Killas… or maybe not.
Are humans hard-wired to be ruthlessly competitive or supportive of one another?
The behavior of our ape relatives, known as peaceful vegetarians, once bolstered the view that our actions could not be traced to an impulse to dominate. But in the late 1970s, when chimpanzees were discovered to hunt monkeys and kill each other, they became the poster boys for our violent origins and aggressive instinct.
I use the term “boys” on purpose because the theory was all about males without much attention to the females of the species, who just tagged along evolutionarily. It was hard to escape the notion that we are essentially “killer apes” destined to wage war forever…
Steve:
This debate always strikes be as a conflict between the left and right wings of scientism, with both sides ignoring a lot of valid evidence in the quest to push an ideological agenda, and this article is a good example of that. The truth is we are capable of being both “ruthlessly competitive” & “supportive”. The American pioneers were supportive of one another while they ruthlessly competed the Native Americans into genocide. Out species is capable of both empathy and murder, and no amount of evidence for empathy is ever going to cancel out all the murder in our history.
4 October 2009, 4:40 pmJames:
Three books are very instructive:
“The Continuum Concept,” by Jean Liedloff
“The Sociopath Next Door,” by Martha Stout
“Political Ponerology: A Science on The Nature of Evil adjusted for Political Purposes, by Andrew M. Lobaczewski
Much male abuse of women may be traceable to the 4-6% of the population of sociopathic types, added to which are types verging on these. These types are found disproportionately in such hierarchies as the military, politics, and certain types of corporations.
4 October 2009, 9:09 pmStan:
Interesting. I wonder if the sociopathology is a function of the job, as opposed to a type predisposed by some mental/affective defect. That is, does a sociological account give us something different than a medical one? These are slots in society that have developmental tracks, and each of the three you describe — military, politicians, corporate heads — are, by their job descriptions, predators. I was in the military for a long time; and I can’t quite get my head around a medically-defined predisposition to write operations orders or conduct drill and ceremony.
It’s an interesting angle, though. I’d like to hear more about it, just as one of several perspectives. There was that movie a while back where corporate practice was shown to be analagous to the textbook definition of a sociopath. At the very least, this perspective stirs the questions up pretty good.
I’ve become a contradictory curmudgeon about medicine, deeply suspicious of its every axiom, and yet an inveterate pill popper for a host of problems that past medicines, or public health initiatives (DDT, malathion, etc), likely played some determinative role in.
4 October 2009, 9:53 pmSean:
James, you must be the same “James” who posts at Winter Patriot. I recognize the emphasis on sociopathy. I raise the same objection here — it is but a label. It does us no good. Ponerology is another rabbit hole. We can discuss what can be blamed on “evil” or “sociopathy” and all that does is triangulate, externalize, scapegoat.
It takes the human act, and puts it outside the human — blames a trait such as “sociopathy.”
Hervey Cleckley’s supposed landmark work on sociopaths does nothing to explain what causes sociopathy. So it’s just a tool to identify people who can be locked up — as in the movie “Minority Report.” I’m afraid of that eventuality when the focus stays on “evil” or “ponerology” or “sociopathy.”
I prefer to head instead down the road toward where Alice Miller spends her time — examining the origins of anti-social behavior, as they originate in the individual’s life. Miller is wise enough to know that merely blaming “ponerology” or “evil” or “sociopathy” does nothing to help anyone except those who can write books for sale, or those who need labels to cubbyhole people for the possible future use of social control.
Find the ways a human gets treated by his caregivers, by her parents, or by one’s assailants and then you will begin to see what are the sources of “evil,” or “ponerology,” or “sociopathy.” Specific acts are the thing to focus on — not theories, or externalized syndromes.
4 October 2009, 11:35 pmStan:
A few years back, a friend asked me if I’d ever been treated for PTSD. She asked because she genuinely cared, and I took it that way. But on reflection, I realized I had never tried to find out more than what most people think they know about PTSD. So I checked out a book at the library.
