Letters to the Editor
swilldog
Published Letters: 184 Editor's Choice: 20
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"Here's some advice, LW..."
[Read the article: At what point can I just give up on my son?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"...but first, listen to me judge you eight ways from Sunday based solely on my reading of your desperate letter.
"You see, I've got a lot of anger issues myself. And rather than deal with my own problems, I like to just come here and lash out at someone who chose to bare their soul about their greatest fear -- losing their son. It's so much more enjoyable this way for me, and you get to learn about how worthless I think you(I?) are(am?). Win win, I say."
Yeah, a bit too snarky, but I wonder if that about sums it up for many of you?
To the LW: You freely admitted made many poor choices in life. Don't make the biggest mistake last -- giving up. If you truly love your son and want the best for him (and are not largely motivated by a desire to get back at your mother for all she's done to you), then gather all the help you can muster and go get him. It's gonna suck -- good lord is it ever -- but he's your son and he needs his mother.
And don't listen to the condemning idiots here who think they could possibly begin to really know what's going on with you and your family.
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dehumanizing, indeed
[Read the article: Hadji Girl]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]wayloopy wrote:
This just makes me sad because it shows that this man really doesn't see the Iraqis as human any more, and I don't think we can assume it's just a song. He's been desensitized to their humanity, and he actually might be capable of putting a child in front of himself in a combat situation - he's clearly thought about it.
That's what today's military training has done to our soldiers. By design. I know I'm vastly oversimplifying this but here goes anyway:
A recent Rolling Stone article (and excerpted in The Week) discussed the training our soldiers receive. To my best recollection: In WWI, our soldiers complied with an order to fire on the enemy about 25% of the time. As a result, the US military refined its combat training, and has now achieved a near 100% compliance.
It achieved this goal by doing two things: 1) Bonding our servicemen and women together in ways that rival and exceed familial bonds, and 2) by dehumanizing any threat to that bond. Any perceived threat to the unit will be met with maximum allowable force.
This paradigm works fabulously on the battlefield, I'm sure. But plop these incredibly strained soldiers into the middle of a protracted (and seemingly unending) occupation, where anyone resembling an Iraqi could be considered a potential threat? Well, that training's in there pretty deep, and the results will be ugly.
I point this out not to criticize the troops, nor to excuse such dispicible and grossly insensitive behavior as we've heard about. Rather, I mention this because it appears to be a natural result of the design of our modern military, one that I'm sure our military brass was well aware of as an all-too-real possibility when this adminstration got us into this mess. And I fear it will only get worse unless something changes here at home.