Join the army, meet interesting people, kill them.
During the rule of the Khmer Rouge, 2 million Cambodians (30% of the population) were killed by starvation, torture, or execution. Led by Pol Pot, these communist guerrillas killed people if they didn’t work hard enough, if they were educated or of different ethnicity, if they showed sympathy, or if the fighters simply didn’t like them.
I took this photo at the Killing Fields, a murder camp outside the Cambodian capitol of Phnom Penh. It was sobering, to say the least, to walk among the mass graves and see the shreds of clothing and pieces of bone still littering the ground under my feet.
I understand that they’re not the same thing as the army. But honestly, what’s the difference? Is it the rhetoric, the level of organization, the popular support, the rationales, the intensity, or the simple fact that we’re part of it?
April 5th, 2007 at 9:16 pm EST
We? Are you the official new spokesman for America, Christianity, the Human Race, or just the Webel Family?
Whose army? The Khmer Rouge came to power as a byproduct of the US surrender in Viet Nam. You need to pay more attention to history as it occurred, not as it has been spun by folk singers and left-wing college professors.
What you saw in Cambodia is a warning of what is likely to follow a US collapse in the face of Mohammedan jihad. On your way home, stop by in Darfur and take some pictures of what happens when the wrong army is on the loose.
Never forget who opened the gates here:
http://webelfive.blogspot.com/2007/03/buchenwald.html
You’d better lay off the tea.
April 5th, 2007 at 9:50 pm EST
I have no idea who posted that link above, fyi. (wasn’t me).
Anyhoo… If you read the Old Testament, you can’t help but notice that God was ok with formalized war, often intervening to either help Israel to win or to cause them to lose. It seems to me that most of those wars were justified by their “moral” objectives to rid the land of heathens (usually the edict was to kill every man, woman, child and even livestock, so I guess I would have to agree with Anonymous that when a war is being waged to rid the world of the likes of a Hitler or a Saddam that it would probably be justified. Just think how many of those 2 million Cambodians could have been saved if some nation would have intervened earlier on to stop the insanity. And think how many more Jews would have died in Europe had the Allies decided not to bother with defeating Hitler and his cronies. (Not like they had any intentions of stopping after only six million of them…)
April 5th, 2007 at 11:12 pm EST
There is a big difference between a lawful army engaged in “just war” and the kind of evil poured out on the world by the likes of Pol Pot. Do you “honestly” not see the difference?
April 6th, 2007 at 3:11 am EST
This is always a complicated issue for me too, Lance. When discussing the topic of war with others, people often use WWII as an example. How many more people would have been killed if the United States (and others) didn’t go to war against Germany? But I keep thinking about all this on a personal level. Would it be wrong for me, one person, to kill one other person? In my mind, yes. So what makes war any different? It is still a matter of individuals killing other individuals, regardless of whether we can see the results of dropping a bomb.
Is there such a thing as a just war? Didn’t Jesus encourage us to love our enemies and find other ways to resolve our issues? I just don’t know if I can get behind the rationale that sin is okay as long as it’s for a “good cause.”
April 6th, 2007 at 8:18 am EST
I wish one of the smiley faces below simply had a peace symbol in the middle of it. All I would have to do to appropriately post is click on that peace symbol and click “submit.”
I stand corrected. We should have just let Hitler do his thing. In fact, what we really should have done is send Nancy Pelosi over to talk to him in a really kind voice and ask him to please… no, pretty please stop what he was doing and just be a nice boy. I bet he would have listened to that.
I mean, I bet if we would have kept putting out UN resolutions against Saddam for ANOTHER ten years he would have stopped murdering people in Iraq and started being kind to women, just out of the goodness of his heart.
This doesn’t make me a war-monger, and I would CERTAINLY have a very hard time personally shooting another person. (I’d probably miss anyhow since I’ve never even shot a gun before.) But I have a really hard time ignoring huge sections of the Old Testament.
