The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #144598 Message #3347206
Posted By: GUEST,Lighter
05-May-12 - 01:54 PM
Thread Name: BS: 'Heroes' or Mercenaries?
Subject: RE: BS: 'Heroes' or Mercenaries?
Thread drift for pedants only...
Most civilians have little understanding of what war is like, particularly what combat is like.
I used to teach a university course on warfare in literature, and few of my students came in knowing anything about war except that it kills people. They tended to assume that most military personnel in war fight in front-line combat most of the time, that it's always legitimate to kill a surrendering enemy (or enemy prisoners), that there are "no rules" except instant obedience, that most enlisted soldiers are teenagers, and that most officers are like Gen. Patton, whom they think of as the greatest American general of all time (and often the only one they've heard of besides Grant, Lee, and Sherman).
Except for the Patton business, few of these misconceptions can be traced to Hollywood or to the American educational system. They're just fanciful assumptions. They're shared alike by "hawks" and "doves." The only difference is that the hawks approve and the doves don't. On the positive side, not even the hawks believe that war is fun.
After My Lai was in the news in 1969, opinion polls showed that strong majorities of American (and Australian) adults believed that the massacre of unarmed villagers by ground forces was a normal tactic in U.S. and Australian war-fighting, and that Lieut. Calley should not have been arrested: he was "only following orders."
The public's justification for the massacre was that "War is war" and "It's kill or be killed."
Only about a third of the respondents said they wouldn't have taken part. Think about it: only a minority would even *imagine for the sake of a poll* that they wouldn't kill unarmed women and children if ordered. Maybe they just assumed they'd be shot if they disobeyed.
Training and discipline are what distinguish an army from an armed mob. And though it occasionally breaks down, as at My Lai, there is a difference.