BREAKING: US MARINE THROWS PUPPY OFF A CLIFF

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Even more simple than I imagined.  How about that.

OH THAT TOTALLY EXPLAINS EVERYTHING IN A PLAUSIBLE WAY!

Oh wait, it doesn't.

It's pricks like that who give a bad name to people like my dad and siblings, who DON'T ACT LIKE WAR IS A FUCKING VIDEO GAME.

You know what my dad thinks of guys like that? He'd as soon shoot them as the enemy, because they're a detriment. Oh, he made a mistake? There are no room for stupid, petty "mistakes" in a war.

[Sir Squid Diddimus]

like i said...

douchebag.

hey man, if gramma gets sick can we throw her off a cliff?

for the record, i too have military family.
dad went to korea, uncle to vietnam.

hmm....don't recall any animal abuse stories.
heard plenty of "lost a buddy there" stories and i don't like that shit either.

[Thurnez Isa]

the US is at war with stray dogs?

I was really hoping they would invade Iran first
they've been dangling that possibility in front of me for some time now

[Cain]

We're fighting the stray dogs abroad so we dont have to fight them here!

[FingFeng]

We're fighting the stray dogs abroad so we dont have to fight them here!

I note that Randoms comments were mainly aimed at me, so let me try to place my comments in context

By your comments I can only conclude that none of you have been in the military, nor do you really know anybody who is or was in the military at some point in their life.  It is equally obvious that somewhere along the line a few of you became firmly entrenched with the meme "all military personal are brainwashed into being mindless killing machines".

I didn't say all, but war does tend to harden people and violence towards children, pets and loved ones is a sign of a growing inability to relate.  Military cousellors have to deal with this quite a lot as do civilian therapists at a time of conflict.

To answer the question I don't have any friends or relatives that have been in the military (unless you count my grandfather who was stationed in Burma during the big one).  I have however had to deal with people who have suffered from the effects of PTSD and I'm familiar with a lot of case studies on military emotional burnouts.

My comments regarding an inability to relate stand as a professional opinion.  They are also the opinion of many army doctors working in the british army so I feel the comments where pretty much justified.  The fact that you have relatives who do not (one assumes) have problems relating is hardly the issue.

It is a medical fact that many others do.

My point was that for them a 'fluffy pink bunny' would be despised because it represents a banality and is representative of the part of them that was taken away.  They've been 'somewhere else' and it is somewhere VERY difficult to come back from.  Again, not all... but it is certainly a very real symptom of such cases.

Of course, I guess there are some things you just don't talk about in the corps.

All of you are intelligent enough to realize that such a belief is every bit as ignorant as the meme "all niggers are thieving motherfuckers" or "all women are whores".  Be that as it may, these are your beliefs so I suppose I should "respect" your beliefs, such as they are.

My belief is that it is all too easy to go gooey eyed over a puppy but considerably more difficult to understand the stresses and frustrations of the man who threw it.  The typical reaction ?  Lynch him.

I still say the puppy isn't the issue.  The US is on a merry rampage and the guys paying for it are the ones on the front lines... when they come home, expect many more puppies thrown.

I had to deal with a lot of people (even after the Falklands for example) a few familes, relatives and the men and women themselves.  A lot of figurative puppies got thrown and a lot of families broke up as a result.

Whilst I may not have your view, the view I have is certainly a considered one.

That said, I may not have aired it in the best way and for that I apologise.


~Fing Feng III

[Faust]

Nice wording in your reply, btw.  Did it ever occur to you that... never mind.  You want to keep your precious world paradigm.  Ignorance being bliss and all that.

my precious world paradigm? Tell me more about my views which i have not expressed. I know the kind of shit that goes on, a lot of which is completely ignored by our wonderful supermen the military, people disappear into camps in africa, i watched the video of the reporter being raped with the broken bottle by whatever little junta was in at the time and the countless videos of troops being killed in iraq, I know what kind of shit they face out there and the brutality that troops can face on a daily basis. I know the effects violence have on a troop, my father was thrown in at nineteen years of age to fight against Turkey, he never sadistically killed any animals though.
I'm not squeamish to death killed, I worked in my uncles abattoir when i was six and the first time I saw a man hanged was around the same time.
Even if he had to kill the dog rather then keep it, regardless of what you say about how the bullets would fail to kill the dog immediately, I am still pretty certain its less barbaric then having the creature plummet.

I hate unecessary cruelty an suffering.

[Triple Zero]

You're right, I'm not making a point, and I should be.  We have a saying "What happens in the field, stays in the field".

why?

Was the guy out of line?  Yeah, a little bit. 

just a tiiiiiiny littlebit

WTF MAN, HE THREW A PUPPY OFF A CLIFF

and he's not even sorry for it. no he's sorry that it was shown.

also that puppy in the video sure looks sick.

