motivator and can lead people in unpredictable directions. The problem with Edward's thesis is that he thinks fear is a tool, yet it is generally unwise to use tools that yield unpredictable results.

[Bernard Yomtov]

I was thinking about the "will to kill" after the WW2 thread as well. How do we drop bombs on Dresden & Tokyo, or exterminate millions of European Jews, when killing large numbers of civilians is so obviously wrong?

Anderson,

Whatever you think about Allied bombing campaigns, please do not equate single events with the murder of the Jews. The scale was different, the duration of the "project" was different, the scope of participation was different, the extent of organization and planning and resources involved was different.

And the motivations were different. The Nazis did not view the Holocaust as part of their military effort. In fact, it sometimes siphoned off military resources. The Allies, perhaps wrongly, did see the bombing of the cities as part of the war effort.

This makes it a mistake to try to explain these events in similar ways. The Holocaust arose, fundamentally, out of many centuries of European anti-Semitism. The psychological mechanism that enabled so many to participate had little to do with the state of war. This is not true of the bombings.

I hope this doesn't send the thread off, but I feel strongly about the point.

[Anderson]

yet it is generally unwise to use tools that yield unpredictable results.

Mac is right that fear is an unreliable way of inducing people to kill; one might well run away. (Recall the tag that Frederick II's troopers feared their NCO's more than they did the enemy.)

That's one reason why dehumanization works relatively well; the fear is directed against a target & is readily converted into anger, which as Aristotle teaches is inseparable from the desire to retaliate. If nothing else, we are angry at the Other for making us afraid.

McManus's point about the Japanese shows how much use propaganda can be, though I wouldn't underestimate racism (who was mentioning Dower's book?). As for Iraq, our cheering over elections did not, I think, rely much on deciding the Iraqis were now fit to live in the same neighborhoods as we; it had more to do with a sense that we may be getting out. N.b. the press coverage's focus on photo portraits, interviews with voters, assorted humanizing touches.

In general, however, words like "raghead" suggest our default position, going back over decades of anti-Arabism (the 70s oil crisis et al.).

[Francis / Brother Rail Gun of Reasoned Discourse]

re: fear on the home front.

first, the very expression "home front" is interesting, isn't it? It suggests that home is also a battlefield. Who, then, make up the two sides? Pro-administration / pro-war vs. anti-admin / anti-war. So, already we have the germ of an idea that those who oppose the war are the enemy.

Fear was pretty clearly a major component of the admin's case for war with Iraq. Warning cloud = mushroom cloud was the most gross, but there were others.

And while extreme fear can lead to unexpected results, a nice low-grade constant anxiety can make people pretty malleable. I wonder if the admin monitored the aggregate fear level in our society and modulated its rhetoric accordingly.

Speaking of surrender, I remember a number of threads on Tacitus about the world's post WWII experience in dealing with insurgencies. What I took from those discussions was that insurgencies that have a significant base of support in the civilian population and that have safe havens can last indefinitely. The only solution is accomodation.

With only 150K in-country, large portions of iraq are safe havens. Isn't time to start talking to the insurgents? Or have we, only to discover that they believe that they can outlast us?

[Laura]

I largely agree with your (Edward's) thoughts on the three motivators, but I don't understand why you think manipulating fear is the most offensive.

There are people for whom any military tactic is acceptable if it will help win the war. There are people who are not afraid to go to Iraq or to send their children there, and who don't care about the Iraqi's back story or the Tutsi's back story, etc. They don't differentiate between "terrorist", "resurgent", "soldier", or "freedom fighter", or collateral damage to noncombatants.

Maybe we're neglecting to talk about another motivator: social status and desire to conform to authority--which I personally find the most offensive.

[Anderson]

Separate reply to Bernard: I used Dresden & Babi Yar interchangeably for the precise reason that I am talking about Americans as well as Germans, trying to avoid the dehumanization that I'm criticizing.

Whatever you think about Allied bombing campaigns, please do not equate single events with the murder of the Jews. The scale was different, the duration of the "project" was different, the scope of participation was different, the extent of organization and planning and resources involved was different.

Okay, there were differences. But those aren't relevant to my point, I think; please correct me. I'm talking about how American airmen and German troops could do what they did and not feel like they were murderers of innocent men/women/children.

And the motivations were different. The Nazis did not view the Holocaust as part of their military effort. In fact, it sometimes siphoned off military resources. The Allies, perhaps wrongly, did see the bombing of the cities as part of the war effort.

