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Soldiers are not trained to do police work, yet that's what many are asked to do. An informant provides a tip that someone is manufacturing IED's, so soldiers
by beloch 1y ago
Soldiers are not trained to do police work, yet that's what many are asked to do. An informant provides a tip that someone is manufacturing IED's, so soldiers are sent to investigate. They're not trained for that. Worse yet, they're the targets of the crime they're investigating. Police are not typically asked to investigate an attempt on their own lives for good reason.
Even with appropriate training and when investigating crimes that do not target themselves, police are often guilty of abuses. In an occupation, the sheer numbers involved would guarantee abuses even if it were police operating under ideal conditions.
It is usually not feasible to conduct military operations with a huge force of trained police officers. However, even with people of the wrong background investigating without detachment, there should be an expectation for a culture of conscientiousness. That's the truly shocking thing about this article. Soldiers were put into a situation where things were expected to go wrong, but the attitude from command was to let it go wrong gleefully and to help cover it up afterwards. There was a complete surrender to inhumanity, on the part of command, before the conflict even started. That's what is truly reprehensible. Perhaps we must forgive people for doing bad things in the moment and under duress, but there should be no forgiveness for those who do it happily, daily, and without complaint.
This was a failure of command even more than it was a failure of the soldiers who committed crimes.
- tartoran 1y agoI don't buy that, nobody with a shred of humanity shoots handcuffed kids in the back of their heads. Something is wrong with these people as well as with the ones who are protecting them.
- pyuser583 1y agoPeople used to murder their own children undesired a children as a form of population control. It was normal and expected. Murdering defeated enemies, and their children was equally normal and expected. We live in such a wonderful age that we can easily forget many “unthinkable” things are the default of humanity.
- tartoran 1y agoThat doesn't excuse current behavior. We want to live in a world where that does not happen. Do you not? Also in this case it wasn't expected of these special forces to behave this way, they take the liberty to commit atrocities out of pure pleasure.
- pyuser583 1y agoNo but we need to address the fact that in conditions of warfare, this is the human default. It starts it training, warning soldiers they will be tempted to commit war crimes. Looking at case studies where the “norm” has been averted. When it comes to punishing offenders, you have to be very careful not to punish only those who speak out.
- sandspar 1y agoHuman beings have unfathomed depths. You don't know how you'd react under the same pressures. Like, unless you've been there, you simply don't know. Our behavior under extreme stress is unpredictable, even to ourselves. That's the hard part about prison or homelessness or war: it shows you parts of yourself that you wish didn't exist. You're writing this guy off as un-human. I think that's a mistake. If we accept the full complexity of normal human potential, including our own destructive capacity, then we can put systems in place to guard against it. That's why the original commenter said it's the command's fault. They should have constructed a system where something like this is impossible. Military systems must be built to absorb the reality that soldiers will act in contradiction to both their training and their self-concept. Only by accepting moral volatility as an expected input can a military system anticipate the full range of its own possible breakdowns.
- rightbyte 1y ago> They're not trained for that. Not even special forces?
- nradov 1y agoAre you asking specifically about the US Army Special Forces, or special operations in general? In either case they typically don't have much training in law enforcement. Special Forces do have extensive training on building relationships with locals, which can be helpful with investigations and intelligence gathering. There are also Military Police trained in law enforcement. They tend to deal more with force protection and internal investigations. Some US MPs were responsible for the notorious Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal but there have been some reforms since then.
- rightbyte 1y agoI think I meant UK special forces. I would expect them to have better trigger discipline and discipline in general. And it would be somewhat surprising if they didn't practice "search and not destroy" quite alot for WoT. Then again the whole ordeal lacked in ... many things.
- wanderlust123 1y agoThis has to be one of the worst mental gymnastics i have seen in a long time
- moomin 1y agoUK military has way more training on de-escalation than US police…