The opening of the New York Times editorial on Saturday made little sense.
It is always a shock — and a cause for deep sadness — when a gunman fires malevolently at crowds of innocent people. We have seen it far too often: at Columbine High School in Colorado a decade ago; on the campus of Virginia Tech two years ago; at a center for immigrants in upstate New York in April; and in downtown Orlando, Fla., where a gunman shot and killed one person and wounded five others on Friday.
Still, this week’s rampage at the sprawling Fort Hood Army base in central Texas seems especially shocking.
As many of the commenters pointed out (such as this one), it is not especially surprising that with the number of people being sent back into the war zone that one of them should flip. Given that the purpose of the army is to massacre people, it can hardly be surprising that it should end in a massacre.
Watching the massacre and its aftermath is of course shocking, but more shocking than when a young person massacres their peers? The only conceivable justification for this can be reverence for the armed forces, but very little else makes any sense. These people have signed up for fighting wars and know the terrible toll that the wars are taking on their mental health. There really isn’t such a vast difference from them being cut down by an IED on tour, and anyone who doesn’t appreciate this doesn’t appreciate the terrible pressures they are under and the ongoing sacrifices in depression, PTSD and broken families and Bob Hertbert had explained this on the previous day.
But the Times’s own David Rhode had recently described on the front page his own experience of being on the wrong end of a UAV attack in Afghanistan.
Our nightmare had come to pass. Powerful missiles fired by an American drone had obliterated their target a few hundred yards from our house in a remote village in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
Dozens of people were probably dead. Militants would call for our heads in revenge.
Rhode thought dozens of people were probably killed. Given the trail of carnage left by the repeated attempts to take out Baitullah Mehsud we would have to be very naive to believe that every person killed by a UAV strike was a combatant. But of course the victims of the Fort Hood were almost all combatants. Why should we think that the Afghans value their own sons any less.
This is the New York Times. Our ability to think about ethics has almost all gone. Is it any wonder we are beset with so many self-inflicted problems.
The Horror
As many of the commenters pointed out (such as this one), it is not especially surprising that with the number of people being sent back into the war zone that one of them should flip. Given that the purpose of the army is to massacre people, it can hardly be surprising that it should end in a massacre.
Watching the massacre and its aftermath is of course shocking, but more shocking than when a young person massacres their peers? The only conceivable justification for this can be reverence for the armed forces, but very little else makes any sense. These people have signed up for fighting wars and know the terrible toll that the wars are taking on their mental health. There really isn’t such a vast difference from them being cut down by an IED on tour, and anyone who doesn’t appreciate this doesn’t appreciate the terrible pressures they are under and the ongoing sacrifices in depression, PTSD and broken families and Bob Hertbert had explained this on the previous day.
But the Times’s own David Rhode had recently described on the front page his own experience of being on the wrong end of a UAV attack in Afghanistan.
Rhode thought dozens of people were probably killed. Given the trail of carnage left by the repeated attempts to take out Baitullah Mehsud we would have to be very naive to believe that every person killed by a UAV strike was a combatant. But of course the victims of the Fort Hood were almost all combatants. Why should we think that the Afghans value their own sons any less.
This is the New York Times. Our ability to think about ethics has almost all gone. Is it any wonder we are beset with so many self-inflicted problems.