Au contraire. The Nazis saw the destruction of the Jews (& of their Communist "equivalents") as the high moral purpose of their war. Remember the "stab in the back," which was all the typical German grunt needed to hear about the military relevance of the Jews/Reds. (For the benefit of non-history-readers, Hitler & co. had the strange notion that Soviet Communism was "Jewish.")

(And "perhaps wrongly" is remarkable as an example that, 60 years later, we're not convinced as a nation that we did anything wrong in killing 100,000's of civilians; that burning up women and kids by the thousands could be justified by military necessity of some sort. The ability to think like that is part of the problem. If none of us could accept that such crimes can be justified, then we'd be that much less likely to commit them.)

This makes it a mistake to try to explain these events in similar ways. The Holocaust arose, fundamentally, out of many centuries of European anti-Semitism. The psychological mechanism that enabled so many to participate had little to do with the state of war. This is not true of the bombings.

This begs the question against my thesis, poor tho it be, that there *is* a psychological mechanism that's implicated in killing masses of civilians, and that it's not essentially different if you're asphyxiating/incinerating babies in Hamburg or in Auschwitz. I don't think that *murdering all the Jews* (as opposed to exiling them, persecuting them, etc.) is a uniquely anti-Semitic behavior that we need Daniel Goldhagen to explain to us, at least in terms of how the individual perpetrators came to carry it out. Maybe I'm wrong. But I'd say the only real difference between My Lai and Babi Yar is that Calley wasn't acting on superior orders.

In short (I can be short!), the "motivations" of the killers on the ground are not to be confused with the "motivations" of the instigators.

Let it be said, if there's any doubt, that I believe the deliberate attempt to wipe out the Jewish people was a much more horrible crime than the fire raids, which were not part of any deliberate effort to wipe out the German or Japanese people.

[st]

mac -
I pretty much agree with you here, but I would point out that for a citizen who is not directly under threat (and the average american citizen is not, 9/11 or no), the move by a citizen towards a strong leader who claims he will reach out and smash the bad guys may well be a flight reaction for the citizen, even if it is a fight reaction in the leader. Or at least, it can be. So not only does fear bifurcate between those who want to fight and those who don't, but can also bifurcate within those camps.

[Edward]

The problem with Edward's thesis is that he thinks fear is a tool, yet it is generally unwise to use tools that yield unpredictable results.

I've tried to rephrase that. Fear offers the very predictable result of skittishness and, as sidereal noted "Fear above all clouds judgement." If you're building a rather wobbly argument for war, it is to your advantage to have the populace's judgement clouded.

I largely agree with your (Edward's) thoughts on the three motivators, but I don't understand why you think manipulating fear is the most offensive.

I believe it's a leader's responsibility to be as reassuring during wartime as possible. Reality is important (as much as can be offered), but exaggerating a threat, when disinformation is a necessary weapon, is essentially punishing your own people. Give me an FDR over a Bush in wartime any time. At least on this issue.

[CharleyCarp]

You know, there's a good way to make fear-mongering effective as a motivational force, and not risk scaring the populace into surrender: focus group the living shit out of it. And poll constantly as you go along. These things aren't binary, you can ratchet up or ratchet down pretty much at will. The warning on the heels of the Dem Convention, for example, involved a large exercise of discretion. When do you have enough to come out with something, and is it really true that no information sufficient to make a warning of this type has emerged in recent months . . . until today with the lost plane?

On the main point, it's clear enough that the human mind is rather easily bent to violate ethical norms, when the subject can be convinced that a higher purpose will be served. Plenty of science for it, and most of us have experienced a moment of making (or being willing to make) the wrong choice. Understandable even where not justifiable.

I had a wonderful opportunity to have a discussion like this earlier in the week, explaining to a couple of conservative German twenty-something DC interns why I am representing a couple of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Germans get the whole 'rule of law' and 'nation of laws not of men' thing pretty well these days, but even they had to gasp at the prospect of freedom for people possibly members of AQ where due process would so require.

In the end, though, is what I am doing psychologically any different from pulling the trigger to get the enemy? Higher purpose, and all that.

[Don Quijote]

I was thinking about the "will to kill" after the WW2 thread as well. How do we drop bombs on Dresden & Tokyo, or exterminate millions of European Jews, when killing large numbers of civilians is so obviously wrong?

Dropping Bombs is easy particularly when there is no air defenses to deal with, the Pilot pushes a button, a bomb falls, lots of people die and the pilot goes home not having seen any of the people he has killed/murdered.
But if an Arabs slices the throat of any civilian, he 's a terrorist, a monster, a barbarian, if an American Pilot drops a bomb that kills 10 civilians, and two insurgents, he's a hero and the civilians are collateral damage.

