NEWS: Asshole Fuckface Roundup #45

circumstance does not provide an excuse for one's behavior. those soldiers acted improperly, and they deserve to be punished for their improper actions. they also deserve respect, which should buy them the benefit of the doubt with regards to their character sans the impact of their circumstance.

a murderer who was abused as a child has every chance of becoming a swell guy--if he receives proper treatment. regardless of his circumstance, however, he committed a crime, and the commission of a crime is something that must be punished for the good of society, no matter how swell a guy he becomes.

my statement to Shiny Metal Ass was uncalled for and arguably less than true. i apologize for making it. while circumstance--specifically, the disrespect i feel he showed to people who i feel deserve respect--led me to feel pretty angry, that doesn't excuse the inappropriate action i took as a response. i'm a pretty swell guy, once you get to know me.

While i agree with you that it isn't right, you're reasoning that it isn't right goes a little beyond what i am willing to agree with.

Yes. some people do go through traumatic experiences and nothing changes, their psyche is strong enough to understand everything and still hang on to their sanity.

But for every person that can handle traumatic experiences, there are just as many that are incapable of dealing with traumatic experiences correctly.

While insanity pleas have pretty much made them very difficult to decipher, there are documented cases in which people who suffered traumatic experiences, didn't get treated correctly, if at all and went on to do some pretty devious things.

If supporting them in the latter case means holding them accountable when they've violated international laws and human sensibilities, then I agree. If not, then fuck no. You don't get a free pass for serving. That's why there are these things called war criminals. Supporting people who are struggling with reintegration and supporting criminals are two fucking different things. I have no desire to support sociopaths just because they have served in the military.

support does not necessarily mean approval. you support a junkie by taking away his drugs, not by allowing him to continue wasting his life. as i've said, i think the soldiers should be punished for their unethical actions and receive counseling to help prevent it from occurring again. but i don't think their actions, given the circumstances in which they were committed, necessarily deserve the ire they've drawn. i think these soldiers deserve an intervention, instead of a lynch mob. and whatever they deserve, lynch mobs never solved anything anyway.

I think we may be looking at the same thing and agreeing, but in different ways. I'm saying there are loads of people who go through trauma and come out of it without antisocial tendancies, you're saying there are just as many who go through trauma and do end up with said tendancies. That is true. And I'm sure there are those that are incapable of handling that type of stress without good help. But I also think that there are those who can't be bothered with help, those that don't want help, and those that were semi-twisted to begin with and just expanded on it because they had both an excuse and the opportunity. And in all honesty, I could probably buy the murderer's excuse before these guys - being abused warps your whole environment from the beginning, whereas these guys were already legal adults, and theoretically trained, before they went.
It doesn't surprise me that people will require help coming back from this war. But that doesn't lessen my disgust for how these particular soldiers chose to act out on their trauma.

This is an interesting intellectual/conceptual/nominal sphere to have entered into.

In this example, your support relates to an action. In regards to military action, I'd say I support troops by prosecuting those who violate codes of military conduct or international laws of engagement (i.e. taking away the junkie his drugs, preventing soldiers from engaging in their sociopathic tendencies). Thereby, supporting the troops who actually perform their duty.

As I said before, I've been following this conversation back and forth and can appreciate the arguments on each side (although I have to say that regardless of the situation laughing at the extermination of any sentient life is cause for concern**).

I'm acutely aware of (due to familial relations) the issues of PTSD and mental illness/disorder that are possible as a result of combat. One of the realities we will face in the next decade (due to technology) is the fact that we will have more survivors than we've ever had in any other combat situation. On the one hand it's good, on the other, people who would have in the past died and we "wouldn't have to deal with them" are now surviving and will have to be reintegrated into society

What's the point? We seem to have reached a point of critical mass. With Youtube and other telecommunications technology we can personally view and emotionally react to acts of violence that we've never been able to witness before. On the other hand, we have more of these people returning to live among us.

We need psychological counseling. We need the BEST medical service possible for our vets. We need to support them in every single way we can possibly afford. HOWEVER, there is a point, where they have crossed the line. There is a point where sociopathic behaviors set in and reintegration isn't necessarily possible. There are actions that need to be condemned. There are individuals that need to go to jail and be held responsible for their crimes.

