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

To: Ilaine who wrote (141847)	7/29/2004 9:59:41 AM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

>> as a European who spends a lot of time in Germany, what do you know about, say, Vietnam, except for what you read in the newspapers or saw in a Hollywood movie? And how is that different for an American? Unless you've spent extensive time in Vietnam, then your sources of info are the same.

To: Ilaine who wrote (141847)	7/29/2004 11:04:10 AM
From: smolejv@gmx.net	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi CB: Right, I was never in Vietnam, I "just" read about(). Same as you. But, I guess we can allow ourselves a sound assumption that a) Vietnam exists, that b) there was a war (one at least) in there and on it goes. We do not have to play Hume and question our private, as well as our common, experience (too much...). Otherwise it's a learning Catch-22 - "if you dont know and want to learn, you are forbidden to do so". Or, I could afford to say there never was Auschwitz, because so far I have yet not happen upon a place called like this. I said "my respect" because the story simply rang true. It's not all of it (see uw). But everything that I have learnt so far - reading of course, like here on the thread;\ - tells me it was not an either/or situation. dj () Actually I translated too - for our Student newspaper in Ljubljana, what Seymour Hersh reported about My Lai (I already hear the sigh of relief: of course, another Woodstock-y Hair-y 68ish liberal...)

To: Ilaine who wrote (141847)	7/29/2004 11:34:45 AM
From: Dr. Id	Respond to of 281500

A certain small percentage of every population are psychopaths, with no feelings of empathy or remorse, maybe 1%, maybe 3%. To extrapolate from them to an entire population needs more than big words If you know anything about human psychology, and have some knowledge of the studies of Stanley Milgrim and Philip Zimbardo, you'd know that you don't need to be a psychopath to commit atrocities during wartime. They both have shown that very ordinary humans will commit very antisocial acts under certain circumstances, depending upon the context. In Milgrim's study, for example, something like 70% of the subjects shocked a fellow research subject to seeming unconsciousness because an authority told them to do so and that he would take responsibility for it. And the Zimbardo study has been described here earlier in reference to the prison abuse scandal. In that study, ordinary college students abused fellow students when put in a role of prison guard, demonstrating the overwhelming effects of context on human behavior. So, if you think that only psychopaths are capable of committing atrocities during wartime, you are incorrect. Though I think that label could apply to some in the Bush Administration.