In response to reports that US Marines committed atrocities at Haditha, alleged "US President" George Bush has said "nobody is more concerned about these allegations than the Marine Corps." While it might be arguable that the families, neighbors and friends of the victims of this vicious crime might, in fact, be even "more concerned" than the Marine Corps. Still, it is heartening to learn that the US Military is instituting "ethics training," presumably to avoid such problems in future. Surely, had they simply attended some classes and read some appropriate pamphlets the Marines would have known that dragging children from under beds and shooting them is unethical. Right?
However, I've learned from my top secret unnamed sources deep inside the Pentagon, that coming up with instructions on how to be an ethical killing machine hasn't been as easy as imagined. I've managed to secure from my sources the following questions which have been deleted from the US Military Ethics final exam, having been deemed "problematic" by the brass.
Ethics training question # 214
If someone ruled a country that had vast resources, the control of which would help secure the wealth and prosperity of your own country, but that person could not be counted on to behave in ways satisfactory to you, the ethical thing to do would be
a)develop an international policy of respectful interdependence and sustainable development, moving toward an overall equalization of wealth and an equitable distribution of resources among all peoples of the earth.
b)create a fictitious story that the ruler had dangerous weapons-- a small fraction of the dangerous weapons you had--and argue that this made it imperative to invade and occupy the country, which, even if the fictitious story were true, would be a violation of
international law.
c) bomb the shit out of them.
Ethics training question # 307If you are holding prisoners the ethical thing to do would be...
a)follow the Geneva Conventions.
b)invent some ridiculous category, such as "enemy combatants" and use it as a pretext to hold people without charges and torture them indefinitely.
c)bomb the shit out of them
Ethics training question #392
If you had a powerful weapon, in fact more powerful weapons than everyone else on the earth combined, and you were the only one who had ever used this weapon, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, AND you found out that someone you didn't like was doing research that might, some years in the future allow them to make one of these weapons, the ethical thing to do would be...
a)talk to everyone who had such a weapon about everyone getting rid of all those weapons, including yourself.
b) threaten to attack the person doing the research and circulate stories that he/she was an evil violator of human rights and was dangerous to everyone in the world.
c) bomb the shit out of them.
Ethics? As the Marines shout to each other as they head into battle: "Get some, Motherfucker!"