• 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

  • happybadger [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 years ago

    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.

  • fuckiforgotmypasswor [comrade/them,any]@hexbear.net
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    3 years ago

    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.

    • Hoodoo [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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      3 years ago

      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.

    • Grownbravy [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      3 years ago
      1. Yes he’s a monster
      2. 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

      • fuckiforgotmypasswor [comrade/them,any]@hexbear.net
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        3 years ago

        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.

  • fishnwhistle420 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 years ago

    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

    • Hoodoo [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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      3 years ago

      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

  • RedArmor [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 years ago

    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.

    • Chombombsky [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      3 years ago

      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