FUN AND GAMES IN THE KILLING FIELDS

Senior Marine Corps General says, "It's fun to shoot some people."

I don't care how valuable this general is deemed by the high command or how many explanations are given for his remarks, any man who says it's "fun" to shoot people, ANY people, has a warped soul and has no business leading Americans into battle. As a daughter of a professional military family (career Air Force officer dad, numerous nephews, career fighter-jock brother-in-law, etc.), I can easily understand heat-of-battle anger, fear, self-defense, defense of a fellow soldier, duty, and other powerful emotions motivating the killing of an identified or suspected enemy. But "fun"???? I can even imagine it as being, under some conditions, satisfying. But to use the word "fun" in association with causing the death of another human being seems to me a dangerously morally deficient attitude. And now this jerk is going to be glorified in a major motion picture, portrayed by Harrison Ford.

It is not a small or incidental thing to take the life of another human being. Police officers who are forced to kill criminals in the line of duty routinely receive psychological counseling because it is recognized that the very act of killing another person causes a wound in the soul of decent human beings. For a military leader to declare that killing anyone, even the most despicable, is a hoot and a pleasure is despicable and beyond justification.

This is Donald Rumsfeld's military. It's essentially a Republican military, where "it's okay if you're an American," because we are superior to...well, just about everybody, I guess. This gang dehumanizes and demonizes not only the "enemy" but their own fellow Americans who dissent from the wing nut policies. It's terrifying to me, especially because that kind of attitude is contagious...it almost makes me want to put people of such attitudes as the General in a shooting arcade and let them see how much "fun" it is to be on the other side of the gun. Forgive me, Lord.