Comment by Nrsolis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Nrsolis | Hacker News Reader

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I'm not going to defend war crimes.

What I'm going to say is that war is the worst possible display of inhumanity you're ever likely to imagine in your darkest nightmares.

I have several friends who have all served in elite military units. I have a photo of myself with Dick Marcinko from a few years ago. I've never served with any of them but I've spent good time with them and talked.

The reality of war is so horrible and dehumanizing that many never fully recover. I have a short list of friends that cannot sleep without chemical aid. One friend drank not a sip of water for over two years, instead drinking himself to a state of numbness until he was able to finally recover. He's killed many many men.

So I'm going to temper my own judgement of these men's actions with the knowledge that we train, equip, and expect these men to plan murder for our benefit. We expect them to inspire fear. And we send them into far off lands, away from their homes and loved ones, expose them to unimaginable cruelty to the point where their psyche is forever scarred, and then forget about that sacrifice once they've destroyed enough of themselves and others to satisfy us.

We command these men to look into the abyss and forget just how much the abyss is staring back into them.

I understand and agree with everything you said.

What are my options, as a regular citizen, to exclude myself from this "we?"

I don't want to send men to such destiny and I do believe that in 9 out of 10 cases only economic elites benefit from all this destruction, dehumanizations and suffering.

I never agreed to send them, but I do share the responsibility, expenses and repercussions / guilt.

What are my options?

Move to a country with no army

There aren't any of those left, sadly.

There are a number of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_without_arme...

And they have relied on treaties with, or protection by proxy from a former colonizer or nearby superpower. In other words, they rely on others for defense.

Here is the absolute truth:

The human race is a brutal and tribal species. The capacity to do horrible things in the name of our own survival, rage, hatred, jealousy, and fear means that no society ever created by men can escape war.

It's also why those that have seen war and it's cost are the best among us to speak of its horrors. The little-known secret is that the USA's biggest doves work at the Pentagon.

I have more details, sourced from someone who is also a writer (as well as a retired special operator) and broke stories like this as part of his work as a journalist, but I'm not going to share those stories here. What was done to the bodies of our servicemen who died on that ridge would leave you speechless.

If it had been done to one of your family, you'd almost assuredly do the same to them.

Very few of us will ever encounter the brutal murder of one who is close to them. As much as I'd like to believe in the better nature of men, I'm also no fool to believe that vengeful rage will never enter their heart.

Once these men knew who they were dealing with, it was "eye for an eye." They cared little if it damned them to hell.

> What are my options?

Activism.

I'd still like to think that there is a real chance of Tony Blair being convicted of mass murder and dying in jail. And of George Bush and John Howard not daring to set foot in Europe again.

This was all preventable: it's quite unlikely that Al Gore would have started it, or that John Kerry would have allowed it to continue. Bush's ruthlessness, and the lack of value he placed on human life, was apparent at least a decade before he was president.

I share your overall dissatisfaction with the USA's disastrous foreign interventions, and while I agree that Gore probably wouldn't have invaded Iraq, I'm quite certain he would have invaded Afghanistan. And I see no reason to believe Kerry would have taken a much different path than Obama has. Speaking of whom, is there a reason he was left out of your critique? He seems pretty fond of both mass surveillance and drones.

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