Trained killers?

[Sh0rtbUs]

My family isnt exactly thrilled about my career choice, and are making a point of discouraging me (note that it isnt working).

Last sunday my grandfather called my house looking for my mom, and my answer was "they‘re at church". he then replied "Why arent you there? OH right! You‘re trainign to be a killer, church aint for you."

This didnt bother me as it‘s become the norm to disregard half the bs my grandfather dishes out throughout the family.

But then i thought, to what extent is he right? I can hardly say that Canadian Forces are trained cold blooded killers, and I feel the Canadian Forces are trained to make a difference for the better, preparing for the worst case scenarios. But I was wondering what some of you thought about this, and what you‘re personal opinions were on the subject?

Myself, I wouldn‘t hesitate a second to take someone‘s life if mine or my buddies were threatened, and I feel thats the right thing to do. But then there‘s the argument of whether its moral to place yourself in that position where you‘re forced to make the choice.

I pretty much said enough to him to get him off my back, but I‘d love to hear what others felt about it.

 

[Yllw_Ninja]

my thinking is soldiers aren‘t trained to kill for there enjoyment...there trained that way to go out and make a positive difference on the world. It is odd that somehow through the use of violence we can achieve something good. Though you may be forced to kill at some point in your career i think you‘d be killing for many right reasons...killing to save lives...its an odd concept but someone has to protect this country and its that concept thats going to see this country safe *nods*

 

[nULL]

Then again, I‘m sure that many, many potential chefs/weapon techs/infanteers struggled with the same moral dilema, and in the end turned out to have never had to kill anyone in their careers. why worry about it now? i‘d think that as long as you aren‘t against the thought of killing anyone, you shouldn‘t worry about how you‘d feel after in a hypothetical scenario.

 

[Jungle]

Maybe you should have your grandfather read this article:
Canadians making lives safer, says Kabul shopkeeper
Afghan man fears withdrawal of foreign troops
By Les Perreaux / The Canadian Press

Kabul - Despite a shopfront peppered with shrapnel and other reminders of a suicide bombing here, Attiqullah Baghan remains convinced that Canadian troops make his neighbourhood safer.

The bomb, aimed at Canadian soldiers, killed one of them and narrowly missed Baghan as he worked in his shop 15 metres away. Baghan insists the Canadian soldiers bring security, even if they also draw violence at times.

"It‘s because the people who did this bombing: the Taliban, the warlords, whoever; they are the same people who destroyed my country," Baghan said Friday as he surveyed two-dozen shrapnel holes in his tin door.

"Canadians, they had no part in destroying my country. That‘s why I want them here. If they go, it will all start over again."

As well as killing Cpl. Jamie Murphy and injuring three other Canadian soldiers, Tuesday‘s bombing left one Afghan dead and nine injured. NATO and Afghan authorities are investigating the attack, along with another that killed a British soldier a day later.

Since the deaths, some Canadian soldiers have wondered if their mission to bring peace to the country is worth the cost in lives.

Local merchants, workers and pedestrians gathered around Baghan‘s front stoop, not far from where the bomber stood. They nodded in agreement as he described how life has improved since the NATO contingent, led by Canada‘s 2,000 troops, arrived in the summer.

For Afghans, the recent violence barely registers compared to the previous two decades of civil war and Taliban rule.

"Before the Canadians were here, we couldn‘t pass along this road for the robbery and thievery," said Abdul Rassool, another area shopkeeper.

"During the civil war, you would never start a business. Before the Canadians were here, we got rocket attacks from the same bunch. It‘s much better nowadays, even with a bomb attack."

A couple years ago, Baghan was a refugee in Pakistan who fed his family by driving a taxi. He returned after the fall of the Taliban and now has a thriving concrete business, fuelled by a construction boom that came with rebuilding in the relative peace of the capital, Kabul.

On Tuesday, Baghan, 32, began his day like most others, opening his shop shortly after 8 a.m. He followed his morning ritual, standing on the front stoop of his shop, watching traffic go by.

A customer arrived just as the Canadian vehicles approached his part of Darlaman Street, known to the military as Green Road. Baghan noticed the two Canadian vehicles and went to the rear of his shop to negotiate prices with the client just as the bomb went off.

Baghan ran out to see a haze of smoke, a blackened Canadian jeep and about a dozen injured people wandering around. Baghan noted the calm of the Canadian troops, although he did not dare approach to offer help.

