extreme disassociation

In the case about the young Marines pissing on the bodies of dead Afghanis. There is part of me that feels sorry for these young men. That after being brain washed to kill, after facing the horrors of battle, that they would potentially now go to prison for no longer being able to discern between what is “humane” and what is “intolerable,” what is “proper” in the face of war and what is “disgraceful,” seems somehow unfair. It’s similar to how I feel about trying war criminals, about the idea of war criminiality at all. War IS criminal. Why try to make it just in retrospect?

The dissociation from “humanity” that one must acquire to fight such a disembodied war, the disassociation between what is myself–human, worthy, alive, and what is them–enemy, inhuman, evil, dead; is already so extreme. And so base. Why is it then so “unbelieveable” that a soldier would have such disassociation as to piss another human being? Is this not how they are effectively teaching their brains to operate?

Marines talk about how they are so appaled, that this is not how a Marine should act, but presumably a Marine is trained to kill, and is it really possible to kill another human being with humanity?

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