"The Objectivist Death Cult"

[Brant Gaede]

You are reading a lot into what I said that isn't true of me. You don't really know combat and war, but like the ancient Romans know how to send men off to fight with righteousness ringing in their ears propelling them forward into the scythes of death. Killing human beings can indeed be both good and bad in any one instance for the killer. It doesn't have to be both, but the experience is certainly permanently transforming regardless.

--Brant

Well feel free to clarify, that is the point of discussion. If you bring up a point, and someone doesn't understand it, is the best reaction to just say 'well, you wouldnt understand' you are, after all, appealing to the ol "if I have to explain it to you, you would never get it" fallacy that elevates something other than reason as a tool of cognition. Were you saying those American soldiers here happy to not have to kill any more Japanese, or happy to not get killed by them? Maybe it's both, but I suspect it's mostly the latter, especially from the stories I've read from soldiers of that period.

And now you suggest that I am advocating sending men off to die in some useless struggle like some callous Roman emperor - and you speak of misrepresenting things that are not true of you??? All of the sudden, since I say if it sometimes just to kill an evil man, and that if it is just it is also good, now I am some barbarous war monger?

And, am I not allowed to speak on the morality of killing unless I have actually killed someone? Shouldnt I work out my moral principles BEFORE I kill someone? Am I not allowed to speak on the morality of abortion - unless I have an abortion? The morality of torture - unless I torture someone? Unless you answer YES to these, then dispense with the 'you've never done it so you can't talk about it' argument.

I'm suggesting your basic attitude seems to be more pagan/Roman than Christian, which I don't think you'd object to. I don't. What I basically object to in this discussion is you telling us how people would feel consequent to an act beyond your own experience and which I'd not wish on anyone. I admit I missed the nuance of your statement differentiating "pride" and "profound Joy" so I went back and quoted it to update what we are talking about. I'm not trying, I hope, to do an argument from authority on you, and you've made many valid points, but experience does count for a lot. Consider President Bush starting the Iraq invasion in 2003. Even though he had experience with the Texas Air National Guard flying a dangerous fighter jet he had not seen war. He had no Vietnam experience. If he had he might have made better choices.

--Brant

[Selene]

Brant/Matus:

Pistols at ten paces!

I am reasonably certain that you are both not far apart on some of these points in dispute.

You may decry your being a linguist, but you turn a phrase really well "...appealing to the ol "if I have to explain it to you, you would never get it" fallacy that elevates something other than reason as a tool of cognition.

That is really well put.

"You are reading a lot into what I said that isn't true of me. You don't really know combat and war, but like the ancient Romans know how to send men off to fight with righteousness ringing in their ears propelling them forward into the scythes of death. Killing human beings can indeed be both good and bad in any one instance for the killer. It doesn't have to be both, but the experience is certainly permanently transforming regardless."

Well we all do a lot of reading into statements, but what Brant wrote hits home to me because I was not in the service, but I have been in fire fights. I have shot two people that I can confirm and been shot because I warned them, which I will never do again, but I was young and stupid. More than likely like every raw recruit when the first mortar round comes in or the friend you had in boot camp gets cut in half before your eyes.

I would think that you must be transformed by that reality.

The Gung Ho mentality is a requirement as far as I can understand to preserve unit integrity which conceptually and practically increases your own self survival which is your priority.

I would like to hear more.

Adam

[Brant Gaede]

Well, Adam, the "Gung Ho" wears off, but you keep going regardless. "Gung Ho" is like carbohydrate loading for a sports competition: it's good for only about 20 minutes so it's best to have eaten that Big Mac and shake for the distance still to go. When unit cohesiveness breaks down you're in big trouble. I once walked up and down rows and rows of dead Vietnamese soldiers in a hospital yard, about 250 young men all cleaned up for their relatives to pick up and bury. There were about 50 survivors who managed to get away on their own. All six American advisors had been killed, cut in two by .50 cal enfilading fire. In this case it probably made no difference, for the unit would have been decimated anyway, but that's the kind of consequence you get for break and run. The unit had done the easy thing walking along a rice paddy dike, came to another dike and went down it. The .50 cal gun was trained along the length of the entire dike and when all the soldiers were on it the .50 opened up. When that happened additional automatic fire came from the bordering tree line.

