Cowalker: exactly. As (Lt. Col.) Dave Grossman demonstrates in his wonderful book, On Killing, the only way you can get normal (i.e. non-sociopathic) people to kill other human beings to to train them not to think of them as human.

BTW, I recommend highly Walter Wink’s treatment of systemic violence (what he calls the “Domination System”) in The Powers That Be, where he points out that the longest-lasting myth in human history, which informs both our politics and our entertainment, is the very myth of redemptive violence that you saw in those cartoons. We’re not a Christian nation, but we are trinitarian: unfortunately, the trinity we worship with our actions comprises Tiamat, Marduk, and Moloch: chaos, creative violence, and child sacrifice.

I wonder, where was it filmed?

Also, as to War and its discontents: I have a book by Nicholas Mosley (His father was THAT Mosley), about his time in WWII. His assessment? “War is both senseless and necessary, squalid and fulfilling, terrifying and sometimes jolly. This is like life. Humans are at home in war (though they seldom admit this). They feel they know what they have to do.”

Dave Trowbridge: “As a matter of fact, yes. It would be so much easier if they weren’t, wouldn’t it?”

As a parent who watched cartoons with children back in the 80′s and early ninteties, I noticed how the Teenage Mutant Turtles and the Transformers and such heroic bands invariably fought off hordes of robots rather than living, sentient beings. They waded into the violence with no reservations, experiencing all the goodness of battle’s adrenaline rush, not having to worry that they were murdering some poor sap who had been forced into killing for the villain of the week. They never had to be concerned about innocent victims in bombarded houses. They never had to face a parent holding the tiny dead body of a son or daughter. Nor did they ever suffer from crippling mutilations or permanently debilitating head wounds.

Sometimes I think people like Crittenden want that kind of experience from a war movie.

Disclosure: I haven’t read this post, but it is rife with boring, played out conservative hand wringing over the evils of hollywood.

Movie-makers want all wars, including the one in Iraq, to simply end. So do I, but as it pertains to the situation in Iraq, I suggest this:

Let’s…

End the War (By Winning It)!

Dr BLT (c) 2007

http://www.drblt.net/music/LetsWIN2C.mp3

I say that it’s not time to bring the troops…

Home

Dr BLT & The Coalition of the Willing

Dr BLT (c) 2007

http://www.drblt.net/music/Home.mp3

How is Jules Crittenden’s from-a-safe-distance perspective on soldiering somehow more valid than Susan Sarandon’s?

The use of the phrase “carnal knowledge” suggests that you look to war for whack-off material. Might want to get an editor to check that one out.

Either way, we’re still going to have to kill them. Deliberately attempting to hamper the ability to do so is not at all helpful.

Then why should I listen to anything you have to say about it?

“Your fanatical, suicidal enemy is human, too.”

As a matter of fact, yes. It would be so much easier if they weren’t, wouldn’t it?

Now, where’s my reality show?