One of the things that stuck in my mind was a “symptom” of this “disorder.” Note the medical terms, and the utter lack of agency implied for the “patient.”
The symptom was that the person suffering from PTSD has lost the sense that the world is a safe place.
PTSD is most commonly caused by assaults, especially rape, combat experience, and very bad accidents. If someone has been assaulted, raped, in combat, or in a bad accident, are they to be expected to return to this state of “normalcy, of being “well adjusted,” wherein they believe the world to be a safe place? To me, learning that the world is not a safe place is part of growing up, an acceptance, albeit often traumatic, about the actual state of the world, not a psychiatric disorder.
Now, having said that, some PTSD sufferers, and I believe there are people who are debilitated and out of control with nightmares, hyper-vigilance, and the rest, may benefit from some form of treatment, drugs, counselling, etc., depending on how you describe and measure benefit.
They’re dying out now, but the Europeans who witnessed the worst of WWII, for anyone who’s met them, carry a certain indescribable heaviness about them, as well as a very literal account of the world, life, things that happen. That sadness, however, I cannot count as a disability. It is part of them; and it is a very appropriate affective response to reality imo.
Is the goal of medicine to… what? End pain. End death? These are, of course, preposterous notions. So what is it? Extend some lives? Relieve some suffering? Then the bigger question, how does this actually work? What Illich and others object to, among other things, is how medicine — as a kind of social monopoly — creates pressure to conform to the idea that suffering and death are avoidable… with professional help, of course.
Sufering and death, like birth and joy, are part of life… however you calculate that whole mystery. The old Medieval saying, “be ever mindful of death,” seems hugely appropriate to me, especially in an epoch where we simultaenously deny and manufacture then export suffering and death, purely in the service of power.
I had to look up “ponerology.” Never realized there was such a thing as a “science of evil.”
For me, at least, the concept of sin is far more useful (than Evil), a state of fallen-ness, and one that is as much a collective responsibility as an individual one. Not the itemized sins that some folks can recite, though I have my own list… but all those things that cling to the spirit of malevolence — “having, showing, or arising from intense often vicious ill will, spite, or hatred” — structures and habits and practices that stand between people (individual and collective) and love, beginning with reconciliation.
Extrapolating from that, and personifying that spirit of malevolence in a very Arkansan way, I’ll just call malevolence the devil; and say that when people, structures, or institutions (like the church’s anti-Semitism, as a blinding historical example) begin to name malevolence as an instrument for Good (the opposites of ill will, spite, and hatred), then the situation becomes demonic. The wolf is in sheep’s clothing, or worse, the shepherd’s clothing.
That’s why I can say, anachronistic as it may sound, that unmasking deceit is “casting out demons.” Illich an others say that medicine, education, progress (the religions that displaced Christianity within collapsing Christendom) are idols, demonic inasmuch as they are phenomena that act as deceivers, and deceivers in at the service of power.
But the anthropological interrogations of our origins, as a species, are intensely interesting to me, because this idea that humans are programmed to kill (or not, as Grossman claims) strikes me as a pretty risky claim. Biological horsehit has been used to justify some of the most pernicious popularizations (about gender and race, esp), and Man-the-killer is deployed far more often for that purpose than to claim humans are anti-killers (the Grossman thesis). We thought about this alot during the writing of Sex & War (De and me), and for my own part, I concluded that humans are biolgically determined not to be biologically determined. Culture evolves a jillion times faster than genes. But that period where we emerged into what we biologically are is important because — if we can find out anything about it without emcumbering those findings with ideology — I believe it will tell us we are conditionally free. Existentialism told us that years ago.
Back to the present, we can say with certainty that here we irrevocably are. What are the motives and guidlelines we rely upon for our own practices, individually and collectively? Is there some lodestar of the Good on which we can orient ourselves? If not, then what? Here is where we encounter absurdity, the abyss, infinity, and all that other really scary stuff.