[liberal japonicus]

I think you mean your twist lj, given that it has nothing to do with what I wrote. Extra points for creativity though.

Mac, sorry about that, but when you wrote

It is the typical response. In the case of nations, rather than "flight" it's usually called "appeasement" or "containment" or even "negotiations" and finally "surrender". (emph. mine)

I assumed that 'it' referred to "flight". And while I appreciate the props to my creativity, I would have never been so creative as to put "negotiations" in between "appeasement" and "surrender". Another one of those subtle ordering phenomenon, I guess.

[Anarch]

I think you mean your twist lj, given that it has nothing to do with what I wrote.

Actually it's almost directly what you wrote. I'd suggest either backing down on the snark or backing up the implications; the hybrid approach is, well, poor.

[Eric]

... the very expression "home front" is interesting, isn't it? It suggests that home is also a battlefield. Who, then, make up the two sides? Pro-administration / pro-war vs. anti-admin / anti-war. So, already we have the germ of an idea that those who oppose the war are the enemy.

It doesn't suggest that "those who oppose the war are the enemy", it suggests that there are things we as civilians can do at home to increase the likelihood of our eventual victory. Remember things like war bonds, victory gardens, etc? The point of those things wasn't to demonize anybody, it was to reduce civilian demand for materiel that could be used on the front lines.

[Eric]

The Nazis did not view the Holocaust as part of their military effort. In fact, it sometimes siphoned off military resources. The Allies, perhaps wrongly, did see the bombing of the cities as part of the war effort.

Au contraire. The Nazis saw the destruction of the Jews (& of their Communist "equivalents") as the high moral purpose of their war.

I think that's Bernard's point. The Germans viewed "the destruction of the Jews ... as the high moral purpose of their war"; the Americans viewed the Dresden & Tokyo bombings as a regrettable but necessary step in their effort to defeat the kind of people to whom the destruction of a race is a "high moral purpose".

[Macallan]

"Actually it's almost directly what you wrote."

If it were, it would be easy to quote and highlight… you know maybe even put it in italics or something like that. However since it wasn't what I wrote it had to "interpreted" and rephrased to make a point.

What was it you were saying about snark or implications? I might have missed amongst your's. I'm sort of dull that way.

[DaveC]

A couple of comments about thes comments:

I was thinking about the "will to kill" after the WW2 thread as well. How do we drop bombs on Dresden & Tokyo, or exterminate millions of European Jews, when killing large numbers of civilians is so obviously wrong?

and

Dropping Bombs is easy particularly when there is no air defenses to deal with, the Pilot pushes a button, a bomb falls, lots of people die and the pilot goes home not having seen any of the people he has killed/murdered.

If you believe this stuff , and this is the most charitable interpretation, then you are totally ignorant. The casualty rate for B-17 crews in WWII was 25%. There was a special problem for bombardiers who for some reason doubled as front gunners. The risk was greatest in the final bombing runs, especially on long range bombing missions when at the end there was no fighter escort, when the bombardier changed from the front gunner position to the bomb sight. That was the most favored time for Luftwaffe fighters to attack the B-17's head-on.

In WWII the accuracy of navigation was nowhere near what it is today, and only a small fraction of bombs hit their intended targets. You guys now 60 years down the line demand perfection from people who just wanted to do the best they could and get the hell out of there. Obviously you didn't grow up with any relatives who had to do this and went through their short life with their nerves shattered,. But my uncle didn't say much about this. He just bitched about how the frickin Brits (actually I think he said limeys, but that it technically incorrect) bombed at night instead of the daytime.

Forgive me, I'm not a great linguist like, say, Chomsky, but when I read

How do we drop bombs on Dresden & Tokyo, or exterminate millions of European Jews.

I parse this as

How do we drop bombs on Dresden & Tokyo
OR FOR ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF WHAT WE DID
How do we exterminate millions of European Jews

Or

The "band of brothers" idea seems at its weakest in bombing Tokyo or gunning down a line of Jewish civilians in their pajamas.

I parse this as
The "band of brothers" idea seems at its weakest in bombing Tokyo.
OR FOR ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF WHAT WE DID
The "band of brothers" idea seems at its weakest in gunning down a line of Jewish civilians in their pajamas.

Feel free to include yourself in this "we" business, but include me out.

You did have one insight I agree with:

there is no "us" without an implicit "them."

Goddamn straight. I'm for "our" side.

