This is just... grim.

Grim indeed but not really surprising to me nor even that big a deal; you join the army, you're expected to *actually* kill people.
Watching others do so on video is not only mild by comparison but might actually act as a partial enabler, allowing the troops to act more effectively.
 
Watching other people exterminate people (including women, or "snakes with tits" as reported) on the ground without even caring if they are "taking out" the right people isn't the sort of "enabling" I think any half decent army requires.

When the next few "bad apples" caught roaming around murdering civilians and setting their corpses up to look like they'd been combatants emerges, then we'll see just how effective this enabling is...
 
I wasn't quite sure from this report that those watching the videos were watching for entertainment purposes or for reviewing prior missions with the aim of improving their tactics - although I'm guessing it's the latter. Such reviews are useful in sports for example, watching your own missions could be just as useful. Of course, it could be that they started off as a formal review, but ended up as morbid entertainment. There will always be pricks that take pleasure in other people's suffering, can't avoid that I'm afraid.

As an aside, I'd image knowing that your missions are video taped and reviewed would actually discourage battlefield atrocities. The alternative to this would be to remove the cameras but then you wouldn't know what goes on out there at all. Overall, I think I'd prefer the transparency even if I wasn't always happy with what was being shown.
 
Karlos said:
When the next few "bad apples" caught roaming around murdering civilians and setting their corpses up to look like they'd been combatants emerges, then we'll see just how effective this enabling is...
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Remember that the purpose of soldiers in wars of conquest is to break the people. This is done with terror (always has been) until the people are unwilling to resist the will of the new rulers.
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
Remember that the purpose of soldiers in wars of conquest is to break the people. This is done with terror (always has been) until the people are unwilling to resist the will of the new rulers.
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Ya, except that this strategy has never succeeded in the entire history of mankind.
 
Glaucus said:
Ya, except that this strategy has never succeeded in the entire history of mankind.
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Nothing has ultimately succeeded in the history of mankind. However, territories have been held for centuries by force. However, after a generation people tend to get used to the way things are. Ultimately these systems never last because at some point another player enters the picture bringing their own terror. It's not so much that terror doesn't work, but more that it works for more than one party.
 
Karlos said:
Watching other people exterminate people (including women, or "snakes with tits" as reported) on the ground without even caring if they are "taking out" the right people
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I never actually read the article that closely and didn't realise it was footage of civilians being killed. That said, I'm still not really surprised.

isn't the sort of "enabling" I think any half decent army requires.
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I'm not sure what you mean by "half-decent". They're trained killers whose job is to kill people when they are ordered to kill people.

I just had another look and this sticks out for me:
He defends the decision to celebrate the deaths of Afghans. "People look at it and say you know... young lads are laughing at the enemy being killed," he says. "Well, I don't know if the Taliban do something similar but I'm sure they rejoice when they kill one of us."
When asked by the interviewer in the film what he thinks goes through the head of a Taliban fighter when they see an Apache coming, WOII Farmer replies: "Hopefully a 30mm bullet".
Later in the film, he is defiant about the moral consequences of war: "We're out there do to a job. We're not there to tickle the Taliban, we're out there to hurt them because they have no qualms about hurting us.
"Of the engagements that I've taken part in... I have absolutely no dramas with it. None at all. I don't really care whether they think it's a fair fight. If they're [the Taliban] gonna pick up a weapon and take us on, then best of luck to them."
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I really don't see how anyone can be surprised at this.

War was ever thus.
 
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