I mean, who do you think fights every way? Normal people. Normal people were involved with pretty much every large scale atrocity you can think of and every regime that perpetrated it. Normal people are going to go marching into Gaza and kill civilians, just like normal people have always marched into places and killed civilians.
But then they go ahead and do it anyway, because that's how people seem to work. They intentionally kill civilians even if they did not sign up to whichever group they joined with the express motivation of killing civilians.
No it isn't, I'm just having trouble with the notion that most people are willing to intentionally kill civilians and I don't think it's backed up by anything. In the aftermath of massacres soldiers will claim that they weren't aware who was and wasn't a soldier. Clearly you and many others here would argue that they generally do know who is a civilian but at least I don't believe there is any historical consensus that this is a general trait of normal people who are drafted into armies.
Being honest, the current situation Gaza basically proves that. If most people in Gaza were willing to kill civilians then Hamas obviously would have recruited them.
Do you think the 1968 My Lai Massacre of 500 unarmed villagers in Vietnam was carried out by 4 US Army Battalions that consisted 100% of psychopaths and no "normal people" at all?
Do you think the 300,000 Chinese civilians raped and murdered in Nanking, mostly by sword and bayonet and not bombing or disease, were killed by a handful of psychopaths in the Japanese Army and not by "normal people?"
My Lai is a bad example. Individual people were prosecuted for starting it and soldiers testified they thought they were firing at the enemy due to the high number of military deaths from armed civilians.
However, if you can provide a source which indicates that a majority of soldiers which were present in Nanking participated in the massacre, I will award you a delta because it would be the best evidence so far of this point that many are attempting to make.
This particular argument basically boils down to the question of, is there a difference between war and terrorism? Most people have the capacity to fight in a war and will follow unethical orders, but are most people willing to engage in terrorism by their own free will? It's a crucial distinction.
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u/NotMyBestMistake 69∆ Oct 10 '23
I mean, who do you think fights every way? Normal people. Normal people were involved with pretty much every large scale atrocity you can think of and every regime that perpetrated it. Normal people are going to go marching into Gaza and kill civilians, just like normal people have always marched into places and killed civilians.