And yet, maybe those men were actually farmers, producing an irrigation ditch to produce the food they need to feed their families.
War terrible or not, whether your side believes it is righteous or not, is an us vs. them endeavor: there is no absolute right, both parties assume they are the righteous. A moral human does not get himself in a situation where he has to make such a decision. I've never killed anyone and I suspect you haven't either.
Normal, well-adjusted adult humans may be apex animals, but they certainly aren't inherently violent. There's a subset of that population who has a cluster B personality disorder that exploits a larger subset of the population who has limited opportunity to feed their family in order to create such violence.
Any analysis of war must take in to account the us vs. them situation. Imagine reversing the scenario, imagining an Afghani soldier wandering around the United States with a weapon, deciding who to shoot and for what behavior. Would your reaction be the same? Would you still think it was the correct decision?
> And yet, maybe those men were actually farmers, producing an irrigation ditch to produce the food they need to feed their families
I doubt that farmers in Afghanistan are idiots.
They will know that because farmers almost never work in the middle of the night digging right next to the road, and that bomber planters almost always work in the middle of the night digging right next to the road, that it is very very very dangerous to dig by the side of the road in the middle of the night.
Farmers who, for some bizarre reason, have decided that they want to dig an irrigation ditch right next to the road in the middle of the night are going to make sure that the Marines in the area know the farmers will be out at that location at that time.
The war has been a major part of the farmers' lives for many years. They know how it works.
War terrible or not, whether your side believes it is righteous or not, is an us vs. them endeavor: there is no absolute right, both parties assume they are the righteous. A moral human does not get himself in a situation where he has to make such a decision. I've never killed anyone and I suspect you haven't either.
Normal, well-adjusted adult humans may be apex animals, but they certainly aren't inherently violent. There's a subset of that population who has a cluster B personality disorder that exploits a larger subset of the population who has limited opportunity to feed their family in order to create such violence.
Any analysis of war must take in to account the us vs. them situation. Imagine reversing the scenario, imagining an Afghani soldier wandering around the United States with a weapon, deciding who to shoot and for what behavior. Would your reaction be the same? Would you still think it was the correct decision?