Does it make him a shithead?  Meh.  I don't know him, so I can't say for sure.  Then again, none of you can either.

of course it makes him a shithead.

how can you doubt this? even if the guy was doing the puppy a favour by killing it, any mercy-kill is supposed to show some fucking respect. it doesn't seem like he was in a particular hurry like "oshit i gotta kill this puppy right now, there's no time to do it properly, let's throw it off the cliff then", so, yes, overlooking that sort of thing is pretty much what makes people a shithead.

If LCpl. Motari has already faced Office Hours for the incident, prosecuting him just to satisfy the bloodlust of the folks back home is both illegal and immoral.  But this is an emotional issue, isn't it....  Or is it?

no this is about retarded persons like you that keep digging for excuses for some shithead that threw a puppy of a cliff.

Unfortunately their weapons proved insufficient to the task.  It seems assault rifles are made to wound and nine millimeter pistols are made to kill.  Go figure.

so, wait. are these the same soldiers that went through rigorous training and brainwashing (like puppy throwing 101), and they couldn't use their guns to off one dog? [and no, i don't really want to watch that vid either]

if "assault rifles are made to wound" and not to kill, how come these soldiers didn't know about that? sounds like a good thing they figured out this trivial detail while trying to kill a dog and not in an actual combat situation or anything .. 

[LMNO]

Ok, I've seen the video.

Before the guy throws the dog off the cliff, he turns to the cameral and smiles.

A soldier who was putting a sick/wounded dog out of it's misery out of a sense of compassion probably wouldn't be happy about it.

[AFK]

I remember Nova did a feature after Gulf War I where they talked about the environmental havoc Saddam's army wreaked on Kuwait.  One thing they showed was how a bunch of the Iraqi soldiers had set up shop in a Kuwait zoo.  They showed some Camel carcasses that had obviously been used for target practice.  (that is the Camels were alive when they were used as targets).  Anyway, this thread reminded me of that. 

[FingFeng]

I remember Nova did a feature after Gulf War I where they talked about the environmental havoc Saddam's army wreaked on Kuwait.  One thing they showed was how a bunch of the Iraqi soldiers had set up shop in a Kuwait zoo.  They showed some Camel carcasses that had obviously been used for target practice.  (that is the Camels were alive when they were used as targets).  Anyway, this thread reminded me of that. 

That's what war does, on both sides of the fence.

You're right, I'm not making a point, and I should be.  We have a saying "What happens in the field, stays in the field".

why?

Was the guy out of line?  Yeah, a little bit.

just a tiiiiiiny littlebit

WTF MAN, HE THREW A PUPPY OFF A CLIFF

Yeah, but what happens in the field... blah 

Basically, these guys have gone through hell and back and they are pretty fucked up.  Anyone who thinks not should consider that the Falklands Conflict (which was a really minor scuffle in the scheme of things) ... resulted in around 250 british deaths in the zone and around 300 suicides after returning home.  Despite being NOTHING LIKE what these guys have been going through in shitholes like Afghanistan.

And when I say suicides we're not talking freshfaced impressionable kids here, we're talking about 2-Para and 42-Commando squadron.  what they went through was nothing like the hellholes of Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.  So honestly, expect that puppies WILL get thrown... both literally and figuratively.

War makes people do things like this.  It makes them come back and beat on their kids and wives.  It makes hard Paratroop Reg't and Commando Reg't commit suicide in peace time because they just can't connect with society anymore... it makes people hate anything that reminds them of the part of themselves they lost.

You'd think after Vietnam most Americans would realise the true cost of war.


So, the guy threw a puppy off a cliff... big deal.  There's a well understood mechanism at play here and it is one the army always downplays.  They HAVE to cus can't have a well adjusted killing machine with a social conscience.

The rational reaction would be to comfort it then break its neck in a single move (Marines certainly shouldn't have a problem with this) or to expend two rounds into its skull... hurling it off a cliff is an example of how PTSD manifests itself as the inability to connect, empathise and care.

It isn't realy surprising though since empathy, social conscience and humane standards of decency and care can quickly kill a man on the front line.

The problem is that we place these men and women in such shitty situations and then demand that they show some humanity.  Trust me, you can have one or the other but not both... either an ape with an assault rifle and no emotion... or a man who sheds a respectful tear over a wounded puppy.

Hence my comments which Random appears to have taken to heart.


Whilst I may feel bad for the puppy, I cannot blame the man.  The problem is twisted foreign policy and the ritual dehumanising of individuals in pursuit of economic advantages for the rich.



~Fing Feng III
'red for blood , white for glory , and blue... for a boy' - R McGough (from Why patriots are a bit nuts in the head)

[hooplala]

If we could harness DUMB as a form of fuel, this thread would be a fucking GOLDMINE.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Whilst I may feel bad for the puppy, I cannot blame the man.  The problem is twisted foreign policy and the ritual dehumanising of individuals in pursuit of economic advantages for the rich.

