"There’s no easy way to kill somebody. You don’t just take somebody’s life and then go on about your business for the rest of the day. That stays with you. And cracking jokes is a way of pushing that stuff down. That’s why so many soldiers come back home and they’re no longer in the situations where they have other things to think about or other people to joke about what happened … and they explode."
I think a lot of people who jumped to conclusions about this video should take these words to heart.
If you are an American taxpayer, you also pay for their psychiatry and medication for the rest of their lives too when they come back, even if they don't "explode".
I have a friend who was drafted into Vietnam, whose airport was overrun and he had to defend himself with a handgun. To this day he still has serious mental issues from being put in a position to have to kill people face-to-face.
Many soldiers in Iraq were just ignorant kids who rushed to sign up after 9/11 with their misguided thinking they'd go to war against those who did that. Instead they were sent to a manufactured war in Iraq. Doesn't justify this behavior in the least but it does give some insight.
That issue is addressed at the end of the article, and I can vouch for it - soldiers have to find a way to take the situation lightly at the time. It's the only way they can deal with what's going on at the time.
Well, I won't argue with you that the more honorable response to accidentally killing children would probably be to break down in tears, go home and commit ritual seppukku.
However, these guys are paid to carry out the nasty state business of killing. It's their job. The immediate question is whether they did their job properly here. Did they carry out their orders properly? A bigger question is whether those orders were correct in the first place.
The question is NOT whether they responded to a killing with appropriate remorse. That part is pretty much irrelevant as soon as you volunteer to kill for the state.
I'm afraid you've got it the wrong way round. The detached non-emotional tone adopted in the recording doesn't contradict the assertion that fighters may adopt a detached attitude during conflict as a way of pushing down emotions.
I guess we project our prejudices into how we interpret the vid. Their job is to kill enemy combatants. Do you expect them to say "oh dear, we hit the people we were aiming at, how terrible". Of course not. To me the judgements on who and what to hit were verging on the 'trigger happy', but sorry, I didn't see or hear evil bloodthirsty yanqui imperialists.
I think a lot of people who jumped to conclusions about this video should take these words to heart.