And I also agree with Lance regarding the unexplainability (cool made up word) of what happened in in Cambodia. Somebody should have stepped in to stop the madness in Cambodia. Pol Pot was in power from 1976 to 1979. If only there would have been a President in charge of the world’s most powerful nation who could have TALKED really kindly to them to try and get them to stop, or at least to play fair! Oh wait, I forgot, there was just such a man in charge of the US during that time (think PEANUTS). Come to think of it, wasn’t he the guy who was peaceful enough to later win a Nobel Peace Prize for all his peacefulness while in office and after he got out?
April 6th, 2007 at 9:42 am EST
Hah! You mean the fellow who let Ahmadinejad and Company hold all those warmongering Americans hostage in Tehran until The Cowboy became president? The fellow who says that Israel is the Bad Guy in the Middle East? The fellow who taught Sunday School? The fellow who says Hugo Chavez is a good man who won his last election fair and square, but that the UN should send observers to make sure that US elections aren’t rigged?
Ah! THAT fellow.
I am still having a hard time equating “we” and “Pol Pot” and “army”.
April 6th, 2007 at 10:57 am EST
“Anonymous”, I think you missed the question marks in my last paragraph. I was throwing out possible answers to my question, not trying to be the “spokesman” for anybody. But since you raise the point, I’d say that you and I both live in an industrialized nation, one that has a military that we support with our money (and loads of it), political action (or inaction), and words (or silence). So yes, I believe that “we’re part of it”, whether we like it or not. But that doesn’t necessarily answer the question.
Steve, it seems that your answer claims that the army must be “lawful” and the cause must be “just”. So as long as these two things meet the right standards, it’s all good? Ok … but I don’t quite get where those standards come from, those standards that justify the intentional killing of other people. Can you clarify please?
Folks, I didn’t originally intend to compare a guerilla army to a modern national army … that’s simply the most appropriate photo that I had for the quotation I wanted to use. But now that I have, I’d say that both are essentially groups of people, often young men with limited education and opportunity, who are highly trained to kill other people without remorse or regret. The propaganda, methodology, intensity, organization, rationales, or uniforms might vary … but at their core, they both kill people. And I have a big problem with that.
Annie, I’m with you … I don’t understand these justifications or interpretations of Jesus’ message. And I agree with the billions of pre-schoolers around the world who know that murder is simply wrong.
April 6th, 2007 at 12:12 pm EST
Ok, I’m not a student of history, but I must say something about the Cambodian genocide … the U.S. military had a lot more to do with it than you might think.
In 1967, the Khmer Rouge were hiding in the Cambodian jungle with only about 2500 troops, greatly outnumbered by Prince Norodom Sihanouk’s forces. Then, in 1968, President Nixon started secret bombing raids over Cambodia because Vietcong soldiers were hiding there. This forced the Vietcong deeper into Cambodia, where they joined forces with the Khmer Rouge. The next year, the U.S. supported a coup of the prince (who then joined the Khmer Rouge) and continued their bombing, causing severe civilian casualties and a lot of resentment against the U.S. In 1973, when the bombing finally stopped (540,000 tons!), the Khmer Rouge grew to over 50,000 soldiers in the midst of the anti-American sentiment. That’s when they invaded Phnom Penh and started the real killing. And who finally intervened? Vietnam … they wanted to stop Pol Pot’s border attacks (which were actually supported by both the U.S. and China!), so they invaded and gained control of Phnom Penh in 2 weeks. The Khmer Rouge retreated to the Thai border and began another guerilla war.
It was the war, not the surrender, that led directly to the skulls that you see at the top of this page.
April 6th, 2007 at 9:27 pm EST
Oh, I get it. Just as the US invasion of Iraq is the cause of the rise of Al Qaeda in that area of the world. Dang it, it seems like its always our fault, us big, bad, imperialistic American cowboys.
Maybe the solution is isolationism. We should all just stay home within our borders and let the rest of the world do whatever they want. Genocide, suppression of women, martyrdom of Christians, AIDS and hunger: none of our beeswax. No policeman needed out there at all.