"They didn‘t have any extreme reaction," Baghan said. "They calmly brought their friends to the back vehicle."

 

[George Wallace]

You may ask your grandfather if he had a rabid dog in his backyard, whether he would opt of peaceful co-existance or have the dog put down? It seems your grandfather has a very naieve view of the world. There really are some monsterous people out there, and not everyone enjoys the civil liberties that we enjoy here in Canada.

GW

 

[LilMissChicky]

Or maybe that he is so used to his freedom and takes it for granted, while not even bothering to remember where THAT freedom comes from and who‘s defending and protecting it!

 

[Sh0rtbUs]

well, he certainly is naive. Im in no way worrying about this, as im aware the likelyhood of me having to kill someone isnt great. So do you think that a trade-off with violence for peace is basically what a soldier trains for? And do you think the militaries judgement of when to do this trade-off is on the mark?

 

[George Wallace]

Almost everyone has heard of that Editorial written a long time ago in New York "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus". Well this morning the Ottawa Sun (1 Feb 2004) published a similar editorial: (Perhaps this is some help)

Editorial in Ottawa Sun, 1 February 2004


"The day Cpl. Murphy died

Cpl. Jamie Murphy died Tuesday at the hands of a suicide bomber on the filthy streets of a decimated city torn to shreds by a generation of war. Half a world away in Conception Harbour, Nfld., his grieving mother Alice was haunted by a question.

Why, she asked, did her boy have to die in a country like Afghanistan whose people "don‘t want peace or even know what it means?" Why, indeed.

Prime Minister Paul Martin said the question, while understandable, was "one I wish she didn‘t have to ask." Well, she did ask, and from a grateful nation she is owed an answer.

Dear Alice:

Most of us never got to meet Jamie, by all accounts a fine soldier, a good friend and partner and a devoted, loving son.

You‘d know far better than us what caused him to don a soldier‘s uniform, but we suspect Jamie was like so many young men and women drawn by an irresistible urge to serve their country.

Not all of us hear that call of duty, fewer still are drawn to act upon it. But Jamie did.

Your son served this country even though it meant leaving the comforts of home and enduring a prolonged separation from those he loved.

His calling took him to a world utterly shattered by war, where hatred is drenched in blood and where people‘s hopes and dreams have been reduced to dust along with their homes.

Alice, we‘ll never know for sure, but we‘d bet Jamie saw that he was making a difference in Afghanistan. He‘d see it in the eyes of strangers who, for the first time in a generation, were beginning to see hope for peace in their homeland. He‘d see it in the smile of a child going to school for the first time or in the face of a mother who had begun to feel the warm embrace of security for her family, thanks largely to a military presence comprised of Jamie and his colleagues.

This week, as he approached the end of that posting, he died -- tragically, violently, under the most awful circumstances.

Alice, we cannot begin to find the words sufficient to console you as your family grieves its terrible loss, except to say that Jamie died a hero. No, he didn‘t die while plunging into a river to save a drowning child or pulling someone from a raging house fire.

But he died doing what he knew was right -- trying to restore civility and dignity to a people who had long lost both. He did it even though they were complete strangers to him and even though there were terrible risks from those who saw him as an enemy of tyranny and terrorism.

Alice, he died ... cruelly and incomprehensibly. But heroically too.

Pull the boys out? Bring them all home? You‘re right to ask, Alice. But we believe the Afghan people do want peace, they do know what it means, and we suspect Jamie believed that more than most of us because he saw it with his own eyes.

Alice, soldiers like Jamie are the last hope of the people of Afghanistan. Jamie died, but his death was not in vain. "

 

[Korus]

Thanks for posting that...

 

[nbk]

Sh0rtbUs: Your parents sound like mine...just be happy you wont have to ever speak to them again once you leave (If your like me)...

 

[Sh0rtbUs]

well, my entire family is agaisnt my choice, save my immediate family (mother, father, sister) because as i‘ve said in other posts, encourage me as my father was with the SSR for a while and he stands firmly that its a great life and career. The rest of my family is agaisnt it, solelyb ecause they dont understand it. They‘re all fishermen from the east coast and my career choice is definatly a shock to them.

I plan to talk to them, and actually look foreward to it after I have had a few years in, so then i can give them some logical, first hand explanations for my choices, rather than what they perceive as "naive me with my lack of knowledge and understanding of what im getting into".

