US foreign wars: the banality of evil.

Supported by their families at home, American soldiers have been killing people around the world since Vietnam. While their actions were evil, the servicemen themselves were quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither demonic nor monstrous. There were no sign in them of firm ideological convictions. Their immorality – their capacity, even their eagerness, to commit crimes – could be attributed to their ‘thoughtlessness’.

It is our inability to stop and think that permits Americans to participate in mass murder.

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WandererTony · 56-60, M

America is seen by the third world as a bully. A bully whose deeds on foreign soil are camouflaged by shrewd media control to depict them as savours of the world to their citizens back home. War, while initiated by US, was seen as a national sacrifice for humanity by its citizens.

I was too young to follow Vietnam - I read about it later - but saw US funding Iraq in the Iran Iraq war, and then strip them looking for WMD which never existed, just for the oil, while their citizens back home were convinced that Saddam was the devil incarnate.

Osama, a creation of American excesses, was terminated in Pakistan, but Pakistan was not punished for sheltering him.

They bombed the daylights out of Afganistan to take out the Taliban and handed over the nation to the Taliban finally.

But back home the soldiers are heroes. War veteran is a golden star in the family tree. And riot police suppress students in campuses in a supposed democracy.

The third world smirks. But does America care?