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I read all the posts, and I'm soundly in the middle. Monday-morning quarterbacking happens far too often with the military, and I'm at least conscious of my own inherent arrogance enough to know that whenever I start by saying "If I were in his position.." I'm totally lying, because I have no fucking idea what I would do in their shoes.
On the other hand, I think a real problem occurs when we aren't allowed to critique something simply for lack of personal experience. Sound judgments about the behavior of others can be made without first experiencing it. We can condemn murder without first murdering. In this case, I think it is a tragic incident (not accident) and I think that the soldiers acted to the best of their ability and training.
What I think lacks is their ability and their training. The approval to fire seemed rather arbitrary (and seemed to be made by someone not even in the field of combat?) and I wonder why the approval is even necessary. Is it a documentation thing? I authorized them to use deadly force because they told me they had AK47s and RPGs? Time, date, personal responsible? If so, I think perhaps additional training needs to go towards soldiers of all stripes that they are being given the authorization to kill based merely on their representation of what is actually happening. Everyone makes mistakes describing what they see, that's OK. I don't even know if it's possible to train someone that because they're at the end of a weapon they need to take additional responsibilty about how they describe the events to those with the authority to authorize firing. But it sure would make me feel better if I knew these things were in place.
Also, I run towards gunfire. I just thought I'd throw that out there.
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"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel
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