You might find time away from your family will do a world of good for you and them.

 

[PteMacPooh]

You are a soldier and that means guarding and honouring your Grandfather‘s right to say what he thinks. Thank God we live in Canada.

But you just have to learn that as a soldier and a leader some people won‘t always agree with what you have to do, but that it does not mean that you should not do it. Sometimes you just gotta make the hard choices. Sometimes that means pissing in someone‘s pickles.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Well you could point out how their fishing is destroying the fishstocks and they should give up fishing because it is bad.......

When you make a decision like joining the military, do it for yourself and don't worry about what other people will think. Those that love you will always love you regardless. In my experience you will never please all your family members, who unlike your friends, you don't get to choose. My Grandfather (Stretcherbearer WWI) was really pissed off about my dad joining up in WWII, who was really pissed off at me joining the military, but he still loves me and admits that it was the army that straightened me up. So go and serve with pride. Good Luck

And ask your grandfather what were the words on the belt buckles of both sides in WWI
The church (pick one) has sent more young men to their death then most governments.

 

[GrahamD]

Myself, I wouldn‘t hesitate a second to take someone‘s life if mine or my buddies were threatened, and I feel thats the right thing to do. But then there‘s the argument of whether its moral to place yourself in that position where you‘re forced to make the choice.

Thats easy to say sitting at home imagining a scenario where you have a clear-cut black and white objective, kill or be killed, shoot the guy who is standing out in the open firing his AK-47 at you and your friends. What happens though when the shooter is concealed in a crowd of women and children? would you hesitate to open fire on them to take down the shooter? would you be justified if you did? If you wouldn‘t do that right away would you do it if your buddies started dying?

What if the threat is a child or a woman who is advancing on your position and you‘re the only one who notices something looks wrong, that you are 75% sure they just pulled a pin on a grenade, or did they? maybe its actually an orange they intend to throw at you, do you kill them? or wait to see if you were right.

The point I‘m trying to demonstrate, because no one has come right out and said it yet, is that yes, as a soldier you will be to all intents and purposes, a trained killer. If you think you wouldn‘t hesitate to kill, right now today in any of the situations I described, I would bet that you are dead wrong.

I fully agree with everything said above about the need for the armed forces, and about the difference Canadians in particular make in the world. However, long before any soldier finds himself overseas in a life threatening situation, he has been trained and conditioned to respond to that situation without hesitation, up to and including deadly force. He/she has been trained to kill.

As for wether or not its moral to become a soldier where you may indeed have to shoot someone one day, only you can answer that for yourself, and it seems to me like you have already come to a decision. If you think you are prepared to use deadly force in the service of your country, then you‘re probably right, but the military will teach you how and when to do it, thereby making you a trained killer.

The way you refer to a member of the Armed Forces though is not to call them trained killers, but rather "soldier" or C.A.F. personell. There are inumerable differences between someone who has been raised since childhood to fight war, like children in Africa, or professional mercinaries like those who operate in South America, and soldiers in the Canadian Armed Forces, and those differences are obvious and glaring. Anyone who chooses not to see those differences is either a half-wit or they are intentionaly trying to bait you into getting upset and should therefore be ignored.

In the end no one has to live with your choices but you. If you go into the military for the right reasons, then you should never look back with regret on doing your duty as a Canadian Soldier.

 

[Sh0rtbUs]

I think GrahamD pretty much summed what I was originally thinking in a nut shell. Soldiers are trained, not so they know what to do in a situation to the point where they dont need to think, just react.

I know Im probably going to be shrugged off as one who is simply trying to dig up "gore stories", but has anyone here been put in such a situation in your period of service, or know someone who has? And how did you or the other person deal with it?

 

[portcullisguy]

Shortbus, you and I live in Toronto, where you might have to kill someone one day just to make sure you get home from work/school safely!

I swear this town is getting more hazardous than Beirut during an intifada!

Following on what GrahamD was saying, when things are in videogame-like simplicity, then the decisions are easy to make: "Kill or be killed."

Not having any personal experiences to draw on, I can only surmise from what I‘ve read and learned through law enforcement training that when reality hits, you will only have a precious few seconds to make the most important decision of your life or someone else‘s.

