Reuben...fired on a vehicle accelerating into an Iraqi checkpoint. As the vehicle approached the checkpoint, he shot into and stopped the advancing automobile. Approaching it to investigate, the unit saw he had killed the driver. But he had also “splattered his head all over the driver’s child. Six years old. He was sitting in the passenger seat. The fifty caliber does a number on the human body. The man’s head was just gone. It was everywhere.”
Reuben has ruminated over that moment for many years, trying to reconcile how he had followed the standard protocol but with horrific results – and trying to convince himself, as he told us, that he is not a monster.
Most civilians will never carry the burden of mortality that Reuben bears.
No, yeah, you are a fucking monster. I don't give a fuck. The second you realized going into someone elses country and firing into people's fucking civilian homes wasnt gonna be "like Call of Duty" (actual quote -- again, fuck off) any self respecting person who gives a shit about the loss of human life would have left, dishonorably charged or not. Oh, sorry, your EGO is more important.
Boo fucking hoo. I'm sure you wish it was you getting your head blown off with a fucking 50 cal, right? Fuck you. Go have your fucking pity party alone in the corner, or see if you can get the warmongering, racist, profit extracting fucking ghouls you murdered for to give a shit.
- Yes he’s a monster
- The Protocols did what they fucking were supposed to, which was make him a monster.
At least i’m hearing he’s feeling bad about it, instead of yelling about doing his job or some shit like a cop would. Yeah
the crux of this entire piece is "this guy did his job, and now hes sad -- lets feel bad for him."
i suppose him feeling bad that he murdered a father in front of his 6 year old child for the crime of driving a car is preferable to him bragging about it and demanding praise, but frankly the difference is irrelevant to me. if this guy doesn't use his trauma to save future lives and to protest the corporate death machine he uncritically served so he could live out a "Call of Duty" type fantasy, I don't give a shit about him. but to be fair, i have friends who are ex-military who did tours in Iraq and I know that arc takes some time.
A moral person would have just gone AWOL at that point.
A fucking monster complains about how murdering made him feel bad.
NO FUCKING SHIT. WE ARE EVOLVED SPECIFICALLY NOT TO MURDER ONE ANOTHER. THAT BURNING SHAME YOU FEEL IN YOUR MIND IS EVOLUTION TRYING TO TELL YOU HOW WRONG YOU'VE GONE, MOTHERFUCKER.
Describing an incident in which three men attacked his unit, one veteran, Beau, recalled the moral clarity he felt while shooting at a visible combatant.
“I know that they’re bad because they’re shooting at me,” he said.
When the brainworms have totally consumed your brain
Ban every veteran from public employment and political office for life and put them all under FBI surveillance imo. Only way to be safe from our biggest domestic threat.
when were you when yankee loser kill?
i was sat at Afghanistan eating defense spending when Joe Biden ring
‘Jack is kill’
‘no’
Gee I wonder why most of us will never carry the guilt of splattering a mans head all over his 6 year old child. It’s because we knew that’s what war is and have been against this for 20 GODDAMN FUCKING YEARS YOU IDIOTS. I don’t give a fuck about these crocodile tears
How the fuck can leftists figure this out from their own homes, while these morons don't realize the war was a farce after 20 years of deployment? They literally had to keep child sex slaves from escaping, and guard opium fields from the Taliban.
Brainworms can't explain this. These are... Advanced Brainworms
American foreign policy is horrendous 'cause not only will America come to your country and kill all your people, but what's worse, I think, is that they'll come back 20 years later and make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers feel sad.
Zero Dark Thirty, The Hurt Locker, and American Sniper already did this didn't they?
The military members returning from this conflict, and that in Iraq, will not all be traumatized by combat experience, and not all soldiers who deploy have killed. But those who have enter a moral space very few of us share or even particularly understand.
I think its easy to understand, its fucking evil to go into someone elses country voluntarily, shoot people and then say that anyone who resists is a terrorist, "1 civilian dead is 5 new terrorists", fuck off.
Other soldiers and vets essentially look down on you in some ways if you didn’t kill. Thankfully I never was in combat so I didn’t have to be put in that situation, even though I had a combat job. It’s so fucked.
This problem was exacerbated greatly with 'awards' like the Combat Action Badge, if you didn't have a CAB then you may as well been a fobbit.
Towards the end of the deployment, NCO's in my unit would more frequently exit the armored vehicles and draw their weapons on whatever
We got our “deployment patches” in Africa because it technically was a deployment, but we never saw combat. At least I wasn’t a slick sleeve so I got more “respect” from new privates, but was never good enough for NCOs.
Yeah that's just it, the combat patches were awarded to 'everyone' so they invented another ornament to incentivise violence
Edit: and it worked like a charm. When my unit got home, and we got to meet our families again, one of the first questions I got was from my Dad asking why I didn't have a badge on my chest like some of the others...
Lucky my parents didn’t know enough about that stuff and I told them not to fly to my station to see me come back. I can’t make excuses for how I was in the past other than I do not know what I know now.
Comrade, if you’re a communist and consider yourself a ML, you should look at the Party of Communists USA we have a Veterans Commission and Peace and Solidarity Commission (anti-imperialism/war) that we could use your insight on. We would actively help formulate and write the Party line on things like we have gone through and the stances on them. Feel free to PM me if you’d like.
“However, even in a direct engagement, like an ambush, it may not be clear who you are shooting at.” It’s almost as if combat is fucking bullshit guaranteed to result in unintended consequences. They want to be thanked or applauded for that shit? I hope all these veterans kill themselves. I really do. “I know they are bad because they are shooting at me.” No fuck face, you are bad for entering their country and pointing a gun at them. Goddam idiot.
If you killed and achieved nothing good, you're just any other murderer. The people who killed over there caused and justified future attacks in the west, on top of giving them tens of thousands of high-end guns to do it with. Two decades of training in bomb-making, endless footage of Americans being hungry hogs in response to the suffering of the entire Afghan people including those who believed in the US project. Like any Vietnam, Korea, or Latin America vet what legacy can you say you've earned except rightful shame? Social damnation after wasting so much money at the expense of the people at home to murder hundreds of thousands of people you don't know for corporate profits? Losing to people who didn't have satellites or the wOrLd'S mOsT pOwErFuL MiLiTaRy? If you did any of that here you'd get an answer to "Did I kill?" in the form of the death penalty. True crime youtubers would study you like a bug.
"Did you kill anyone?" is a great way to piss off a reactionary veteran and I highly recommend it.
in communist china the social safety net is gated behind military service designed to turn all citizens into brainwashed killing machines