Popular culture now superficializes this fearsome spectacle, throws dirt on it to conceal it, like criminal covering his tracks. Fun is the goal. Fun. Everything else is directed at moments of fun, which are counted up like a miser’s coins and held as a secret reassurance of one’s worth.
5 October 2009, 11:48 amSean:
Stan –
That’s why I can say, anachronistic as it may sound, that unmasking deceit is “casting out demons.” Illich an others say that medicine, education, progress (the religions that displaced Christianity within collapsing Christendom) are idols, demonic inasmuch as they are phenomena that act as deceivers, and deceivers in at the service of power.
Yes indeed!
As to PTSD — I can recall what happened to my mother’s cousin in a before/after comparison of his personality and personhood before he went to fight in Vietnam, and after he returned. I don’t think his “after” persona benefits any from being labelled with PTSD. What I do think is that his experience utterly ruined him for functioning in modern human society. Aside from the constant trembling/shaking that resembled late-stage Parkinson’s, I remember the vacant stare, the way he’d lose his way mid-sentence, the way his sentences were really phrases of often urelated observations or expressions. DIS-integration is what he seemed to embody. He would suddenly decide to visit our family in MD from his home in NJ, and would do things like show up unannounced, parking in the driveway at 2AM and waking us up at 9AM all disheveled and bleary. To take such effects and simply label them as PTSD for categorization, that shows a profound lack of empathy and a distinct unwillingness to help with the existential and psychological traumas he suffered.
5 October 2009, 1:19 pmMichael Anderson:
The Lobaczewski book was written by a group of Polish medical researchers under the Communist system, surreptitiously as the story goes. While it has useful analysis of definitions and causes, one of the things that made me uneasy about it was how they prescribed “treatment”….roughly the equivalent of locking people up and treating them with drugs and therapy…which one could expect from a system where this practice was widespread for people who didn’t follow the rules. Of course, we do that here, to a degree, also. He did praise the great majority of humans who he said were endowed with “common sense”, and the ability to live peaceful, cooperative, fruitful and happy lives, though.
I do think certain personality types CAN be attracted to certain areas, however, and followers can be made…the cult of personality (i.e. the spirit of Satan) and adherence to the system (that, too–S.O.S.) can be strong causal agents.
5 October 2009, 1:50 pmm.c.:
I borrowed this from Doonesbury the cartoon but it’s good. Jesus got along with everyone, even the Roman occupationists. He only lost his cool when it came to the Money Changers.
On the topic of science having a definition/value factor for everything in a society, I bet the Apartheid South African govt. had plenty of PhD’s in high office with plenty of crackpot theories about racial superiority and the like. The pluralistic ballot box & jury box that can judge both the facts and the law is the democratic medicine to too many bean counter minds.
5 October 2009, 3:06 pmMichael Anderson:
I don’t like Michael Moore (it’s his approach more than the subject matter), but what is this….Sociopathic? Predatory? Diabolical? Perhaps all of the above? Revelations indeed.
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/143064/michael_moore%27s_expose_of_%27dead_peasant%27_insurance_policies_too_shocking_even_for_good_morning_america_to_ignore
5 October 2009, 5:20 pmStan:
Toni Morrison said something that stuck with me, probably out of context by now: that being the master, or the oppressor, causes the personality to become fragmented. Probably more complicated still for soldiers, who are limited-masters in the most brutal settings, and virtual slaves to the chain-of-command 24-7. Something related to child abuse going generational. I really believe that the existential trauma you point to, Sean, is touchable not by medicine or “treatments,” but by love alone; and lacking that, people do not heal. They die disintegrated, as you say.