Perhaps people calling for the death of someone who laughed at the death of a dog is a bit overboard, but I haven't seen that. They just called it Asshole Fuckfacery, and it is. But like you said yourself, hate the sin, love the sinner. If you have to hate someone, hate Bush for putting these children in this position. But don't relieve those who have violated the sensibilities of humanity of their responsibility. For every soldier who has lost his moral compass, there are 500 if not thousands who have retained and realized in their actions ethical behavior even with in a war zone****.


**The fallacious argument that there are worse things that happen, therefore, this doesn't really matter will never fly with me.

****I honestly can't stand the "well you haven't been in combat, so you don't know" argument. I've known plenty of people who have been in the thick of the shit who find these people probably more despicable than I do. In fact, they argue, you haven't seen how horrible it is, so you can't possibly be as outraged as I am at the inhumanity.

[note: I have no desire to check this for grammar or spelling.]

that's very true; these people most certainly exist. but because of the sacrifices soldiers make and the stress they are under, i feel it is unfair to leap to the conclusion that a soldier who acts in an antisocial manner is automatically one of these people. i feel that the opposite conclusion should generally be leapt to, until it's proven unwarranted. assuming one absolutely must leap to a conclusion.

there's nothing wrong with being disgusted with their actions. but i think it's taking the simple, easy answer to be disgusted with the soldiers themselves. holding them accountable for their actions while simultaneously feeling compassion for them, forthe circumstances that helped shape those actions--that's much more difficult. and much more honest.

emotedcreation, i agree with everything you just posted. i do have a caveat, though:

how far it flies with me depends on what that particular point is being used to support. in terms of what the public should spend its time and emotional energy decrying, i think this incident has pretty low priority. if one is trying to argue that this incident is morally and ethically acceptable because there are worse things that happen, well, i believe that's wrong and intellectually dishonest. but it should still be a pretty low priority.

As a Buddhist, I'd probably place a different level of priority on it, but I understand where you're coming from. Nevertheless, I don't think decrying pointless elimination of sentient life is ever pointless (not that you are saying it is). Are there more strenuous issues at hand? Certainly, but that shouldn't diminish people's emotional responses (i.e. whether or not it's asshole fuckfacery). And if you're going to make that argument, in my opinion, that specific point needs to be stressed or else your going to have people strenuously objecting as they have.

You hold them accountable, and you put them into severe re-programming, not punishment. Punishing someone who doesn't understand what they did wrong serves no purpose.

The military has trained these individuals to be desensitized, the acts they have seen over there have desensitized them even further. They're are in an environment in which human life in itself has no value. They deal with suicide bombers running into a grocery store filled with innocent people and killing them all. They see people get be-headed, they see women get stoned for sleeping with a man prior to wedlock on top of that they deal with losing friends they are serving with on a daily basis.

While you and I can sit here and say "It was criminal to blow up the dog, the dog is a life" they have been desensitized enough to not appreciate the dog's life. To them "it's just a dog" because on the same note, they are watching people die daily, in comparison, a dog's life holds no value.

While your value of the dog's life is honorable, i am not willing to stamp "sociopath" on these guy's foreheads, throw them in military prison for years on end and forget about them. That doesn't fix the problem, it band-aids the problem while they are in prison, but once they are out, they still don't understand completely what they did wrong, they just know they got punished for it, and that may not be enough to stop them from doing it again. Punishing someone for something they don't understand as wrong doesn't fix anything. Teaching them why it was wrong, and re-programming them to comprehend why it was wrong, will fix it.

The key is to rehabilitate the person, make them understand and comprehend why it was wrong, and then try to reintegrate them into society. I am not willing to give these guys a free pass for what they have done, but i am not willing to give up on them either. The U.S. Government asked them to do a job, while the majority of the nation doesn't agree with it, they're still doing the job that the administration we voted in is telling them to do.

