War And Murder: No Difference

I can’t help but feel that Darrell Y. Hammamoto’s paper, “Empire of Death and the Plague of Civic Violence” is all too correct in describing the social atmosphere today.  The atrocities are still around—if not exacerbated—by the invisible wars we still fight.  Unlike Viet Nam, however, these atrocities are swept under the rug of so-and-so’s political scandals (sexual, of course), and some actress’s tacky dress that the media gleefully portrays.  Because of this, the connection Hammamoto enunciates between militaristic culture and civilian violence is lost in the ambient noise.  When Hammamoto writes that “our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher”, he make it clear for me that the glorification of war and the persecution of individual violence is extremely contradictory.  How can the act of killing the enemy and killing a civilian be morally different?  After all, everybody is a civilian in his or her own right.  Perhaps those who actually commit these atrocities truly see there is no difference.  I personally believe that most (if not all people) do not actively seek evil.  In order to do evil, those who commit evil acts must go through a series of rationalizations that convert an evil act to one of simple, blameless necessity.  Could it be that mass murderers believe they are on a crusade?  It would not surprise me.  The militaristic atmosphere here certainly seems like unsettlingly fertile ground for that.

-Melody Yee, Section 2 ASA 2