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Well here I am reviving an old thread, so perhaps no one will read this, but I would like to add that there is another reason for introspection or asking yourself, “would you . . .” Extreme horrors come up perhaps rarely, if at all in many peoples lives. If your life happens to be unlucky enough where you actually find yourself in a situation where there is a burning baby in a building ( for example ), and you can risk your life to save the baby, then it helps if you’ve thought the situation out in advance.
Here’s my example: the My Lai Massacre
My Lai
Please take the time to read my reference as it is only a page or so long. However, here are some cliff notes.
U.S. Soldiers entered a village thought to be occupied by enemy combatants. As ordered, they entered the village aggressively ( no problem in my opinion with this, indeed, if they shot everything that moved when first entering the village, I wouldn’t have a problem given the intelligence they had). Once they secured the village, they found no draft age men. Only approximately 500 women and children and baby’s and old men. The lieutenant, began barking orders, even though there was a captain present that outranked him. The orders he instructed were to kill every man, woman, and child and animal and burn the village. The soldiers, who had rounded up the unarmed villagers, began by grabbing some young children and throwing them down a well, then tossing a grenade into the well. One soldier shot at an infant, missed, his companions laughed at him, he stepped 3 steps closer, shot again, missed, his companions laughed some more, then he got right up to the baby and shot it. The soldiers began machine gunning down the unarmed villagers. A baby tried to suck on his dead mothers tit and a soldier bayoneted it. The villagers were rounded up and forced into a ditch. The soldiers fired automatic weapons into the ditch but had a hard time killing everyone because the mothers fell on top of their children. However, the children that were old enough to walk, soon got up from underneath their mothers and began to walk around, at which time, the soldiers fired on them and killed them. All together, according to U.S. sources, the soldiers murdered over 300 unarmed civilians. According to Vietnamese sources, that name each victim, there were 504. An American soldier photographed the whole incident.
Now. What would you do if you were one of the soldiers? As Borodog pointed out, who knows. Many soldiers refused to participate, but would you have taken a more active role then just refusal to obey orders? Now that you know such a thing could happen, you can anticipate it by asking yourself the question . . . What would I do?
This whole story hit home to me even harder when I wiki’d the My Lai Massacre. Scroll down to the second picture. Most people probably have little empathy for babies because of their non-sentience. But look at the little girl, perhaps 7 or 8 years old who is clutching at her mother. Look at the total horror registering on her face as she knows she is about to be murdered.
My lai wiki
Actually guys, this incident has always disturbed me. I didn’t know the proper venue for airing my angst, but Borodog’s question seemed as good as any.
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I mentioned them in another thread. The Milgram studies, inspired greatly by stories of war crimes, clearly show the majority of us would have participated in the massacre if we had been there.
Here is a wiki:
clicky
The finding is replicated across a wide variety of cultures and genders, and seems to be a generalized trait in humans.
A very interesting debate that arises from this when looking at psychology in warfare is an increased look at the role of the officer/operative leader - if he can make men under his command violate their most base principles, then for all practical purposes his principles and authority are the most important ones.