Hacker News Reader

(warning: anecdote)

I knew a guy who joined the US Marines and talked about how he wanted to "shoot towel heads." I don't believe that the US armed forces are purely virtuous at the top, bottom, or in between levels. There likely is a non-zero number of service men/women who get some sort of sick joy out of murdering non-Americans.

View on HN

I heard they made a movie about that guy: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2179136/

So your saying that the whole United States Armed Forces is non virtuous, based on one guy you knew? This is a huge claim.

That's literally not what he said at all - he said "a non-zero number", meaning (i'm assuming here) an amount that exists but is difficult to quantify, yet not so low as to be completely ignored.

"I don't believe that the US armed forces are purely virtuous at the top, bottom, or in between levels.". I think the non-zero number could be upwards in the positive millions, according to this claim.

My tone above is clearly one of doubt, thus saying "just like there are some residents of middle eastern nations that want to kill American civilians, there are some Americans who want to kill middle eastern civilians."

> I don't believe that [they] are purely virtuous

The only claim I'm making is that there are members of the US military at all levels that don't have God-Like Perfect Morality.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com