Culture of Atrocity

[cyborg]

All troops, when they occupy and battle insurgent forces, as in Iraq, or Gaza or Vietnam, are swiftly placed in what the psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton terms “atrocity-producing situations.” In this environment, surrounded by a hostile population, simple acts such as going to a store to buy a can of Coke or driving down a street means you can be killed. This constant fear and stress leads troops to view everyone around them as the enemy. The hostility is compounded when the enemy, as in Iraq, is elusive, shadowy and hard to find. The rage that soldiers feel after a roadside bomb explodes, killing or maiming their comrades, is one that is easily directed over time to innocent civilians who are seen as supporting the insurgents. It is a short psychological leap, but a massive moral one. It is a leap from killing—the shooting of someone who has the capacity to do you harm—to murder—the deadly assault against someone who cannot harm you. The war in Iraq is now primarily about murder. There is very little killing. American Marines and soldiers have become, after four years of war, acclimated to atrocity.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070618_a_culture_of_atrocity/

Allied atrocities are caused by violence victimhood. Axis atrocities were caused by supernatural white male oppressor evil.

[Ratatoskur]

I remember in history class, of some Persian of Assyrian ruler who had a whole city state skinned for revolt, the question struck me whether the people of that time would have moralized as much as we do nowadays over the exaggerated nature of the punishment. When you read human history, it would seem that atrocities and cruelty are a constant. Do animals with relatively complex social structures also make a signaling point out of cruelty?

[Kodos]

The only way to break fanatical insurgencies like with Iraq is with reprisals... but well disciplined ones.

You don't want troops doing it to a mostly supportive part of the population where some guerilla got through.