There was a famous Marine sniper, "White Feather," who once caught a North Vietnamese unit out in the open. About two hundred men. He killed one of them and they all hit the dirt. They could have assaulted his position, maybe losing a few more men, but they didn't. They stopped functioning as a unit. There was no command and control. One by one he killed every one of them. The killing went on through the night as the area was continually lit up by aerial flares. Out of panic a North Vietnamese would expose himself and get shot down.

These were not my actions, which I'd rather not talk about, but all in all, aside from the everyday possibility of being killed, I was pretty comfortable in Vietnam. I didn't spend many nights in the field and I never walked point.

--Brant

[Selene]

Brant:

Thanks.

As I understand it and have experienced it on a lower scale - exactly what happens.

Disorganized retreats yield the highest casualties recorded ever.

Command and control is critical.

I have had experiences shared, grudgingly, by folks that I knew that were in combat or on police swat teams and "joe civilian" has no clue what happens.

Yes walking point generally sucks.

That sniper sounded like an evolved Sergeant York.

Adam

[Brant Gaede]

York was a very complicated, interesting man. The sniper was an efficient killing machine. He was never a York to begin with nor did he win any CMH. He was extremely brave and did win the Silver Star. Carlos Hathcock once took out an enemy sniper sent to kill him. This sniper had already killed several Marines when Hathcock saw the sun reflecting off his telescopic sight. Hathcock put a bullet right down through the sight tube into his eye. He then realized that doing that meant the enemy sniper had him in his sights too and that he was within seconds of killing him instead and that they both could have killed each other.

Wikipedia says he had 93 confirmed kills, so my original story may have belonged to another sniper. Maybe. I read the story in Vietnam magazine. "Confirmed kills" was much more conservative than "actual" because actual required a third party verification and a sniper team was usually two men.

--Brant

Edited July 2, 2009 by Brant Gaede

[Selene]

Evolve was too positive a word without what you added, I meant "evolved into a killing machine".

York was extremely interesting. CMH as well as a whole bunch of comparable European medals - Legion of Honor Croix de Guerre

Amazing, he was born in Pall Mall Tennessee!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_York

1941 film

York's story was told in the 1941 movie Sergeant York, with Gary Cooper in the title role. York refused to authorize a film version of his life story unless he received a contractual guarantee that Cooper would be the actor to portray him. Cooper won the Academy Award for Best Actor.

Adam

Edited July 2, 2009 by Selene

[Judith]

I am not amused that someone who has probably never killed anyone or is unlikely to is telling us how he would feel about it

Why not take it from the horse's mouth?

A few years ago some woman reporter (Katie Couric, maybe? I didn't see it myself, only heard about it second-hand) interviewed guys in Iraq -- snipers, I think -- and asked, "What do you feel when you shoot an Iraqi and see him die?" and the guy deadpanned in response: "Recoil."

Judith

[tjohnson]

This sniper had already killed several Marines when Hathcock saw the sun reflecting off his telescopic sight. Hathcock put a bullet right down through the sight tube into his eye. He then realized that doing that meant the enemy sniper had him in his sights too and that he was within seconds of killing him instead and that they both could have killed each other.

I saw this on Mythbusters and they said it couldn't be done. In every trial the bullet blew the scope to smithereens but never made it to the sniper.

[Brant Gaede]

This sniper had already killed several Marines when Hathcock saw the sun reflecting off his telescopic sight. Hathcock put a bullet right down through the sight tube into his eye. He then realized that doing that meant the enemy sniper had him in his sights too and that he was within seconds of killing him instead and that they both could have killed each other.