I gotta disagree Fing Fing... We are, all of us, responsible for our actions. Sure there may be twisted policy, dehumanizing training, horrific conditions... however, he voluntarily signed up for all of it. It's not like PTSD is some brand new thing, or psychological damage to soldiers is an unknown, that he can't be blamed for.

Every soldier must take personal responsibility for every death they cause, just like any other human. Having the blessing of some social/tribal system and wearing a fancy jacket doesn't change that.

[Roo]

The problem is twisted foreign policy and the ritual dehumanising of individuals in pursuit of economic advantages for the rich.

I think the problem is a little more personal than that. Blaming the government isn't much different than blaming the soldier. Either way, we're passing the buck on the whole situation, which is why we didn't learn from Vietnam or any other war. Instead of taking responsibility for the government that sends these people off to war, we keep electing the same bullshit politicians, and then blaming them when it all goes wrong. And instead of recognizing that making people into killing machines does wonky things to their brain, and sending them into horrific situations does even more fucked up things, we just send them home, where they have to throw a puppy off a cliff before we realize that maybe that's not such a good idea. 

Sure there may be twisted policy, dehumanizing training, horrific conditions... however, he voluntarily signed up for all of it.

Perhaps. Or maybe he got recruited under the premise that by signing up, he would have his education paid for, get to see a bit of the world, and have a chance to get the hell out of his hometown.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Sure there may be twisted policy, dehumanizing training, horrific conditions... however, he voluntarily signed up for all of it.

Perhaps. Or maybe he got recruited under the premise that by signing up, he would have his education paid for, get to see a bit of the world, and have a chance to get the hell out of his hometown.

And that somehow magically changes the fact that this guy volunteered to join a organization that is trained, designed and used for mass murder? I do not accept the "Dur, those poor boys got tricked into joining" bullshit. Maybe we could make that argument in the 50's, when WWII was still fresh in the minds of individuals. Now though, after Korea, after Vietnam, after a generation of wars for corporate interests... naivety seems like a silly excuse to me.

[FingFeng]

And that somehow magically changes the fact that this guy volunteered to join a organization that is trained, designed and used for mass murder? I do not accept the "Dur, those poor boys got tricked into joining" bullshit. Maybe we could make that argument in the 50's, when WWII was still fresh in the minds of individuals. Now though, after Korea, after Vietnam, after a generation of wars for corporate interests... naivety seems like a silly excuse to me.

I think you're forgetting that the UN changed the face of the US Army role until just recently.

Whilst I may feel bad for the puppy, I cannot blame the man.  The problem is twisted foreign policy and the ritual dehumanising of individuals in pursuit of economic advantages for the rich.

I gotta disagree Fing Fing... We are, all of us, responsible for our actions. Sure there may be twisted policy, dehumanizing training, horrific conditions... however, he voluntarily signed up for all of it. It's not like PTSD is some brand new thing, or psychological damage to soldiers is an unknown, that he can't be blamed for.

Every soldier must take personal responsibility for every death they cause, just like any other human. Having the blessing of some social/tribal system and wearing a fancy jacket doesn't change that.

I see where you're coming from but I'm not entirely sure that most marines DID sign up for this.  The US army has, since vietnam, tried to be seen as a policing force... For a long time there was the feeling that the UN meant that most of their work would be blue-capped... peace keeping and the like.  I'm sure a lot of people signed up thinking they were making a difference for good in the world.

And, as Roo points out, the recruiters advertise it very well as a chance to make the most of yourself, to become self reliant, educated, assertive and to see the world... they are quick to tell you that the modern army is all about education, skills and self-betterment.

They tend not to mention the rampant PTSD problems, the suicides and the familial breakdowns which DO occur.


I do understand what you're saying, that this doesn't absolve him of a personal moral responsibility... I'm just saying that I can see clearly how such concepts can disintegrate.  More people commited suicide after the Falklands than were killed on active duty... this shows the extreme mental states that exist at a time of war and that such extreme states can persist far into peacetime.

Yes, it was horrible, it was senseless, it was cold and callous... Yet I find it difficult to blame the man on a whim, based on some standard of morality we civilians can afford.  You've got to be pretty cold to get the job done and he's in a very different place to you and I.

Even when he comes home, he will likely carry all of this with him... just like countless others he may experience guilt, self-loathing, anger and a difficulty relating to society or even his own family.  I hardly see those effects of war as voluntary.

But thats just my take.  Perhaps it is just my duty as a healthcare professional to neither blame nor absolve but just try to understand.  If I was anyone else I'd probably just kneejerk about the fate of the puppy.


~Fing Feng III