[Peace-discuss] Spat on?

[Karen Medina]

Dear Mort,

You bring up good points. I'll try to address them as 
follows: guilt by volunteering to do wrong; the guilty not 
being victims; no nobility in being part of aggression; 
should the Germans have cheered the SS; and Hiroshima haunts 
us.

I think a lot of my answers will center around my philosophy 
of human nature, so I'll start with explaining it just a bit. 
I believe that very few human beings are truly evil. I think 
we make a lot of mistakes in trying to figure out what is 
good and what is bad. Some mistakes are worse than others. 
When we make a mistake, recovering from that mistake and 
going on to never make it again is really hard -- painful. It 
requires a lot of reflection, analysis, and most that we 
admit to ourselves that we were wrong. We become more evil 
every time we lie to ourselves. 

Guilt by volunteering to do wrong:
Yes. Many of the people who go in to the military do not 
realize that they are being lied to. And admittedly, some 
enjoy the opportunity to be cruel and violent. Most don't. 
Are they all guilty? Is ignorance a legitimate excuse? Of 
course it is not. But if they are ever to recognize their 
guilt and then to recover from it, they are going to need 
opportunities to do so. If your child ever made a mistake, 
you would still be glad when they returned alive.

The guilty not being victims:
One can be guilty and still a victim.

No nobility in being part of aggression:
We all make mistakes in assuming that the use of force or 
power is more efficient in accomplishing our goals. 
Recovering from those mistakes is what is important.

Should the Germans have cheered the SS:
Not cheered. Welcoming them and cheering them are two 
different things. 

Hiroshima haunts us.
Iraq and Afghanistan will eventually haunt all of us. Right 
now it haunts at least 60% of us. 

At the township meeting the other night, there were people 
who think we should have stayed in Vietnam. They bought in to 
a way of thinking. And in order to live with themselves, they 
continue to buy in to it. I think, if they had felt less 
defensive about all of it, they would be more likely to open 
up to the possibility that they were wrong all along. 

To summarize, I think at least one member of the returning 
troops will be ready to recover. But an aggressive presence 
on our part will not force them to it any faster. 

-karen medina

---- Original message ----
>Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2006 22:19:31 -0500
>From: "Morton K. Brussel" <brussel4 at insightbb.com>  
>Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Spat on?  
>To: Bob Illyes <illyes at uiuc.edu>
>Cc: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>
>Pardon my intemperance, but to say that the soldiers are 
victims  ignores what they do, and what they have done, not 
only in Iraq but  in Afghanistan, and in their bases 
threatening war wherever the U.S.  president decides. They 
are in effect pawns, but willing pawns ab  initio, of U.S. 
policy. They are agents of aggression. They have  defended 
nothing except their status. Many have been barbaric in  
>their actions. Why welcome anyone back who kills and wounds  
or who  has wreaked havoc for no good reason? It is perverse 
to say that they  are victims, save if they were forced to so 
act. They had no rightful  business there. In effect, 
whatever these soldiers signed up for,  many unwittingly no 
doubt, they are simply put hired killers (of  course in 
defense of democracy and our national interests). In  
>peacetime, their duty may be relatively benign, but in the 
wars we  create, it's another story. It seems to me that 
there is a lot  fawning nonsense going around about our noble 
troops. They are not  more noble than anyone else, and I see 
no special reason to cheer  them as they return, except as a 
political--tactical-- gesture.  
>Ignorance has no nobility. Should the Germans in WWII have 
cheered  the SS when they returned from the front, or from 
Auchwitz? On a  moral plane it doesn't make sense.
>
>One has to consider these guys case by case, and I do not 
know  anything about their cases.
>
>I am definitely opposed to putting the military on a 
pedestal. That  is part of the sickness of society. Too many 
military heroes!
>
>Of course, they are not all the same. There are good eggs 
and bad  eggs. There are those that learned something about 
the horrors of  war, and those that disregard them or 
perpetuate them. The latter  populate much of our Amercan 
Legions or VFW's. There are no doubt  some heros, like the 
guy who stopped some of the massacre at Mai Lai  in Vietnam. 
But there are also those that partook in the blood letting.
>
>These guy were volunteers. That they volunteered for quality 
of life  or economic reasons is beside the point. If they can 
now admit that  what they were doing was wrong, great, we 
should welcome them in that  sense to our fold, but we should 
not welcome them for simply having  returned home.
>
>If this note is a little bitter, so be it. Our soldiers are 
no  different than any other army's soldiers. It's a tragedy 
to someone  that that they die or are wounded, and it's a 
tragedy that their  participation continues the tragedy.
>
>Our wars since 1945 have not been good ones from a 
humanitarian point  of view. Hiroshima, of the good war, 
still haunts (some of) us.
>
>--mkb