I really hate to tell you, but "War Crimes" are usually labeled with crimes against humans, not animals. While animals are covered under some chemical weapons treaties, usually livestock for food, killing a stray dog does not equate a war crime. It's a domestic crime to kill or torture an animal in that manner, i highly doubt these guys will ever stand in front of the International Criminal Court, with all the other atrocities going on over there, the ICC will probably never see it, they do however hold a chance of being court-martialed.

I don't mean to be an asshole, but I figured I might as well inform you that you are on ignore and I won't be responding to you (now or in the future).

well, the thing is, people have a limited attention span. in the face of problems like human trafficking, corporate influence on national policy, the imbalance of global wealth, landmines, and the gigantic pile of shit and death that has been made of Africa--it's just a dog, man. decrying its death is pointless to me because there are so many larger issues that need to be decried. lobbying for the benefit of the doubt with regards to the character of soldiers who do awful things is one of those issues, which is really the only reason i've taken any interest in this thread.

looking over the little things is what leads to the bigger things.

I completely understand what you're trying to say. But all the larger scale things we are dealing with now, were at one point smaller scale things.

while right now it's just a dog we need to prevent it from becoming a bigger problem. Ignoring it now, and giving them a free pass because they served isn't the answer, crucifying him because he killed a dog isn't the answer either, there has to be some middle ground in which everyone benefits, he gets the help he needs, and we don't have yet another burden on the already overwhelmed prison system which is inept to begin with.

...this is the heart of the matter. To you it may be pointless, but you might want to rethink diminishing the opinions of others who think otherwise. I understand your lobbying for what soldiers are going through, but perhaps it'd be wise to highlight that aspect of the issue rather than reducing the perfectly rational emotional reactions of others to pointlessness (that is where I'm coming from).

[edit] I'm not trying to jump down your throat. I'm just highlighting the fact that both you and the others who have responded to you have taken perfectly reasonable positions on this issue.

Also, as far as the idiots who felt it'd be cool to dig up a grave site, thank you. Now there's no doubt in my mind that I'm meant to be incinerated.

That would imply I think I am wrong. I do not. I think the soldiers in the video are vile assholes. The presentation was simply their own work.

They are cunts and I am okay with any suffering they may meet along the way.

As for the post, some other clown brought up the point. I was responding to his pandering and simplistic view of life.

while this is true to an extent, it's also true that the little things can be a distraction that keeps attention away from the big things. considering how we were drawn into Iraq in the first place, i'm particularly wary about such distractions.

i'm not trying to diminish their opinions so much as i'm trying to tell them that my opinion is, they're wrong. anyone is, of course, free to disagree with my opinion, and i don't necessarily think poorly of anyone who holds a different opinion. but if this video had been shot by a couple of rednecks playing with firecrackers in the back forty, or some gang members dicking around with gasoline and matches in some alley, or a bunch of rural thugs with AK-47s in just about any mud hut village in the world, i wouldn't have cared enough to comment.

heh, well, as i said elsewhere in this thread--everyone's entitled to an opinion, but not everyone's got the qualifications required to make me listen to 'em!

It was not my intention to suggest he's asking for a free pass for himself; except, of course, that QW identifies as a "warrior". That could have something to do with his reaction. Who knows.

And I'm not saying he's disparaging X or Y, or whatever. I'm saying he applies a double standard. Hence, he's being hypocritical.

I applaud. Thank you.

My apologies; I certainly didn't realize that replying to a comment the day after it was posted was outside of the timeline.

Reread my post, genius - I never mentioned YouTube. Between that and your rant about my hair and nationality, I hardly think I am the one who looks like a 'freaking moron'.

Thug cops fired.

I used to work with an immigrant from Nigeria. It was quite shocking how different a cultural conception he had of the role of women's rights. He explained that over time, in America, he had changed his views, but in Nigeria, if a woman was raped, she was considered a disgrace, and could no longer be married or seen in public. He also thought that women would be impressed by stalkers, as it was a sign of sincerity of intention. I explained to him that this wasn't the case in America, and I genuinely believe he was not an inherently bad person, but rather, the cultural concepts of dating and sexuality in America were completely alien to him.