I saw this on Mythbusters and they said it couldn't be done. In every trial the bullet blew the scope to smithereens but never made it to the sniper.

Interesting. I assume they used the same ammo. Supposedly they recovered the rifle, but the Wikipedia article doesn't mention what happened to it. Distance from target is also important as the velocity falls off as the bullet falls down. When I was trained on the .30 cal. machine gun at Ft. Ord, CA you could see the tracers trace a downward arc to the target. First they went up, then down. One wonders how the arc of the bullet might have made it an impossible or almost impossible shot.

--Brant

Edited July 3, 2009 by Brant Gaede

[Selene]

Folks:

I never thought I would get to use this famous unfinished quote on the OL forum!

"They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist. . . ."

(Last words of General John Sedgwick, killed in battle during the U.S. Civil War)

http://a248.e.akamai.net/f/248/17859/1d/de...War_Snipers.pdf

This is an article about it ^^^^

Adam

Edited July 3, 2009 by Selene

[kiaer.ts]

I am not amused that someone who has probably never killed anyone or is unlikely to is telling us how he would feel about it

Why not take it from the horse's mouth?

A few years ago some woman reporter (Katie Couric, maybe? I didn't see it myself, only heard about it second-hand) interviewed guys in Iraq -- snipers, I think -- and asked, "What do you feel when you shoot an Iraqi and see him die?" and the guy deadpanned in response: "Recoil."

Judith

Leatherneck.com says snope says this is a myth. But a damn funny one.

[Selene]

Michelle:

Sitting with a sharpshooter, artist Winslow Homer was appalled, calling the practice ‘near murder.’

Interesting, I would never perceive the sniper as a murderer, more an "executioner" because of the certainty of the craft or art of the sniper.

Adam

[BaalChatzaf]

I have noticed quite a bit of response to the situation of snipers. Snipers are NOT assassins. The are soldiers who kill other soldiers at a distance. No one would ever get the job of sharp-shooting if he had any compunction about killing an enemy soldier. Bottom line: pacifists are not issued sniper scopes and rifles.

If you really want to probe ask how a bombardier who drops high explosive or incendiary ordinance on a mixed military and civilian target feels. Apparently not that much. The U.S. Army Air Corps had no trouble finding bombardiers for their bombing missions during WW2. I have heard bombardiers and other crew on the bombing missions on programs broadcast by The Military Channel. When asked they usually reply some thing like -- well, I feel a little badly but it is a job that had to be done --. Something like that. Apparently they didn't feel badly enough not to fly their missions. Paul Tibbets who dropped the first A-bomb in history said he was glad that he was able to carry out the mission as ordered. Col. Tibbets aparrently felt that he was doing something necessary and he carried out his orders smartly and successfully.

Here is what Tibbets said to Studs Turkle in an interview:

Studs Terkel: Do you ever have any second thoughts about the bomb?

Paul Tibbets: Second thoughts? No. Studs, look. Number one, I got into the air corps to defend the United States to the best of my ability. That's what I believe in and that's what I work for. Number two, I'd had so much experience with airplanes. I'd had jobs where there was no particular direction about how you do it and then of course I put this thing together with my own thoughts on how it should be because when I got the directive Iwas to be self-supporting at all times. On the way to the target I was thinking: I can't think of any mistakes I've made. Maybe I did make a mistake: maybe I was too damned assured. At 29 years of age I was so shot in the ass with confidence I didn't think there was anything I couldn't do. Of course, that applied to airplanes and people. So, no, I had no problem with it. I knew we did the right thing because when I knew we'd be doing that I thought, yes, we're going to kill a lot of people, but by God we're going to save a lot of lives. We won't have to invade [Japan].*

That, I think, is pretty much the attitude of all the bombing crews that go out to kill the enemy (along with women and children who happen to be in the area).

