The Moral Injury of Pardoning War Crimes

[Zorro]

The president may feel like he’s righting a wrong, but he’s damaging the nation’s moral compass.

Post-traumatic stress — the nightmares, flashbacks and anxiety set off by terrifying events — is a defining injury of the global war on terrorism. But in the past few decades, the mental health community and the military have come to understand that there is a related, intensifying phenomenon called moral injury.

Moral injury doesn’t simply result from witnessing or participating in the horrors of war. Moral injury comes from participating in events that violate soldiers’ morality or, as the Department of Veterans Affairs describes it: “failing to prevent immoral acts of others, or giving or receiving orders that are perceived as gross moral violations.”

A person suffering from moral injury may be unable to trust friends and family, or the society that enabled the immorality. The injured can question whether virtue exists. Moral injury is often described as a bruise of the soul.

To avoid such injury, militaries long ago adopted procedures to ensure that those who don the uniform can do so with honor and then remove it with pride. One of the pillars of that framework is the military justice system; another is societal taboos against aberrant behavior.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/opinion/editorials/trump-gallagher-pardon-war-crimes.html

[handmade34]

1. a must read...

A nation has to know that military action being taken in its name follows morally defensible rules — that soldiers do not, for instance, kill unarmed civilians or prisoners.
To excuse men who have so flagrantly violated those rules — to treat them as heroes, even — is to cast the idea of just war to the winds. It puts the nation and veterans at risk of moral injury, the shattering of a moral compass.

The United States military — and its civilian commander — doesn’t have the luxury of simply asserting that it is morally superior to its enemies. It needs to be morally superior, which means abiding by the rule of law, not some sense of American exceptionalism that presumes that monsters cannot exist in our midst.

[DENVERPOPS]

3. This sends a clear message to all the TrumpHumpers in the military ranks:

This sends a clear message to all the TrumpHumpers in the military ranks:

Trump: do whatever you want under the cloak of the U.S. Military and don't worry, I have your back...
Not any different than President W, Cheney, Rumsfeld years ago...........

[DENVERPOPS]

2. It began years ago

It began years ago under another Republican set of Zealots.

Abu Graib (spelling/)

I have heard that Cheney and Rumsfeld cannot travel to most other countries because they will be greeted as they step off the plane by officers of the Hague, taken directly to the Hague for prosecution for international war crimes.........

[Skittles]

7. should include W

fuck those warmongering bastards

[DENVERPOPS]

8. W

W would get off on a mental deficiency plea.........seriously

His "word salad", according to an addiction person I know who is an expert said it showed one thing. Not Alcohol and Not Cocaine but only a symptom in extreme use of the two of them together sometime in the past, the lasting effects would be present the rest of their life......

[Skittles]

9. yup

people still every day because of W, yet some DUers feel that somehow Trump makes W look better. NO HE DOESN'T.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

4. Thank you for the link, Zorro.

It was a good read.

trumpie said (on twitter, because, of course he did) "We train our boys to be killing machines . . . " And therein lies the problem. No, you idiot, we do not train anyone to be a "killing machine."

The nation has to know that military action being taken in its name follows morally-defensible rules. Their called ROE. As in Rules of Engagement. And killing unarmed civilians is prohibited.

That fat fucking moron in the WH would know this if he read the actual laws we have in place. I think he gets a vicarious thrill out of the murder of innocent people.

[keithbvadu2]

5. Trump will eventually be gone and it will be 'America condones war crimes'.

Trump will eventually be gone and it will be 'America condones war crimes'.

Donald has given any country commingling war crimes a ready-made response.

[TomSlick]

6. What Trump does not understand - indeed cannot understand,

if that the difference between a military force and an armed mob is honor and discipline. He cannot understand because the concepts of honor and discipline are foreign to him.

Discipline takes years to develop and can be lost in a moment. Trump is doing damage to the US military that will take years to repair.