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by andrewflnr
383 days ago
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> Everyone is capable of murder in the right circumstances. Citation needed. I don't think this is true, and if it was it wouldn't change anything. Notably, the individual level of circumstances required matters a lot, pragmatically even if you don't care in principle. |
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Think about training soldiers and the concept of “non-firers”. I’m not an expert on those things but the fact that training soldiers to kill is hard, and no one has a great solution even after a lot of effort, and passive combat personnel concepts even exist at all, I think gives evidence to the idea that not everyone can be a murderer, even under extreme circumstances.
“ Gen. S.L.A. Marshall once described war as “the business of killing”. And yet many war-fighters throughout history have gone out of their way to avoid it. Marshall himself estimated (though some say he exaggerated, or even fabricated) that only 15-25 per cent of infantry soldiers in the Second World War fired their weapons in any given battle. The rest were so-called “non-firers”; they had the opportunity to shoot at enemy soldiers but failed to do so. Marshall added that even those who did shoot often deliberately missed their target — they were so-called “mis-firers”. These “passive combat personnel”, as they are sometimes called, have long been a thorn in the side of military institutions. War is a “competition in death and destruction”, in the words of Henry Shue, and these individuals deliberately forego opportunities to score points for their own team.”
https://www.abc.net.au/religion/ned-dobos-military-training-...