5 October 2009, 5:24 pm(Boer) Tom:
To M.C.: The irony of the Apartheid regime is that they often published very good research, e.g. there was a paper that explained that a big part of the reason black primary and secondary students did poorly in the Bantustans in geometry was that they tend to live in structures that did not have the typical ‘modern’ triple-orthogonal plane surface geometry (walls and floors that are flat and 90 degrees to each other), but rather roughly circular mud-wall structures, so that the idea of a Cartesian geometry was somewhat distant. Of course, the poor nature of the education system and the undertraining of teachers also played their parts. Another example may explain: The apartheid government would add disclaimers to their IQ tests of SA blacks to the effect that the students hardly understood the language in which the test was given. It was a question of extracting resources and labour, and having a population (my ethnic group, and a majority of SA English) supporting them for receiving the goods. In fact, their propaganda relied mainly on ‘separate development’, and the intellectuals behind the DET considered themselves quite liberal, e.g. rejecting scientific racism in the 1920s…
5 October 2009, 7:07 pmSean:
Yes, Stan, for sure. Love, empathy, understanding, patience, acceptance. Each of us can discern what we did that was morally wrong. We know it. The only time I feel inclined to help point out wrongs in a personal setting is when the person seems to show no knowledge or understanding of what he/she did. In such cases I then wonder, did he never learn empathy? did she have the empathy beaten out of her traumatically? What explains this perspective, this raw selfishness?
5 October 2009, 11:35 pmStan:
In Haiti, they teach in French in the schools, a foreign language to the vast majority of the population. Their literacy rate is still near 30% or less. The rich, of course, raise their kids to speak French and Creole at home.
Education.
6 October 2009, 5:53 amJames:
Sean: I’m not familiar with Winter Patriot. Different James.
6 October 2009, 1:45 pmJames:
The essential thing I get out of the volumes on sociopathy is the thesis that a small but telling X% of the population is not well-endowed with a conscience, a capacity for empathy, the realization that “you” are just as much an “I” as I am. Obviously there is a range of aptitude–or lack thereof. It may also be that this is simply a predisposition that is actualized to a greater or lesser degree by circumstances: upbringing, formative experiences, profession, etc.
The important point, I think, is simply the existence of the “actualized” type within society, and how this type tends to behave and why. I think we have all run into these sorts of people at one time or another in our lives, although they are very good at masking their lack of conscience. They are consummate actors, and what they fake best is sincerity. Politics is a wonderful place for them.
As for Liedloff’s book, it is quite different: the experiences of a woman among an Amazon tribe. It’s largely about how they rear children–especially during the beginning stages of life) and the societal implications.
6 October 2009, 2:00 pm(Boer) Tom:
To Stan:
6 October 2009, 2:32 pmIt is a general problem in western and Bantu (central and southern) Africa: Most of the governments prefer to teach either in English, French or Portuguese – in Botswana though, Tswana and sometimes even Nama is used (at least informally) in the class room, which is probably why they do great – the ANC has dragged its feet in setting up RSA Bantu-languages curricula, and even many parents imagine that their children will do better if they are educated in one of the three. Only the Congos had meaningful education in an African language, and even there, it was the dominance of said language (kiKongo).
Richard:
“for my own part, I concluded that humans are biolgically determined not to be biologically determined. Culture evolves a jillion times faster than genes. But that period where we emerged into what we biologically are is important because — if we can find out anything about it without emcumbering those findings with ideology — I believe it will tell us we are conditionally free.”
I think you are right, except that I think it’s the somewhat later period when we became “culturally” human that makes the difference, that makes us “conditionally free” and not biologically determined. An influential book on my thinking on this topic is Blood Relations: Menstruation and the Origins of Culture by Chris Knight, a Marxist anthropologist heavily influenced by feminism. I wrote about this book on my own blog a couple of years back: http://yolacrary.blogspot.com/2007/07/becoming-human.html
(In a more recent post concerning Freud, I link in the final paragraph to other excerpts or dicussions of Knight’s work, if anyone’s interested.
http://yolacrary.blogspot.com/2009/09/masters-of-suspicion.html
)
All too often we look to how the other primates are as clues to our own behavior. And while that’s not completely invalid, what needs to be explained is how we’re different, so assuming that earlier humans were like chimps misses the point, it seems to me.
