Thoughts about US military/ police talking like kindergartners? (bad guys)

[Bossy Monkey]

Maybe there's no moral relativism in a foxhole, either, but it's always disconcerting to hear Pentagon spokesmen or police detectives talk about looking for/ going after "the bad guys". Admittedly, the latter by definition are trying to catch criminals who by society's definition are bad guys, but I always heard this weird thing about folks being innocent until proven guilty. The Pentagonians, however, are either betraying a frighteningly childish view of the world or are taking advantage of or playing to the frighteningly childish worldview of most Americans. Which is it? What do you think?

[Stephanie]

1. They get it from cop shows

They got it from TV. That's what's really sad.

[Eric J in MN]

2. I'm more disgusted when they say that civilians they killed

I'm more disgusted when they say that civilians they killed with their bombs were "military-age males."

As if every male between the age of 18 and 65 is acceptable to kill.

[Bossy Monkey]

3. I'm glad not to have heard this, but couldn't say I'm surprised

that they would say such a thing. Even within a misadministration of evil swine, the evilest swine seem to have taken over at every turn.

[Trillo]

4. Both. But Childish? No.

The training of the good/bad opposite starts the moment someone seeks to manipulate another. Parents do it first in the earliest training, there are "good" behaviors and "bad" behaviors. I've read that parents, in general, tell their children how bad they are a lot more then noticing and telling them when they're being good.

This training continues in school. Besides the Bad/Good polarity, children are introduced to a rating system, sometimes using stars on a paper, but most notably in the grading scale of A-F; "A" being the best good, and "F" being the worst bad, with a couple thrown in the middle like a "C" for not good and not bad, just average. Because of our inequality, only a few are "good" with "A" grades, most are neither good nor bad, and a few are "bad" with "F" grades, whereupon all sorts of "special manipulations" are interjected into those students' lives.

These early conditionings persist throughout our whole lifetimes: they are something all of us are intimately familiar with.

As adults, in civilian life, we have a more complicated set of rules whereby bad behaviors aren't rewarded with money or food, the worst behaviors are rewarded with jail time--where food is given and work required--the best good behaviors are supposed to be rewarded with more money, but the highest paid appear often to be morally bankrupt, greedy, and sometimes criminal.

The military deals with a simpler set of conditions: survival or non-survival. This survival, in the hierarchical system, depends upon orders being followed; this is unlike the civilian system where people are free to choose what directions to follow. The military system presupposes those higher up and at the top of the command chain are giving orders that will lead to survival, and that not following those orders leads to non-survival.

So in answer to your question, it is both; but it is not childish. Children haven't yet learned how to survive a world filled with predators. The military has survived.

The logical outgrowth of the most violent (multiple militaries of different nationalities) being ordered into no-win situations by incompetent leaders, joined by a technologically advanced society and weapons, leads directly to Armageddon-like scenarios.