Wow, I'm learning to use those sneer quotes!

[Macallan]

I assumed that 'it' referred to "flight".

That assumption was correct lj, where you got creative was "that flight is obviously the poorer option". There are many instances where it is the wise option, even when dealing from a position of superior strength. It is actually one of the luxuries of strength…

[DaveC]

Oh also, as an example of how to motivate ordinaty people for war, consider this about mt Sept 10th point of view:

I enjoyed the television show "That's my Bush"

and I actually thought it somewhat amusing that China eventually returned the US military plane that that they forced down, disassembled, in crates.

Now, you may think I am wierd, but I have in my lap copies of the Sept 24, 2001 editions of People, US News and World Report, and Newsweek. The cover of Newsweek was titled "God Bless America". Imagine that.

That's when I changed my point of view.

I went on the side of "let's do anything we can to stop these SOB's from doing this again."

[Anarch]

If it were, it would be easy to quote and highlight… you know maybe even put it in italics or something like that.

Are you confused about the reference? Was the text of the relevant passage at all in doubt?

However since it wasn't what I wrote it had to "interpreted" and rephrased to make a point.

Ah, so you're using the word "interpreted" as a triviality: anything that isn't a literal transcription is an interpretation. How very deconstructionist of you. Derrida would be proud, if he weren't dead.*

Also, while your goalpost-changing is duly noted, what you're now claiming isn't what you originally claimed. In the spirit of your request, let a thousand citations bloom; emphasis always mine, and the word "it" in your 9:03pm post and your 5:02am post, pace the latter, shall be replaced by "[flight]".

I think you mean your twist lj, given that it has nothing to do with what I wrote.

[which it does, ergo the claim is false]

as versus

However since it wasn't what I wrote it had to "interpreted" and rephrased to make a point.

[which is either trivial, meaningless, or false.]

Further amusements: this...

"But if you're only fearful that you might be attacked, I'm not so sure flight is a more typical response."

[Flight] is the typical response. [Emph in original]

...has become this...

My point however, was that fear is a capricious motivator and can lead people in unpredictable directions.

Unpredictably leading you usually in the direction of flight. Capricious indeed.

And this...

In the case of nations, rather than "flight" it's usually called "appeasement" or "containment" or even "negotiations" and finally "surrender".**

is now this...

There are many instances where [flight] is the wise option, even when dealing from a position of superior strength. It is actually one of the luxuries of strength…

Yes, that ever-popular luxury of strength, "surrender".

I'm genuinely curious: do you ever intend actual meaning in these remarks, or are they merely intended to sound meaningful while signifying nothing?

What was it you were saying about snark or implications? I might have missed amongst your's. I'm sort of dull that way.

Believe it or not, I've noticed.

* Knowing Derrida, that would probably make him all the prouder.

** BTW, I too love how negotiations are invoked only as a prelude to surrender.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

"I've tried to rephrase that. Fear offers the very predictable result of skittishness and, as sidereal noted "Fear above all clouds judgement." If you're building a rather wobbly argument for war, it is to your advantage to have the populace's judgement clouded."

Clouded judgment doesn't always break one direction. I would be unsurprised if one of the characteristic differences between modern liberals and conservatives is that when their judgment is clouded modern liberals tend toward appeasement responses whether or not it is appropriate and when their judgment is clouded modern conservatives tend toward fighting responses whether or not it is appropriate. The split between the two is pretty even, so a hypothetical artificial increase in the fear level for the purpose of clouding judgment does not seem to me like it would particularly help a weak case for war.

[felixrayman]

Clouded judgment doesn't always break one direction. I would be unsurprised if one of the characteristic differences between modern liberals and conservatives is that when their judgment is clouded modern liberals tend toward appeasement responses whether or not it is appropriate and when their judgment is clouded modern conservatives tend toward fighting responses whether or not it is appropriate.

As long as we are making unsupported generalizations, I think the difference is more that modern liberals are less likely to have their judgement clouded than conservatives.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

I'm certain that you do believe that.

[DaveC]

As long as we are making unsupported generalizations, I think the difference is more that modern liberals are less likely to have their judgement clouded than conservatives.

Correct, your statement is one of those unsupported generalizations. I can vouch for this because my son, just returned from college, participates in discussions about current events by shouting left-wing slogans at me.

That is only anecdotal, of course :)

[felixrayman]

I'm certain that you do believe that.

I'm certain that you missed the point.