6 October 2009, 3:19 pmJames:
Criminal behavior in credit markets (video of a presentation at the Hammer Institute):
The Great American Bank Robbery
http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com/2009/08/great-american-bank-robbery.html
6 October 2009, 3:54 pmCurt Kastens:
…..Unmasking deceit equals casting out demons…..the only thing is that when you cast out these demons the souls that they come out from our usually so mentally inflexible they think that the demon was cast out of someone else and the demon just goes right back where it came from. So many people think that the US military actually protects them from someone it is hard to phantom. I wrote this long long letter to “America’s First Sergent” yesterday. It was like my salvos hit the sides of Old Ironsides and just bounced right off. Of course I could not have expected anything better. I have been at this game long enough to know that progress is made one neuron at a time. That is not going to cut it though. We need to invent a jackhammer that can chisel away at the Maginot lines of peoples minds. Do not look to me. I am not a mechanical engineer.
6 October 2009, 5:30 pmSandy:
Re: “Jesus got along with everyone, even the Roman occupationists. He only lost his cool when it came to the Money Changers.”
Jesus didn’t “lose his cool.” I resent this dreadful mentality for whom nothing whatever is sacred, on the supposition that “humor” is the loftiest human value, even when it opens the door to flagrant unintelligence, or when it supposedly is serving a good purpose–actually inferior to the thing being desacralized.
Jesus was justifiably angry at money changer in the temple–the location is an important datum here! Anger on the part of being like Jesus cannot be qualified as “losing” anything.
If you are not a Christian of any sort, that is your choice, but at least please respect those who are, and for whom Jesus is not just anybody.
If you are indignant at an injustice or a crime, are you “losing” it. Or do you smile serenely at it?
6 October 2009, 5:56 pmJames:
Another interesting aspect of human nature was revealed by the well-known Milgram-Stanford experiment. Back in 2007, electricpolitics.com conducted a very interesting interview with the expert on this, Dr. Robt. Altemeyer
http://www.electricpolitics.com/podcast/2007/10/its_a_mad_mad_mad_milgram_worl.html (the missing “d” in “world” is correct).
Here is the blurb on the interview:
“In the 18th century elites predominated among the politically active. So it was natural for the founding fathers to worry mainly about faction while blissfully overlooking fanaticism or the problems of followership. Given the 20th century experience with authoritarian rule one wonders, however, whether contemporary government structures or ideas about democracy suffice. Clearly, for exactly the wrong reasons, the Cheney-Bush administration thinks not. We really must get into the details of who’s doing what to us (and why) if we wish to avoid terminal difficulties. For that I turn to a pioneer in the study of authoritarianism, Dr. Bob Altemeyer, who frames the problem in an accessible way — please see his recent e-book (PDF) — yet communicates a most vexing, profound message: a small, energetic, organized minority that’s impervious to reason will always do harm to everybody else. Given the influence to match their ambition they will wreck the planet. It’s a critically important insight. The question (for which I don’t have an answer) should be what to do about them.”
As you can see by the parentheses, there’s a free book PDF available there too.
As with the issue of sociopathy, what I get out of this, among other things, is that there are significant somewhat “deviant” minorities. Their de facto complementarity is interesting.
7 October 2009, 12:24 amm.c.:
The Doonesbury clip is from May 31, 2009. You can find Doonesbury on Google them use the Archive tab to find it.
The daughter says Jesus is “a humble dude who’s mellow to everyone-even the Romans. He only really snaps once, right?” Her Mom asks who and the girl responds, “The Money-Lenders.”
Losing his cool & Money-Changers were my interpretations from memory. Sorry….
7 October 2009, 3:32 pmSean:
James, sorry for confusing you with the fellow who posts at Winter Patriot. It was a unique coincidence, because *that* James has spent a fair amount of time writing over the past 6 months or so about sociopaths, evil, and criminal behavior. He was particularly emphatic about the Hervey Cleckley book written on “sociopaths” and tying the themes of sociopathy, evil and criminal behavior together with problems in the American federal government’s domestic and foreign policies. While I don’t doubt that someone can be labelled as an evil, criminal sociopath, I don’t see what that labelling does for us. The label and its underlying scope of “definition” are vague and broad enough to be useful for imprisoning just about anyone for just about any reason. It all depends on what gets defined as socially acceptable. As I said in an earlier comment, it could become the foundation for a “anticipatory law enforcement” culture like that shown in the movie Minority Report.