Ba'al Chatzaf

* excerpted from

http://www.avweb.com/news/profiles/PaulTib...2_196499-1.html

Edited July 3, 2009 by BaalChatzaf

[tjohnson]

You know, humans are capable of a wide range of responses and can learn to act professionally and not let their emotions interfere with their work. This applies to Nazi death camp soldiers as well as US Air Force pilots - they are just doing their jobs. One might ask why don't these individuals take responsibility for their actions? Why do they mindlessly do their jobs even when it is morally reprehensible?

Edited July 3, 2009 by general semanticist

[Matus1976]

Michael - "go with your heart on this issue ..." I love it. You mean go with your emotions!! It's funny, but I'm currently in need of something to read and have picked up The Fountainhead after many years. Yesterday, I got to the scene where Roar interviews for the Stoddard Temple. Every fiber of his body is SCREAMING not to sign with Stoddard. He doesn't feel good about this at all. Yet he goes with his head.

Imagine how much smarter he'd been had he gone with his gut? I like to think things out, but if my emotions interfere, I assume there's a damn good reason and I don't budge till I get to the bottom of it. My emotions are actually pretty damn smart and spot on as a rule.

Ginny

People will many times intuit something that they are unable to immediately recognize conceptually. In that case, Roark knew the signals of an unprincipled an disingenuous man on a subconscious level, but he had no rational, conceptual reason to refuse the commission.

I think this is something generally not appreciated as much as it ought to be, as people all to easily just attribute intuition to some sort of mystical tool of cognition, or reject it completely as some mysterious manifestation of irrational emotions. But the human brain is a damn powerful computer, in fact, by most estimates, about 1,000 to a million times more powerfull than the most powerful supercomputer anyone can construct today. If you are a rational, intelligent, introspective person, intuition can be an extremely powerful tool, as that supercomputer can recognize much more subtle patterns than you would.

[Matus1976]

...You were fortunate. Your health permitted you the privilege of going into combat and killing first hand. I was not so fortunate. ...

Ba'al Chatzaf

I never know how serious to take Ba'al's comments. But if he's sincere about this, then he sounds no different in motivation than the soldier brant mentioned. Valuing killing, he sought the opportunity to legally do so. There are two aspects to killing in war in this context, one is the killing, the other is the value you are defending that results in having to kill an enemy to your values. If Ba'al primary interest were in defending what he values, I highly doubt killing is the most productive avenue to furthering his values, yet that is what he strove for. Sometimes it's necessary to kill an evil person who threatens your values, but it certainly is not always the most important thing, starting a successfull business and using the wealth to further your values in particular ways might be far more productive.

[Michelle]

Judith:

I think you probably have to dehumanize the 'enemy' to a certain extent if you want to be really efficient out on the battlefield.

[BaalChatzaf]

I never know how serious to take Ba'al's comments. But if he's sincere about this, then he sounds no different in motivation than the soldier brant mentioned. Valuing killing, he sought the opportunity to legally do so.

Take me literally. I am an Aspie. I am genetically incapable of not being serious. Killing bad people is a necessary evil. Helping to clean up the dirt is a virtuous activity. I keep my house clean. I clean up the areas around my house, even picking up trash in other people's yards on my way in and out. Keeping the world neat is one of the things I like to do. The world will not stay neat unless people who do not like messes are willing to keep it neat.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[BaalChatzaf]

Judith:

I think you probably have to dehumanize the 'enemy' to a certain extent if you want to be really efficient out on the battlefield.

Absolutely. One must regard the enemy and his kin as rubbish to be disposed of. Do not let his human looking appearance fool you.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

You know, humans are capable of a wide range of responses and can learn to act professionally and not let their emotions interfere with their work. This applies to Nazi death camp soldiers as well as US Air Force pilots - they are just doing their jobs. One might ask why don't these individuals take responsibility for their actions? Why do they mindlessly do their jobs even when it is morally reprehensible?

Are you referring to US (army) Air Force pilots who dropped bombs on Nazis?

