Freda, I really appreciated your input. It was, again, more to the point of where I was trying to go with this thread.

Deckman, you know I love you, but you wrote the following;

"Your use of the term "murderers" bothers me. In a war situation, under accepted rules of war, common soldiers who were following orders could/should not be branded as murderers".

Ya see, herein lies the rub. Thinking that wars and their rules are acceptable, and thinking that the "common soldier" is absolved from their actions of killing and maiming other human beings, whether they cry about it afterwards or not...is all part and parcel of much of what I've read here.

You guys GET OFF on WAR! Whether it's in the reading history of it, or re-arguing the battle strategies, or just proclaiming why certain leaders did or did not achieve what they set out to do...The underlying accord is that this is acceptable human behavior! Aggression against each other is not, or should not be, considered appropriate. Whether it's in defense or offense, and whether it's justified in your reasoning or not. This is the crux of the matter, guys.

Those of you who think you are pacifists are kidding yourselves.

Men need to bond over their war stories, or their sports competition, or their politics, or religions...it's an "Us against Them" kinda world. Is this part of our genetic make-up? Does the fact that we have a bigger brain in proportion to our bodies actually count for nothing when it still seems we as a species are not able to stop indiscriminately procreating, and then perpetrating violence against others of our species, (and for that matter, being responsible for the elimination of half the other species on earth in the past century alone)??
Where does it stop? Are we simply a dangerous mutant species run amok? Reading most of this thread made me feel physically ill. The calm debates regurgitating the Civil War, or Vietnam, Korean, or the World Wars etc, ad nauseum...have we learned anything? Or is it just mouth flapping rhetoric..."See how smart I am? See how much I know?" Oh PULEESE!! These discussions will not save our world, nor will they stop anyone from raping or torturing or pretending that this species is capable of living in a civilized society.
I think, no-I hope-we are doomed. I think we deserve to be given our walking papers off this wonderful gorgeous, astounding planet. We don't deserve it....
Ok, guys, go back to talking about war....ellen