[Phil]

DaveC, when you talk about parsing the examples of certain behaviors -- about which I don't totally disagree with you -- but then say: "Feel free to include yourself in this "we" business, but include me out.", I believe you've accidentally made yourself into an example of what Edward's discussing. "We," in those examples, means "people," or "humans." It seems you want to reserve that appellation for yourself, and for those capable of doing the former things in your parsed examples, but take it away from those capable of doing the latter. That's exactly what leads to the kind of behavior at issue.

Which you then go on to prove with your "I went on the side of "let's do anything we can to stop these SOB's from doing this again."" Really? Anything? Like slaughter their civilians? Or drop a nuke on Riyadh? Do you really mean "anything," and if so, is it likely that the dehumanization above has led to that opinion?

Finally, as a side note, and not directing this towards you particularly, I think the entire concept of "Sept. 10 thinking" vs. "post 9/11 thinking" is precious, precious bullshit. It's the worst kind of excuse-making, and of abandonment of principle for expediency.

[Don Quijote]

DaveC,

Dropping Bombs is easy particularly when there is no air defenses to deal with, the Pilot pushes a button, a bomb falls, lots of people die and the pilot goes home not having seen any of the people he has killed/murdered.

You missed the key clause, I was thinking Korea, VietNam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia. You know the countries we have been attempting to bomb into submission as in the following example from WAPO:They Came Here to Die

Reluctantly, Marines called in an F/A-18 attack plane, which dropped two bombs at midnight. One failed to explode. The second missed the house.

[Macallan]

Anarch I have little inclination to argue with your imagination. Regards.

[Catsy]

Anarch I have little inclination to argue with your imagination.

Forgive the neologism, but: PWNED.

[Macallan]

Goodness Catsy one would hope so... If you can't pwn your own strawman, why bother?

[Anderson]

DaveC seems to be self-refuting, but just so it's expressly said, "killing civilians because that's all your technology lets you do" is not a good argument for killing civilians.

I do begin to question my suggested collapse of Edward's "info ops" and dehumanization categories. While they're complementary, the difference between a B-17 pilot who can't see his victims and a German Special Group soldier shooting Jews is evident; the latter, it seems, called for a greater investment in dehumanization. Even so, the death camps were in part an effort to hide the actual sight of killing, and thus more on par with the fire raids.

Our desire to protect our own soldiers' lives by enabling "remote killing" naturally leads to making killing easier.

[votermom]

Dehumanization begins at home, in childhood, in the family. Corporal punishment, unquestioning submission to authority, the use of force to compel obedience, suspicion and distrust of outsiders. It's training for being a grown up.

[DaveC]

Darn, I wish I could express myself as well as neo-neocon. I agree with her, and while you're at it, read the whole darn series.

[votermom]

Yeah, well, then she (neo-neocon) should sign up. They'll probably take her. Recruitment levels are down and all that.

[Edward_]

That's a very interesting (and very long) essay, DaveC. Thanks for sharing!

e

[Bernard Yomtov]

Anderson,

Okay, there were differences. But those aren't relevant to my point, I think; please correct me. I'm talking about how American airmen and German troops could do what they did and not feel like they were murderers of innocent men/women/children.

But they are relevant. The reasons they could do it need not have been the same. Not all killings are motivated, or enabled if you prefer, by the same factors.

The Nazis saw the destruction of the Jews (& of their Communist "equivalents") as the high moral purpose of their war. Remember the "stab in the back," which was all the typical German grunt needed to hear about the military relevance of the Jews/Reds. (For the benefit of non-history-readers, Hitler & co. had the strange notion that Soviet Communism was "Jewish.")

That’s a big overstatement, I think. If Hitler could have waved a magic wand in August of 1939 and made all the Jews of Europe disappear would he not have invaded Poland? What you describe may have been part of the overall Nazi program, but it was not a component of their military strategy. In fact, there is considerable debate as to exactly when and how the physical destruction of the Jews became a part of the Nazi program. I think that the Allied bombings, on the other hand, were intended as a part of the military effort.

(And "perhaps wrongly" is remarkable as an example that, 60 years later, we're not convinced as a nation that we did anything wrong in killing 100,000's of civilians; that burning up women and kids by the thousands could be justified by military necessity of some sort. The ability to think like that is part of the problem. If none of us could accept that such crimes can be justified, then we'd be that much less likely to commit them.)

I do not justify these bombings. I don't think they can be defended on any rational basis. But we are not wholly rational beings. I admit that there is a part of me that says “F*** Dresden.” Sorry, but that’s the way it is. Does everyone feel like that with respect to certain situations? Maybe not? (remember the Dukakis debate disaster?) But I suspect many do, and that’s part of what’s being discussed here.

my thesis [is], that there *is* a psychological mechanism that's implicated in killing masses of civilians, and that it's not essentially different if you're asphyxiating/incinerating babies in Hamburg or in Auschwitz.