7 October 2009, 3:51 pmJames:
That is a weird coincidence. On other hand, James is a very common name. The coincidence would be really remarkable if we’d shared unusual names. I am not an expert in sociopathy–or for that matter, in any “-pathy,” however. Just another amateur trying to comprehend the world. What I’ve found useful about the little I know about all this is that it makes sense of certain things and thus also of certain people–particularly those I’ve had concrete contact with. The relative absence of conscience, on the one hand, and the relative ease with which some people will ditch their conscience in favor of authority explains–at least to some degree–many a human phenomenon.
8 October 2009, 12:05 pmHenry:
I must say I agree with Sandy. The sort of language quoted from Doonesbury is really awful. One of the least attractive traits of American culture is the vulgar desire to bring lofty things down to a lower–or lowest–common denominator, where they are inevitably ruined. This has often been noted by others. One of the beautiful aspects of the American Indian was their strong sense of the sacred, even regarding the smallest things–all of which come from the Great Spirit. It would not cross their minds to refer to sacred matter in that sort of trite, and basically stupid language–stupid because it attests to people who don’t penetrate to the realities in question.
8 October 2009, 10:22 pmSean:
James, I agree completely with the observation on the apparent lack of a holistic, humane conscience in some public figures. I’m not saying it’s not a problem. I’m saying that using the label of sociopathy as a reason to prosecute, imprison or otherwise punish these people is not the best course of action. It leaves us open to what is defined as “sociopath” and it’s highly possible to see dissent from one’s government as sociopathic, if “socio-” is construed narrowly as the government being a proxy for all of society. It’s not an illogical argument, as an abstract, to suggest that the government is a proxy for all of society. So you can see the problems we create, eh?
8 October 2009, 11:23 pm(Boer) Tom:
I wanted to post about the (probably ANC directed) neo-liberal violence against the shanty movements, but I guess I should put it in the context of this piece first. Structural violence: Please read Raul Hilberg’s “The Destruction of the European Jews” (I wanted to mention it earlier, but not while the Israel/Abbas abhorrent tactics were being exposed), especially volume II – aside from some vicious collaborators (Iron Guard, Ushtasha), most of the individual killing operations were done by disparate entities (various smaller collaborator units, SS (units), German Army (units) etc) – only the (enthusiastic) bureaucracy was consistently involved, and they generally proved to be most important to the successful implementation of the killing (they were generally most divorced from it): The game was to define the opponent, separate them from the general population, and only then get really nasty (dispossession, slave labour and “deportation,” i.e. killing centres). The bureaucrats were quite happy to avoid too direct participation: Eichmann is said to have fainted upon witnessing a massacre by a German unit. (He was perfectly happy to do some song and dance to obtain the cooperation of the Hungarian Jews, and was orchestrating their killing within a month afterwards.)
Perhaps it is uncomfortable to bring in the Jewish destruction actions, but they serve as an accurate template for repressive governmental actions, irrespective of the amount of murder that is performed: Successful state actions involving murder and repression can to some extent work on the basis of hatred and enemising, but that tends to be self-limiting – a repeated problem for e.g. Eichmann – reading Agents of Repression (Ward Churchill) afterward makes much more sense – a city police officer may murder once in a while, but that is not sufficient for effective repression – a broader program is needed, and hence the FBI’s occasional prodding of city police departments, and instigation of infighting inside oppositional movements. Of course, as Churchill points out, the FBI developed specialists to undermine such movements, an insight which makes much more sense after reading Hilberg – the German bureaucracy also developed such specialists in the destruction program – destroying movements and ethnic groups are not simple undertakings, even if it seems effortless to us.
