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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (135499)	6/3/2004 7:20:02 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<sometimes being "trigger happy" is a good thing and "shooting them up" is what saves our soldier's lives. And sometimes hesitating because of empathy, trying to think it through, or in an attempt to communicate, is a bad thing. > Cynd, that's what I said. What matters is what the word "sometimes" means. From what I've seen over a lot of years, American soldiers are shoot 'em up oriented. Not just soldiers, but everyone! Those Columbine people weren't just instinctively defending themselves. Gunshots in the USA are wildly popular. I don't buy the "instinctive instantaneous life-saving reaction to a perceived threat". Sure, that's sometimes true, no doubt. But we do have brains with executive function. Some people don't have much executive function. They are all instinct and no brain. Mike Tyson apparently is strong on instinct and short on self-control. "Oh man! I perceived a threat and let rip. I was watching myself just turn my instincts loose and before I knew it, the whole damn lot were dead. Some of the women and kids we had to drag out of the huts to kill them, but we perceived such an immediate threat that we just burned the hut down with them in it to save it. But we got one great Vietcong body count that day." It sounds like a good excuse to just have to react in 0.1 seconds with 100 rounds without checking in with front of brain first. Note that empathy is different from sympathy. One could have empathy dictionary.reference.com with the Al Q terrorist and shoot him having hunted him down. Being able to enter into his emotional state, to figure out what he's up to, where he is, what he's thinking and feeling, all the better to kill him is empathy. Or, one could have empathy for a soldier being sent to the front lines, where he'll be killed, all the better to enable the process of sending him to be achieved with the least difficulty possible. Have bands and bagpipes playing to rally the troops, have beloveds seeing them off to save the motherland [or fatherland - fatherlands are generally more belligerent countries; I just made that up, so I'm not offering a double your money back guarantee], give them a swanky uniform. Sympathy dictionary.reference.com is quite a different thing and what you meant in <The real issue is whether those who weren't at risk, those who had time to think, those who had time to communicate and those who should have had empathy for those soldiers were "trigger happy" when they sent them. > I think they did have empathy. That's how they got them to go out there and try to do the job. Now, a lot of Americans are thinking that the military intelligence was just the old oxymoron. Tenet is gone for failing to be intelligent enough. Anyway, I'm going to go and let loose, firing wildly on the golf course. I find my instincts enjoy the rampage, though my executive functions get upset at the poor results. It would be more fun with a machine gun, but we aren't allowed those. Ironically, I've often thought that USA soldiers are so stupid and vicious that it's a good thing - everyone knows that they just go ape and kill anything that moves. So it helps keep the peace because people know not to mess with them because they go nuts. But Osama might yet be right and the USA will cut and run [or cut The War President loose and run]. Mqurice