Humanity Of War

Currently, the only thing that makes the United States superior to what the rest of the world has done in the past millenia, which brought us to our dominance globally, was our respect for human life. This can be disputed but the situation we are in puts us against another ideology, one which Russia does not follow to this day, that accepts and encourages emotion in war. We do not have hardened soldiers with no regret for taking life. Those who lose their emotion often commit crimes which are punished severely, and when not punished the American public has an outcry for the punishment to take place.

This seperates us from the terrorists who target civilians and allow for no neutral zone. They have no emotion when they kill other than hatred. Taking away kindness and compassion for human life creates a terrorist. We do not fight home-grown terrorists on our streets. We do not have ethnic and religious violence caused by the government policies of modern day. Sadly, not long ago the riots in LA and the marches of Martin Luther King were inspired by injustices of our government. Luckily, many of those injustices have been corrected. The populace may have different views, but the government overall has improved.

Russia, however, has not. Their president recently spoke of a terrorist bombing which killed 25 and woulded over a hundred others:

Medvedev called Wednesday for tougher measures to fight militants.

"We must continue to fight them without ceremony and liquidate them without any emotions or hesitation, or we won't succeed," Medvedev said.

Excerpt over. Every American soldier, when no shots have been fired, must approach, declare themselves an American soldier and request a surrender. Should a shootout already have started, all bets are off and the battle is on. Yet, surrender is not an option given by Medvedev. He calls for their "liquidation". To say you must kill them to succeed is part of the failure of the former Soviet Union.

When you see your people angry and rebellious you do not oppress them. When you slaughter your opponents, the humanity in others observes this and knows the wrong doing, which leads to further dissent and a sense of fear which in and of itself creates doubts of a government. By taking away emotion you are becoming a terrorist yourself. I hope the words spoken by Medvedev, like those spoken by our own president, do not reflect the reality of the situation.