The reason the military trains and drills repeatedly is so that those decisions can be made as a second nature. The police train repeatedly as well, but their focus is on the legal aspects, and the judgement itself - shoot or don‘t shoot. None of my military training has remotely touched on the actual shoot-or-don‘t-shoot judgement, because you will be ordered what to shoot and when, generally speaking.

What the army DOESN‘T want is people who cannot follow orders. When following orders becomes second nature, it is (I am guessing) a lot easier to pull the trigger.

If and when I draw the short straw and it‘s my turn to shoot-or-don‘t-shoot, I can only hope I don‘t let the side down and become the weakest link.

 

[Sh0rtbUs]

tell me about it. Here‘s a lil story.

me and my buddy are up at Yonge and Steeles picking up a pizza. on the way to his house north of steeles on yonge, we‘re approached by a guy. He quickly orders us to "give him a slice or he‘ll stab us". Stupidly, we shrug it off as a bluff, and he follows us. I got fairly annoyed with his persistance, so I turned to confront him just as he pokes my buddy in the side with something. he didnt stab, just poked to prove he had a knife. My buddy then says "look fella, you better make sure you can do both of us in 1 stroke, cause you‘re gonna have that in you‘re face if you cant." Throughout this entire ordeal, we were both trying to figure what we should do. Take the easy route and beat the **** out of him (easily done as it was me and my buddy vs. him) and risk getting cut up. Or simply play it safe and let him reconsider before things went to the next level, he obviously got a clue and quickly turned and booted it behind an apartment building.

Later, we had the discussion if we had actually stabbed him with his own knife if things came to a struggle. i came to the conclusion that I would simply throw it far away if I had gotten it, but as I reflect, I realise that Toronto IS getting quite different as generations pass when you are forced to make such decisions over pizza.

To end this, I later recognised the guy at school and got even.

 

[winchable]

My only experience of Toronto was when I lived in Regent Park when I was 7 years old.
....I learned how to run really fast, other then that I like Halifax more I must say.
If it has gotten any worse since then I think I‘d have to say I‘ll be staying as far away from central Canada as possible.

Of course with the way Toronto is sucking more cities into its metropolis, Halifax might be a suburb of Toronto sooner or later!

 

[Danjanou]

Halifax might be a suburb of Toronto sooner or later!

**** I see the Mayor‘s secret plan to procure good Donairs is out.

On a serious note, yeah this ain‘t Toronto the Good anymore. Still it‘s only a few really bad neighbourhoods, so far.

 

[Tante Mu]

Hi everyone,

I orignally planned to post this as a new thread,but having read through the above I think this might as well be the place to put it: It‘s not haiku-short, but please bear with me.

I am a student of Communication Science, English and Psychology at the University of Essen, Germany and am currently working on my Master's thesis. In my thesis I deal with the question:

â žWhich communicative means and strategies are being utilised in military training and education in order to enable/empower the individual soldier to execute (deadly) force if need be?â Å“

My basic assumptions are:

a) ...that any military force can only fulfil its mission, if it actually possesses the power to effectively use (deadly) force.
b) ...that most members of modern industrial societies (and therefore their armed forces) are not by nature capable of executing (deadly) force.
c) ...that therefore, enabling/empowerment to execute (deadly) force is a major task of any modern military training.

My working hypothesises are:

a) ...that there are two levels on which the individual has to be taught to execute (deadly) force: 1. Training of technical skills and knowledge on how to use force and/or kill, â Å“tricks of the tradeâ ? so to speak (the level of enabling) and 2. Education on the â Å“whenâ ?, â Å“howâ ? and â Å“whyâ ? a soldier's use of (deadly) force is justified (the level of empowerment)
b) ...modern armed forces all work on the training-level, but tend to not cover the education-level. (See: Kilner, Maj P.: Military Leaders' Obligation to Justify Killing in War. Online in: Military Review, General & Staff College, Fort Leavenworth. http://www-cgsc.army.mil/milrev/english/MarApr02/kilner.asp

I would be interested to hear from anyone concerning the following:

Speech-codes used in training and military life in general concerning violence and killing â “ be they officially enforced or autopoetic.

To what extend does the educational level come into play when it comes to creating a soldier's self-image, ethical and moral questions related to the trade of soldiering.

I am open for any comments, thoughts, experiences or recommendations for further research and reading from whoever feels he or she can distribute, CF or other.

Thanks in advance!