Come to think of it, we really don’t need authority over here either, if that is the logic. Lets just lay off all the policemen (since them killing a bad guy who has taken an entire grade school hostage and is killing them one by one would be wrong anyhow, it would be killing a person). Hey! Without policemen I would be be able to go faster than a paltry 65 MPH on the highway (especially after experiencing unlimited speed on the Autobahn last month). Let’s do it!
April 6th, 2007 at 10:28 pm EST
‘Cause that’s exactly what I was saying!
</sarcasm>
Point taken. My thinking is probably unrealistic, idealistic, and naive. But it’s what I think … so maybe it’s a good thing that I’m a teacher, not a President!
April 7th, 2007 at 3:45 pm EST
Where does the standard come from? From many places, but there is a whole field of ethics devoted to the concept of “just war”. It’s not something I just made up.
In America, much of that “just war doctrine” comes from our Judeo-Christian heritage. Despite what many (politically biased) media commentators would have you believe, a great deal goes into the decision to declare war on another nation. At that point, soldiers who are following orders, go into battle. They are NOT murderers (as you seem to imply) they are patriots doing their duty.
If the war is NOT just, then that ‘evil’ or ’sin’ falls on the leaders who declaired war, not on the soldiers. There are alot of patriots, some even in YOUR family, who have sacrificed a great deal so that you could have the freedoms you have - calling them murderers or killers should be done carefully and only after alot of thought. (And then, done face to face or with a phone call, not on your blog.)
April 7th, 2007 at 5:35 pm EST
Yes, I agree, Steve. My own father was a medic in the U.S. military … so this is by no means an accusation of individual soldiers and their allegiences or obediences or duties. I simply question the very concept of what we are doing in this day and age in the name of “just warfare” (including murder and much more). Furthermore, I believe that our leaders (and their decision-making abilities) need to be questioned often and thoroughly, especially when they are using so much of our money and reputation to do these things. So I will.
I fully expected this post to raise some interesting, and even heated, discussion, somewhat because of the huge discrepancies between the Christ of the Bible and the Christianity of America. This kind of dialogue is something I really miss over here in China, where an abstract conversation of any sort has been hard for me to come by. So I really hope that my questions and ideas don’t anger you or cause any sort of hard feelings. I sure don’t have any, but I’ve found that my words often have that unintended effect on people.
April 10th, 2007 at 12:21 pm EST
as usual i see this several days after the fact…
Do we have the responsibility of the world? Are we supposed to try to fix things?
As citizens of the US, we should be responsible for our government, we should be required to take an active part in it, to be a part of the solution. Taking a sit doesnt help anyone except those who want you to sit and twiddle thumbs.
Does the same apply to the world? Who holds people responsible? In some countries they are buddhist. Does Buddha hold them responsible? If he doesn’t, do we have to make sure they listen?
The USA isn’t perfect, and yes I agree that the war in Iraq is likely not based on “moral premises”. (keep in mind that i am mulling over Ayn Rand right now and am biased in that direction)
But what about wars the necissatate *gar* the use of war as a factor to save lifes from something? Then shouldn’t we use all force necissary to make people stop doing something that will kill or hurt them?
Like in Cambodia? should we have stopped those people? Should we, then, on this premise of stopping murders, use all possible force on the continent of Africa to stop AIDS, famine, War, Drugs, Illegal trade, as long as we can make a difference and save some lives?
To some degree do we have a responsiblity? As the rich, bloated, morally based and fantastic citizens of THE United States of America?
Meh, I don’t know. I am just a citizen travelling along, singin my song, walkin in a scintillating wonderland.
thats enough thoughts on that. I agree though, Lance. These thoughts aren’t meant to provoke angry diatribe. intense, sure, provoking, yes, but harsh yo, no.
Peace
November 17th, 2007 at 10:22 pm EST
[…] my trip to Cambodia in February 2007, I had the sobering privilege of witnessing the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge’s genocide of 2 million Cambodians (30% of the […]