9 October 2009, 12:46 pmJames:
Sean: Of course. I agree with your points completely. I was just putting in what I thought was interesting material for the general discussion–more grist for the mill–but certainly not proposing legislative measures.
9 October 2009, 4:16 pmJames:
I forgot about Jim Craven’s article, which appeared back in ’07:
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Capitalism: A System Run By and For Psychopaths
http://www.aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/
9 October 2009, 6:53 pmMichael Anderson:
Am recommending a book, “The Peacemaker” by my friend Brenda Duffey. Historical fiction, using as a starting point the Iroquois Confederacy “Law of Peace”, and set against the background of American history, with significant import given to the Quaker faith, as to being a white analog to the Indian Law of Peace. Fiction, with lessons to learn…
12 October 2009, 3:04 pmMichael Anderson:
Didn’t know quite where to put this link, but it’s a nice short excerpt on “Whiteness”…
“Clean, Safe and High-Value” Neighborhoods Are Nice Ways of Saying “White” Without Bringing Race into It
By Rich Benjamin, Hyperion Books
Posted on October 16, 2009, Printed on October 17, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143337/
The following is an excerpt from Searching for Whitopia by Rich Benjamin (Hyperion, 2009).
In twenty-first-century America, how do so many Whitopias hatch and flourish?
A few white readers may protest that their neighborhood’s appeal has nothing to do with its racial composition. The homogeneity of where they live is “irrelevant” or “coincidental,” they say. But divorcing a Whitopia’s appeal from its predominantly white composition is like extracting the marshmallow from the s’more. Impossible. Each is fundamental to the other.
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/143337
17 October 2009, 1:52 pmCurt Kastens:
German TV is at this very moment showing a program called War Made Easy. It is about how the US government and media manipulate the US public rather than inform the American people to support US aggression World Wide.
6 November 2009, 9:12 amIt is a truthful and very anti american government film. I am surprised that it is being shown on a government owned channel. I guess it would be even more surprising if it were on a corporate channel. I am not going to watch the whole thing however. It is too depressing to see how the truth in America is ignored.
Curt Kastens:
Woow, no the German TV is showing a program about a massacre at a bridge near No Gun Ri in South Korea. The program alledges that members of the US 7th Calvary Regiment shot hundreds of civilain Korean refugees at this bridge in 1950, and that this event was kept secret for more than 50 years. The anti american tone of these programs is just appalling isn’t it? Why at 4pm local time a child might actually see part of this program before the channel is changed to something that children are more likely to watch.
6 November 2009, 10:28 amIn 2001, when I worked as a civilian guard at a US military installation, I conducted an experiment. I asked many of the soldiers whose IDs I was checking, at times there was no line of course, what they would do in the following situation. They are a platoon sergeant or platoon leader that has recieved orders to stop advance elements of an enemy force from crossing a bridge. When the unit arrives at the bridge there are streams of refugees streaming across the bridge but after 15 minutes enemy reconnisence troops begin making their way on foot across the bridge. These soldiers are not using any specific refugee for cover but are taking advantage of the situation to use the refugees as cover in a general sense. Would you as the platoon sergeant order your solders to open fire on the bridge with all of their weapons in order to stop the advance enemy elements from crossing the bridge. In all I asked about 20-25 soldiers at random this question. About 2 out of 3 said that they would open fire on the bridge. The remainder said that there would have to be some attempt to separate the civilians from the enemy combantants or at least fire in a very limited manner in an attempt to limit civilian casualties. My experiment was actually similar to what happened on this bridge in Korea. Only the real life history is less gray is because the refugees were deliberately killed because it was feared that enemy agents could be mixed in with the refugees.
I would agree that if an enemy soldier is explicitly using a civilian as a shield and advancing on your position a person is justified in shooting the at the soldier despite the risk to the civilian because responsibility for that death goes on the enemy soldier.
What if an enemy soldier is using a civiilian as a shield to retreat? In a strict sense I think it is probably moral to fire on the soldier but I am not sure that I would. I am glad that I have never been put in that position.