You have closely studied the psychology of American Air Force pilots and crews?

Do you know the difference between a German Nazi and an American fighting Nazis?

How would you describe the psychology of Americans who went to Canada and became Canadian Air Force pilots so they could go to England and fight the Nazis before the United States got in the war?

--Brant

[Selene]

"I think this is something generally not appreciated as much as it ought to be, as people all to easily just attribute intuition to some sort of mystical tool of cognition, or reject it completely as some mysterious manifestation of irrational emotions. But the human brain is a damn powerful computer, in fact, by most estimates, about 1,000 to a million times more powerfull than the most powerful supercomputer anyone can construct today. If you are a rational, intelligent, introspective person, intuition can be an extremely powerful tool, as that supercomputer can recognize much more subtle patterns than you would."

Glenn Beck has referred to this "gut feeling" in terms of his dog and himself meeting a person for the first time. The dog does not react normally to the person, the dog is on edge, suspicious and wary of the individual.

Glenn makes the assertion, that the dog is picking up the deep reactions that you are experiencing, but the dog does not have the rational mind to be "fair", open, "christian", trusting, etc.

I happen to think he is correct.

Adam

Post Script:

GS - you are kidding correct? You see no difference between our side in WWII and the National Socialist Nazi Regime?

Edited July 3, 2009 by Selene

[Brant Gaede]

Judith:

I think you probably have to dehumanize the 'enemy' to a certain extent if you want to be really efficient out on the battlefield.

Absolutely. One must regard the enemy and his kin as rubbish to be disposed of. Do not let his human looking appearance fool you.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Garbage. Nazi psychology. Death camps. Mobile death vans. Firing squads. Industrialized murder. The Jews will never recover demographically from the Holocaust and humanity will miss those dead brains and their progeny for the next thousand years.

(I wasn't referring to Judith here, but she's only going with a conjecture. You cannot dehumanize someone you haven't met, but now wants to kill you. The enemy soldier is not like the brother you left behind when you went to war. The United States is primarily responsible for up to 50,000,000 malarial deaths of babies and the malarial infestation of 10 times more human beings because of its war against DDT. These people haven't been dehumanized in American minds because they were never humanized in the first place.)

--Brant

cranky and getting crankier

Edited July 3, 2009 by Brant Gaede

[Michelle]

Judith:

I think you probably have to dehumanize the 'enemy' to a certain extent if you want to be really efficient out on the battlefield.

Absolutely. One must regard the enemy and his kin as rubbish to be disposed of. Do not let his human looking appearance fool you.

Ba'al Chatzaf

It's a nasty and incorrect attitude, but for the purposes of the battlefield, it is probably useful. The difference between efficient and inefficient soldiers is that the inefficient soldier is going to kill people on his own side as well. When killing is your business, empathy is nothing but a burden. Of the men who make careers in the military, there are probably only two variety: men who go in without a lick of empathy, and men who have it killed--or have to kill it--while gaining actual field experience.

[BaalChatzaf]

It's a nasty and incorrect attitude,.....

More precisely, it is nasty and incorrect for peacetime. But when has there been peace of late? I do not plan to hold my breath until men beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Were I to do so, I would turn blue and faint.

While Islam exists in the world, there will be no peace. Only Submission.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited July 3, 2009 by BaalChatzaf

[Michelle]

It's a nasty and incorrect attitude,.....

More precisely, it is nasty and incorrect for peacetime. But when has there been peace of late? I do not plan to hold my breath until men beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Were I to do so, I would turn blue and faint.

While Islam exists in the world, there will be no peace. Only Submission.

Ba'al Chatzaf

It's nasty and incorrect either way. The difference is that it is useful during a war, and not useful in peacetime (a somewhat incorrect term: has there ever been a point in history where there has been no civil or international conflict somewhere in the world?)

It's fine. I'd rather our boys do their jobs without having an existential crisis every time they have to kill someone.