Sick insurgents

[capsulecorpjx]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/...ain/index.html

Iraqi insurgents used two children as a cover to get through a checkpoint in Baghdad and then blew up the car while the kids were still inside, a U.S. general said Tuesday.

Two adults jumped from the car, leaving the children in the back. Moments later, the car exploded, witnesses said.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Considering that they are targeting people almost at random, this doesn't really seem so different from any of their other actions.

However, I seem to remember a thread on here where people were saying it was crazy to search people randomly at the airport. The idea was that you should profile, rather than search randomly because certain types of people are more likely to be dangerous. I held the position that if you profile, you will show people that certain types of people are not examined, which creates a hole in the security that people will exploit. The point of this article is that the terrorists are actually looking for us to overlook some segment of the population. If we stop looking so closely at people just because they have kids with them, somebody will surely use the kids for bad purposes....and now they have.

[nemaroller]

Shaggy = smart.

[DeadEyes]

Sick Americans use kid for gratification.
war shows us what some people will do given the chance, rape torture kill.
It's not confined to one side like just insurgents or just U.S. troops, Israeli troops use kids as shields when entering houses (illegal now but still done).
Reading the news can be so depressing there really isn't much hope for humanity.

[moeur]

war shows us what some people will do given the chance, rape torture kill.

So, are you saying that if there were no war there would be no rape, torture or murder?

[Shaggy Hiker]

No, the point is that war can let loose behavior in people that they would otherwise not exhibit simply because war is inherently dehumanizing.

[DeadEyes]

No, the point is that war can let loose behavior in people that they would otherwise not exhibit simply because war is inherently dehumanizing.

What he said.

[moeur]

That can certainly happen, but we have no evidence that this was the case here. There are rapists and murderers in all levels of society including the military.

The high level of discipline in the military helps to prevent the normal people from degenerating into criminals. Rapists and murderers however, can simply take advantage of the opportunities presented by battle conditions to commit their crimes.

The situation we saw at the abu ghraib prison was a clear example of the lack of discipline allowing relatively normal individuals to degenerate into criminals. I don’t think that this story fits that template.

[DeadEyes]

Yes rapist and murders exist everywhere, but I'm not to sure that the training/discipline in the army(any army), does prevent people from degenerating into criminials. What I think it does is place them in a group above everyone else. I'm thinking of the Japanese in WW2 and the "comfort girls" aka rape factories they had. Well disciplined normal people doing things that would never have occured to most of them had it not been for the war.
With regard to Abu Graib, I am of the belief (no proof) that they were operating under the tacit approval of the superiors. That it was not a case of a few rogue elements going too far.

[Xanith]

With regard to Abu Graib, I am of the belief (no proof) that they were operating under the tacit approval of the superiors. That it was not a case of a few rogue elements going too far.

There were more prisons than just Abu Graib being run by the US Military in Iraq. If this was indeed a policy of the US military then why were their no such incidents at the other prisons inside Iraq? The prison system in Iraq was looked at extensively after the charges at Abu Graib were made, why were there not more charges brought or other incidents found at other prisons?

Also can you tell me why you believe this was ordered by superiors (without any proof)? Is it just you believe the US Military (or US in general) is evil, or is it something else? Just curious.

X

[moeur]

I'm thinking of the Japanese in WW2 and the "comfort girls" aka rape factories they had.

The difference here is that the Japanese military superiors condoned the behavior; it was not against military policy.

[Shaggy Hiker]

There were more prisons than just Abu Graib being run by the US Military in Iraq. If this was indeed a policy of the US military then why were their no such incidents at the other prisons inside Iraq? The prison system in Iraq was looked at extensively after the charges at Abu Graib were made, why were there not more charges brought or other incidents found at other prisons?

Also can you tell me why you believe this was ordered by superiors (without any proof)? Is it just you believe the US Military (or US in general) is evil, or is it something else? Just curious.

X

I don't have any opinion as to whether there were people higher up involved. There didn't need to be, but there were people "higher up" who did benefit from this behavior. If you maintain plausible deniability, is that really moral? Don't know if such occured.

Other incidents were reported at other places, from Gitmo to Afghanistan. Unlike Abu Ghraib, these other incidents lacked photos, so unless somebody died, it was just he said/she said kind of stuff. Of course, a few people did die, such as that guy smothered in a sleeping bag.

However, I would say that argues somewhat against it being systematic, as an act directed by a superior would show different consistent patterns between locations. The individual character. In the abscence of that, you come back to those disturbing psychology studies, such as the Stanford Prison Experiment. Put people in those situations, and as far as we can tell, most people, unless they are aware of the potential, or trained against it, may well act the same way.

[DeadEyes]

Also can you tell me why you believe this was ordered by superiors (without any proof)? Is it just you believe the US Military (or US in general) is evil, or is it something else? Just curious.

X

I never said it was ordered, I think it happened and superiors turned a blind eye, which is the same as saying ok go ahead. Soliders are trained to follow orders and I don't think they would be so quick to go against their superiors. In the middle of a battlefield things would be different but not I think in a confined regimented area like a prison.
Do I think the US is evil? No. I don't like the foreign policy, or the idea of spreading democracy by force. It also made me dispair to hear Bush say the same lies about Iraq that Reagan used about Nicaragua, and to realise people haven't learned anything.
Do I think the US military is evil? No but they do seem to shot themselves in the foot as much as they shoot innocent people in the head, probably no more than any other army would. But then not many armies are as active as they are.

[FunkyDexter]

There was a very interesting documentary on over the weekend that feeds into this. It basically argued that there were two types of freedom, positive and negative.

Positive is where the powers that be attempt to enforce a model of freedom on the populace starting from the assumption that they know what is best for the people. This starts as a benign process but inevitably transforms into totalitarianism as individuals have different ideas of what they want their 'freedom' to mean and a common vision must therefore be enforced from the centre. An example of this would be post revolutionary pre Stalinist Russia.

Negative is where the powers that be sit back and say, 'we don't know what's right for you, you decide'. Market forces direct the nation for the good of all. This is the model adopted in the West.

The point where it feeds into this discussion is that we in the West have been increasingly shifting from Negative to Positive Freedom. We are trying to enforce our ideals of what freedom means onto the rest of the world and have been doing so increasingly for the last 50 years. When we meet opposition to that enforcement we increasingly turn to the sort of measures used by 'Positively Free' nations: Detention without trial, removal of habius corpus, water-boarding (aka torture) etc. And once the centre begins to exercise such measures it is inevitable that individuals on the ground will follow suit, often in a more extreme fashion.