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March 7, 2005
Reasonable behavior in an unreasonable situation
Reuters is carrying an article that reports some rather disturbing behavior by some Florida National Guards in Iraq.
Once I got past my immediate righteous indignation I started to think about it a bit more - from a safe distance, sitting on a ferry with no one shooting at me or otherwise trying to end my life in a violent and abrupt fashion.
That really makes all the difference in determining rational behavior, not being in a combat zone and all.
I've never been shot at - but I can only imagine I'd take it quite personally.
I'm not sure how much "we" (the we that are sitting safe on this side of the water, far from the violence) can really get into their (the they on the other side of the water, close to the violence) heads.
It's not an original thought, it's the central tenet of A Few Good Men for instance - but it's still troubling.
How much rational behavior can we really expect, or demand, from persons involved in an irrational situation? (And I'd argue that there's no part of people running about shooting each other that can really be called rational.)
There's clearly a line - and I think some of the behavior described in that article crosses that line - but if asked to draw the line in the proverbial sand, I don't know that I could. I suppose the deciding factor here is that, by the fact that the soldiers involved attempted to destroy the evidence they clearly knew they had gone beyond the bounds of acceptable behavior.
Oh, and am I the only one that saw the irony in the last bit of the article?
The Palm Beach Post stated on its Web site it did not post video showing the gruesome aftermath of a suicide bombing and excluded the audio portion because of profane language.
I, for one, am grateful that the media saw fit to protect us from strong language while showing us acts of barbarism.
Posted by dberger at March 7, 2005 7:16 PM