This is true in one almost trivial sense – that it takes some psychological force to induce people to kill. But I don’t see why there can’t be various such forces – bigotry, vengeance, the mental state induced by combat, greed even.

I don't think that *murdering all the Jews* (as opposed to exiling them, persecuting them, etc.) is a uniquely anti-Semitic behavior that we need Daniel Goldhagen to explain to us, at least in terms of how the individual perpetrators came to carry it out. Maybe I'm wrong. But I'd say the only real difference between My Lai and Babi Yar is that Calley wasn't acting on superior orders.

I’m not sure I understand this point.

In short (I can be short!), the "motivations" of the killers on the ground are not to be confused with the "motivations" of the instigators.

If I understand, you are saying that you are interested in how the actual, physical, killers, as opposed to the leaders, overcame what we would expect to be revulsion at their acts. But I think my point still applies. Why assume that the attitudes that lets one individual kill are the same as those that let another do so?

Let it be said, if there's any doubt, that I believe the deliberate attempt to wipe out the Jewish people was a much more horrible crime than the fire raids, which were not part of any deliberate effort to wipe out the German or Japanese people.

I don’t doubt this.

[DaveC]

italics off

[Donald Johnson]

On the subject of being willing to kill, I could never talk myself into being in favor of unilateral nuclear disarmament, though I have trouble seeing how nuclear deterrence could be seen as anything other than a plan to murder hundreds of millions of people in case hundreds of millions of our own people were killed. I don't think we even promised never to use nuclear weapons first--leaving aside the previous use, of course, when we used nukes to ensure we'd get the surrender terms we wanted without having to invade.

I've heard America's nuclear war plans targeted military and industrial targets and not population centers as such, but when you're talking about thousands of nuclear warheads the notion of collateral damage is even sillier than usual. Those of us who weren't nuclear pacifists all devoutly hoped it'd never come to that, but we put our stamp of approval on the policy--the willingness to kill hundreds of millions of people in the abstract was preferable to the risk of using Gandhian tactics against the Soviet Union.

It makes it a little harder to argue that other people shouldn't use terror tactics. Not impossible--just harder.

[Edward_]

Is the threat of terror the same as terror?

[Anderson]

Responding to Bernard in detail would hijack this thread even further, but two points:

That’s a big overstatement, I think. If Hitler could have waved a magic wand in August of 1939 and made all the Jews of Europe disappear would he not have invaded Poland?

Poles & Russians were untermenschen, little better than Jews in the Nazi Chain of Being.

What you describe may have been part of the overall Nazi program, but it was not a component of their military strategy.

Must disagree. The war in the East was a war of extermination from Day One. See, recently, Bessel's little ModLib book on Nazism & War. Think of the Commissar Order, which swept far more broadly than just "commissars."

In fact, there is considerable debate as to exactly when and how the physical destruction of the Jews became a part of the Nazi program. I think that the Allied bombings, on the other hand, were intended as a part of the military effort.

Well, it preceded the invasion of Russia. And maybe we're just talking past each other due to some misunderstanding on my part, but I'd say that the Nazis really *did* see their massacres as part of their "military effort." Though you're certainly to be credited morally if you find that hard to conceive.

As for the "intentions" of the Allies with the fire raids, the less they put on the record about these, the better for their reputation. I'm more familiar with the raids on Japan, due to Frank's excellent Downfall, and we were crystal-clear there that our goal was to kill lots of civilians, on the theory that this would diminish the labor force. If you want to call that "military effort," okay. I call it mass murder of civilians, and I think we knew it at the time; LeMay, in a moment of introspection, acknowledged that he'd be on trial as a war criminal if we lost the war somehow.

ANYWAY: I hope our agreements outweigh our differences. If I have a point to make, it's that accepting that the fire raids *were* wicked would be a big step towards our not repeating the mistake. A mistake which, as Donald Johnson observes, was enshrined in our nuclear strategy for decades.

And I think that people who can accept mass murder of civilians as military "necessity" are likely to be a lot more desensitized to genocides like the Holocaust, so to that extent, comparing the two may be rhetorically useful, even if the two crimes are different in nature. --Gee, glad I went for the "short" response.

[Bernard Yomtov]

Thanks, DaveC.

