Our Killing Games
I receive hundreds of posts each day and check a variety of sources for information. I try to post things that may be missed by the professional media -- curbed by limiting budgets and supervising (censoring?) managements. Needless to say, I encounter far more horrors than I post. I try to check out sources for accuracy and we are all aware that those with loyalties tend to be blinded to the wrong-doing on their own side and exaggerate the wrong doing of those whom they view as enemies.
I have no loyalties to any side in the Middle East conflicts. We are all aware that there are extremists there who see their enemies as targets for extinction. Genocide, pillage, and ethnic cleansing have been around for quite some time. Our primate version tends to be xenophobic and can readily turn murderous. We make heroes of our serial killers in wartime -- remember Audie Murphy who blew away a 240 or more Germans during WW2 and then played himself in a movie commemorating that 'heroic' event? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audie_Murphy
I recall one of my students from the Viet Nam period who had been in charge of keeping tabs on how many and the locations of our U.S. troops who told us that the officials routinely underreported same (more than a million at the peak) and how his own drill sergeant had boasted of his Korean War experience in which he had personally killed nearly 100 'Gooks' with his entrenching tool.
I did not actively serve, but learned enough through my NROTC training to know that our job was to kill whatever was out there. In those days our artillery weapons were less accurate, had to be directed by manual equipment and presumably did a good bit in the way of killing our own with "friendly fire" and civilians as "collateral damage." I recall one horror story of a young soldier who fired into a dark cave to discover that he had demolished a mother with a newborn baby who had taken shelter there. During that Viet Nam fiasco we used napalm (jellied gasoline) bombs that splattered victims and kept on burning them, timed canister bombs filled with ball bearings that punctured victims when they went off up to 24 hours after being dropped -- often kids that had come out to play. We dropped bombs in "free fire zones" (any over which we did not have military control) when our bombers could not hit a target intended (cloud conditions) and could not land without unloading.
Needless to say modern warfare from on high does not discriminate between combatants and innocent civilians. We killed a good number of the latter intentionally during WW2 (Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki) with horrendous lasting after affects from the latter. We are using deadly weapons today -- those uranium hardened "bunker busters":
http://science.howstuffworks.com/bunker-buster.htm
Needless to say they do not distinguish between military emplacements and civilian bomb shelters. People have to do that. These are what I gather we have been rushing to Israel in special air shipments being protested at the airports when they stop over en route"
And then there was our use in Afghanistan of our new "daisy cutters" -- huge things which ignite a spread of gases that explode with tremendous force as they approach the ground and kill everything within several hundred yards. Needless to say when dropped from on high they do not discriminate between any life forms unfortunate enough to lie below. It is unclear when we developed these or how widely we have used them of late in Afghanistan, Iraq? They were being boasted by our military for a time, but silence seems to have come down again so far as the uses of deadly weapons against possible civilians is concerned?
Enough said to make the point here. Modern warfare is a hell far worse than anything prior to the Twentieth Century when at least militaries had to confront their victims face to face.
I shall continue to report what I discover -- the end of modern military approaches to conflicts between us primates is too apocalyptic either to ignore or to contemplate. Some of our religious seem bent on bringing on the end of times when they assume that _they_ shall be duly awarded by their deity. Enough to make one believe that there is a Satan smirking somewhere safely out of our range -- possibly deriving great pleasure from observing our killing games on his cosmic TV screen?
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Israel_Palestine
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net
I have no loyalties to any side in the Middle East conflicts. We are all aware that there are extremists there who see their enemies as targets for extinction. Genocide, pillage, and ethnic cleansing have been around for quite some time. Our primate version tends to be xenophobic and can readily turn murderous. We make heroes of our serial killers in wartime -- remember Audie Murphy who blew away a 240 or more Germans during WW2 and then played himself in a movie commemorating that 'heroic' event? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audie_Murphy
I recall one of my students from the Viet Nam period who had been in charge of keeping tabs on how many and the locations of our U.S. troops who told us that the officials routinely underreported same (more than a million at the peak) and how his own drill sergeant had boasted of his Korean War experience in which he had personally killed nearly 100 'Gooks' with his entrenching tool.
I did not actively serve, but learned enough through my NROTC training to know that our job was to kill whatever was out there. In those days our artillery weapons were less accurate, had to be directed by manual equipment and presumably did a good bit in the way of killing our own with "friendly fire" and civilians as "collateral damage." I recall one horror story of a young soldier who fired into a dark cave to discover that he had demolished a mother with a newborn baby who had taken shelter there. During that Viet Nam fiasco we used napalm (jellied gasoline) bombs that splattered victims and kept on burning them, timed canister bombs filled with ball bearings that punctured victims when they went off up to 24 hours after being dropped -- often kids that had come out to play. We dropped bombs in "free fire zones" (any over which we did not have military control) when our bombers could not hit a target intended (cloud conditions) and could not land without unloading.
Needless to say modern warfare from on high does not discriminate between combatants and innocent civilians. We killed a good number of the latter intentionally during WW2 (Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki) with horrendous lasting after affects from the latter. We are using deadly weapons today -- those uranium hardened "bunker busters":
http://science.howstuffworks.com/bunker-buster.htm
Needless to say they do not distinguish between military emplacements and civilian bomb shelters. People have to do that. These are what I gather we have been rushing to Israel in special air shipments being protested at the airports when they stop over en route"
And then there was our use in Afghanistan of our new "daisy cutters" -- huge things which ignite a spread of gases that explode with tremendous force as they approach the ground and kill everything within several hundred yards. Needless to say when dropped from on high they do not discriminate between any life forms unfortunate enough to lie below. It is unclear when we developed these or how widely we have used them of late in Afghanistan, Iraq? They were being boasted by our military for a time, but silence seems to have come down again so far as the uses of deadly weapons against possible civilians is concerned?
Enough said to make the point here. Modern warfare is a hell far worse than anything prior to the Twentieth Century when at least militaries had to confront their victims face to face.
I shall continue to report what I discover -- the end of modern military approaches to conflicts between us primates is too apocalyptic either to ignore or to contemplate. Some of our religious seem bent on bringing on the end of times when they assume that _they_ shall be duly awarded by their deity. Enough to make one believe that there is a Satan smirking somewhere safely out of our range -- possibly deriving great pleasure from observing our killing games on his cosmic TV screen?
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Israel_Palestine
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net
posted by Ed Kent at 10:35 AM
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