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Saturday, January 5, 2008 12:00 AM

A Democratic donnybrook

The debate was rich in sound and fury, but did little lasting damage to unruffled frontrunner Barack Obama.

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  • Monday, January 7, 2008 02:25 PM

    A quibble, AKA Smith

    I don't wish to get deeply involved in the debate between you and Anonymous. I agree with you that Anon was engaging in absurd hyperbole to say that Clinton's election would be bad for men. That's just sexist propaganda. However, I have to disagree with your statement:

    Also, war uproots and makes refugees of probably more women and children than adult, fighting age males because it makes sense not to characterize participants in war a "victims."

    First of all, as Anon correctly pointed out, you implied that all adult, fighting-aged males are actual participants in any war or conflict, and that's far from the truth. The definition of "adult, combat-aged males" will differ somewhat depending on country, region, culture, who's offering the definition, etc. but in many, if not most cases (particularly in conflicts that are not organized, conventional wars between nation-states) that label will encompass all males from teen boys through men in their 60s. Just look at the US military's definition of "legitimate military targets" in Iraq and Afghanistan--it pretty much corresponds to all able-bodied males between the ages of 16 and 64, even if those males aren't directly involved in hostilities against US armed forces. They're considered to be "potential" enemies and thus are legitimate military targets in ways that females of any age or really young males are not. And, therefore, they've suffered death, injury, torture, arrest, and wrongful or at minimum questionable imprisonment in vastly greater numbers than any other demographic in the country.

    Regardless, many males in that "combat-aged" demographic--no matter how broadly or narrowly it's defined--do not participate directly in war or conflict. Perhaps they're too old or too young (only in unusual or extreme circumstances do males younger than 18 or older than 30 take part in war in any sizable numbers); perhaps they're barred from military service for some reason; perhaps they have medical conditions that restrict or prevent their service; perhaps they're conscientious objectors; perhaps there just aren't the resources to have all of them armed and in uniform at any one time and they're helping out the war effort in non-combat or indirect ways, or not at all.

    The point is that when they encounter enemy military forces, "combat-aged" males, even if they're not involved in the combat, are often treated as combatants anyway and are abused and mistreated, and frequently killed or held as prisoners far more than any other non-combatants, with the important exception of rape in the case of female non-combatants. The Bosnian war provided a major example to illustrate the point, in the capture of the Muslim enclave of Srbrenica by the Bosnian Serbs. The Serbs separated the women and children (only very young males) and elderly males from the teen boys and adult men up to their 60s, and then put the women, elderly, and children on buses and sent them to safety. The males from age 12 or 13 up through their 60s--all 8,000 of them or so--were held as prisoners, and then marched into fields, massacred, and dumped in mass graves. Many of them--arguably most--were non-combatants. According to Hillary Clinton, their wives, girlfriends, mothers, and daughters, who were sent to safety out of the war zone on buses, were bigger victims than the thousands of men and boys who were bound, blindfolded, and machine-gunned into hastily dug trenches. I find that attitude puzzling and worrisome, to put it mildly.

    Finally, I disagree with your point that participants in war can't be described as victims. Why not? Many of them are conscripts rather than volunteers, meaning they're being forced to serve on pain of death, imprisonment, or some other serious legal penalty. Many of them go AWOL or mutiny once in service to protest their circumstances. Many of them serve and fight not due to any great passion but out of a sense of duty, or a desire to just survive and go home as quickly as possible. Many of them have been swept up in hysteria, sometimes manufactured hysteria by government agents. Many feel that they're fighting to protect their families and homes from a dire threat--whether or not that belief is justified. Many are shamed into serving against their better instincts, for example look at the "White Feather" movement among women and girls in Britain during World War I that sought to shame men in civilian life into joining the military, in order to become little more than meat for a murderous grinder. Many of them die in horrendous ways, of course, and many of those who don't end up horribly wounded and crippled or debilitated for life, and/or psychologically traumatized. Other than those who deliberately commit crimes during war, I see everyone involved, combatants and non-combatants alike, as victims of terrible circumstances and of forces larger than themselves. How can you not?

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