Sorry to be careless. Just to be clear, Anderson wrote,

Let it be said, if there's any doubt, that I believe the deliberate attempt to wipe out the Jewish people was a much more horrible crime than the fire raids, which were not part of any deliberate effort to wipe out the German or Japanese people.

and I wrote the last sentence - that I did not doubt the belief expressed.

[Anarch]

Anarch I have little inclination to argue with your imagination. Regards.

I'm flattered by the implication but, alas, I haven't the imagination to conjure up such an apparition as you. No, those words I quoted were entirely yours -- as you might have noticed by the italicizations provided in keeping with your wishes:

If it were, it would be easy to quote and highlight… you know maybe even put it in italics or something like that.

That juxtaposed these words form nonsensical incongruities is merely a feature of what you've written, and one you might consider fixing.

If you can't pwn your own strawman, why bother?

Ah, another term bites the deconstructionist dust: quoting verbatim has now become "imagination" and the straw in a "strawman" now means something like "constructed out of one's exact words". It's like watching Humpty Dumpty contort himself through the Looking Glass:

`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'

[You've even got the scornful tone down too! How delightfully serendipitous.]

Thus it is that "capricious motivators" betoken an emphatically "typical response"; "surrender" is a "luxury of strength"; and "quoting" is now a part of one's "imagination". Truly, the English language trembles before your mighty hand.

And all these are from just this one thread.

You're even less likely to answer now, having scurried elsewhere, but I'll ask again: do you intend these combative epigrams to possess actual meaning, or are they simply intended to possess the appearance of meaning while signifying nothing?

[liberal japonicus]

Anarch,
Since 'surrender' (which is equated with flight) is (at least to Mac) one of the 'luxuries of strength', I'm just going to say that I give up...

[Donald Johnson]

Edward--

Is the threat of terror the same as terror?

My answer--no, it isn't, and that's the thin reed one can lean on to condemn the actual use of terror, but the nuclear deterrent meant nothing if we weren't willing to use it. To protect our freedom we were and are willing to kill more people than all the tyrants in history, so it makes it a little hard to lecture people who don't have freedom that they should only employ Gandhian tactics, or failing that, just war tactics that are bound to get them killed if used against an enemy with vastly superior firepower.

A little hard, but not impossible. I don't necessarily let a charge of hypocrisy stand in the way of me telling other people when they are wrong. Terrorists are wrong.
I just don't think that we mainstream Americans are the right ones to be saying so.

[Edward_]

I agree in spirit with your statement, Donald, but if not the US, who?

There is no body or government that meets the criteria your argument calls for.

[Macallan]

You're even less likely to answer now, having scurried elsewhere, but I'll ask again: do you intend these combative epigrams to possess actual meaning, or are they simply intended to possess the appearance of meaning while signifying nothing?

Since the individual I was addressing had no problem discerning my point, and given how tightly wrapped you've become chasing your tail on this, I'd say the question is more your motivation. When your prejudice and animus starts to affect your reading and spurs a need to ferret out the worst possible spin of what you read, then maybe its time for a break.

This sort of hostile attempt to manufacture some tiny irrelevant point makes the comment sections here a bit of cesspool. It happens all too frequently. If you find me so distasteful and infuriating then perhaps it would be best to ignore my comments completely.* Parsing this long and hard to argue such a nit seems rather strange to me. Maybe you're working this hard to convince yourself. Either way, I don't see the point, or why I should defend or argue your mischaracterization. Total waste of everybody's time.

*You may not have to worry about it, as I'm finding this sort of nonsense affecting the signal to noise ratio to the level where it isn't worth the effort. Most commentators seem to want an echo chamber, and I imagine they'll get it.

[ral]

Anarch, I think I mentioned before, the entire English language has become shrill.

Naturally, this leads to confusing discourse.

No one seems to have pointed out that "fight or flight" is a reflexive biological response to a threatening stimulus. It does not involve conscious thought. One hopes that at least some reasoning would be involved in making decisions about modern warfare, considering the heavy cost.

[liberal japonicus]

Since the individual I was addressing had no problem discerning my point, and given how tightly wrapped you've become chasing your tail on this, I'd say the question is more your motivation.

