I don’t hate people who are in the military, and if the scenario in the OP ACTUALLY happened, “The Screamer” overreacted. However, I do question the judgement of military personnel. Also:
- Military personnel aren’t gods. People need to stop treating them like they’re above reproach or judgement.
- The military is a volunteer force. No one is making anyone join, so what they do is entirely on them. No one else can be blamed.
- The military, from top to bottom, is about one thing: Killing. Killing people who’ve never harmed you at the command of people who don’t care about you.
- “Just following orders” doesn’t absolve you of guilt.
This is a case of where a desire for too much worship of structure/social cohesion and too little independent thought and behavior goes to cause problems. Harm (killing, hurting another, etc.) should never be rationalized. Our society loves to rationalize away the horrible things we invoke upon each other though… makes living life a lot easier when not having to deal with the negative outcomes of reality, lol.
I doubt the story happened.
But there’s one thing which I will say about the imperialist soldiers, which may be to their credit. John Kerry once said, “We don’t need a draft, because we have an economic one.” Despite the fact that the whole fucking military structure recruits from the most naïve and depressed areas of the planet, this does not excuse or allow in anyway the existence itself, let alone the behavior, of the US military. Being colonized does not make it OK to colonize and murder other people. Sorry. It’s a fucked situation, I can understand how it happened, but when it comes down to it, the resisters have the right to defend themselves by any and all means available to them.
As redguard said, there are three things people in the military can do:
- Turn their guns around (preferable option)
- Desert
- Take a bullet
(Source: the-unpopular-opinions, via doctorofnothing)