If I am the person you were addressing (I don't want to assume it), I have my own discernment of your point, but I don't think you would like it very much. I didn't (and still don't) appreciate you accusing me of fabricating some illusory point from what you wrote, but life is too short to worry about that, especially since I perceive that it wouldn't make one whit of difference to you if I were upset. In fact, the reason I phrased it the way I did was to give you some room to gracefully retreat. I agree completely with what Anarch has pointed out, and, at the risk of being the recipient of the mother of all Carnaks, I'd suggest that the fact that you denigrate the notion of flight so much not only represents an inability to realize that victory comes in many forms, but indicates that you don't really understand the source of true strength. In fact, I would suggest that it is a general tendency in current "conservative" thought (the quotations are to suggest that if anyone feels that the hat does not fit, don't stick your head in it) to believe that victory must always be attained by crushing one's opponents (Karl Rove's overheard comment about blanking Gore like he's never been blanked before comes to mind) The idea that negotiating is appeasement or surrender is precisely what you suggested and when called on it (obliquely, so as to avoid precisely the kind of crap you profess to abhor) you squirm and thrash about in attempt to explain surrender as something done from a position of strength. Hence my rather sarcastic reply, which you take to mean that I understand your point.

I would have left this alone, but you seem to be invoking some agreement on my part to score points on Anarch, an agreement I certainly do not share. If you truly don't understand this, perhaps you should surrender, serene in the notion that you are doing it from a position of strength. (Just in case you misundertand, that last sentence is sarcastic. It means that I don't really think surrender is done from a position of strength, and that you are fooling yourself)

[Macallan]

lj I wasn't referring to you at all.

[liberal japonicus]

And now appearing at ObWi, Flem Snopes from William Faulkner's _Spotted Horses_. “A little sweetening for the chaps,” he says...

[Anarch]

When your prejudice and animus starts to affect your reading and spurs a need to ferret out the worst possible spin of what you read, then maybe its time for a break.

I'm not "ferreting" anything -- heck, I haven't even pulled citations from another thread yet! -- nor am I "spinning". I cited your comments verbatim. Through juxtaposition, I pointed out their inconsistencies and the way in which you seemed to be redefining terms with gay abandon. I noted the frequency with which this occurred. I then asked if this was intentional. The only way to possess less "spin" would be for me to literally echo everything you say.

I'm unsurprised that you're not happy with the result. I wouldn't be either. The fault, however, is entirely with what you've written: you've contradicted yourself (or at least common English usage) at every turn. I have suggested that you rectify this; you're free to ignore the advice, of course, but it will only serve to ruin what credibility you have left.

If you find me so distasteful and infuriating then perhaps it would be best to ignore my comments completely.

Why? Assuming, arguendo, that I find you distasteful and infuriating, surely the best response would be to counter such errant nonsense at every opportunity so as to prevent its spread.

Parsing this long and hard to argue such a nit seems rather strange to me.

If you regard the fact that English words have meanings over which you run rampant; the fact that you frequently contradict yourself and sneer at those who point this out; the fact you rarely take an express position -- though challenging and occasionally deriding others for theirs -- and, when you do, what you profess to believe seems infinitely malleable; if you regard all these as "nits" then yes, I don't doubt that my responses strike you as rather strange. And I'm perfectly willing to live with that.

The real question is: are you?

Either way, I don't see the point, or why I should defend or argue your mischaracterization.

As to the point, see above. As to "mischaracterization", I've done nothing but give you back your own words. If you find that a mischaracterization, I'd suggest suing your fingers for slander.

[Anarch]

Oh, and btw?

Most commentators seem to want an echo chamber, and I imagine they'll get it.

Karnak.

[votermom]

No one seems to have pointed out that "fight or flight" is a reflexive biological response to a threatening stimulus. It does not involve conscious thought. One hopes that at least some reasoning would be involved in making decisions about modern warfare, considering the heavy cost.

I always remember a real-estate seminar that hammered again and again that the decision to buy (a house) is an emotional one. All one had to do is provide the desire and the rationalizations to support that desire.
It's probably like that in everything. The important decisions are based on emotions, whether we admit it or not. The emotions stem from deeply ingrained "scripts" or "values" (depending on who you talk to).
Ironically, teh more we acknowledge this, the more we are able to allow for the emotion and the more we can move towards rational decision-making.
Put another way -- intellect is both logic and emotion.

[ral]

Ironically, t[he] more we acknowledge this, the more we are able to allow for the emotion and the more we can move towards rational decision-making.

Yes, I think this ties into lj's point about "true strength." I would say that true strength is restraint and care, using force only when absolutely necessary and only the minimum required. Such restraint requires emotions that have been tempered (not suppressed or denied, but fully experienced).

Soon we will have to ask that this thread be moved to "not yet a Buddha."

[Tinker]

It looks like we aren't doing such a good job at killing after all.

http://www.iq.undp.org/ILCS/overview.htm