ريّان نور

Walk down one of the market streets, rue Montorgueil, or rue Daguerre in the XIVe, there are a few of these lined with shops and cafés.

Joyeux anniversaire my dear, enjoy Paris. May I suggest the Sainte Chapelle rather than Notre-Dame, and the Musée d'Orsay rather than the Louvre. And at night, hang around Place Monge/rue de la Contrescarpe rather than the Champs Élysées.

Bottom line is, the culture was there, and systemic, but policy and norms kept it to a certain level that bears no common measure with what will come once the last safeguards are removed.

But seriously though. It did happen, but it wasn't the norm. And if justice was lacking, impunity was far from total although they were punished for being caught/getting viral, rather than committing war crimes.

Clearly not enough.

*kill

Last addendum.
"We didn't do enough war crimes" as a strategy screams #Hegseth 's lack of strategic vision. The US lost, despite humongous firepower, materiel and technological superiority because they were outsmarted by their enemy. Not because they didn't rape, torture and kille enough civvies.

And having a blast !

Because this didn't start with #Trump, nor #Bush for that matter but is a solid, unchallenged narrative of #ManifestDestiny sweeping #slavery and #genocide under the rug and refusing to face #History and acknowledge the crimes of a so-called #democracy.

And a final point.
As #POTUS is about to unleash the military on its own, the Americans are about to get a taste of what it was to be an #Iraqi or an #Afghan during the #GWOT.
The very thing that you rooted for after 9-11 is coming back to you, via militarisation of your police.

His praetorian guards will remove him, or anyone deemed an obstacle, to the warrior elite conquest of power.

And this is where #Hegseth is walking a dangerous path for himself and the increasingly fascistic #Trump.
As he empowers the sole authorised appliers of violence and removes both rules and oversight of the application of said violence, he's building the instrument of his own demise.

However, my point stands for democracies.
When you're a democracy that stands for the #RuleOfLaw, #HumanRights, #InternationalConventions, you can't allow yourself to have rogue appliers of (supposedly) state-sanctioned violence.
Unaccountable, and seeing themselves as a caste, a social elite.

3) "Obedient soldiers, not warriors, have committed the worst crimes of the 20th century"

Indeed.
The #fascists, #Nazi, and #communist regimes have had their militaries commit genocides, mass war crimes.
Because they were obedient tools of evil ideologies.
There is no denying that.

Whether the Senate, or the citizens as whole approved of the mass crimes - according to our contemporary definition - is another debate, one that applies to the crimes of the #IDF #Tsahal in #Gaza.
My point is the Republican legions were accountable to the Senate and the people - SPQR.

2) "The Romans, as an example of ethical behaviour in the military, really ?"
Right. You have a point.
And here's my answer : I picked the Romans of the Republic because of the accountability. Whatever the legionaries did, they were going to be scrutinised by the Senate.

I don't have time for pedantic debates about semantics at this point. It's "Warrior" culture because this is how the advocates of that toxic culture call it.

As I said, I indeed gave #warrior a particular meaning to reflect a cultural, sociological, and now #political meaning. What I describe - a culture of unaccountable, unchecked, violence amongst legal weapon users - exists, and its proponents are using the very name I picked.

These guys want to tell me why I should be more of a warrior...

Aaaaaanyway.

Justin Stoddard

Donnie Hodges

But let's be serious two seconds.
Two USAF punters want to lecture me about warrior spirit.

These guys.

These guys want to teach me what a warrior is.

THE JOURNAL OF CHARACTER & LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT / WINTER 2021 12 In recent articles published on the topic, the term warrior, and the idea of warrior ethos, have drawn much undeserved criticism. In the April 2020 piece, On the Toxicity of the Warrior Ethos, Ryan Noordally uses an inaccurate and prejudicial 37-year-old definition of warrior from John Keegan when stating that a warrior is, “a professional fighter trained since childhood whose class or caste holds power. Warriors feel they own the exclusive right to apply violence or bear arms.” (Noordally, 2020). Noordally justifies his position by taking a swipe at Zach Snyder’s 2006 film 300. After defining warriors as amoral rapists, murders, slave holders, and oppressors, he explains why the modern military should not aspire to be warriors at all. His argument is fundamentally flawed, and this article will examine the reasons why. First of all, alarmists can settle down. The U.S. military is not seeking to reinstate 5th Century B.C. cultural practices of ancient Greece. We are not looking to start throwing ugly babies off cliffs for the good of society and, in fact, the Air Force has one of the most active anti-sexual assault education and training campaigns in the country. Secondly, the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines ‘warrior’ as a person who fights in a battle or war (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionaries, n.d.) and Merriam-Webster defines ‘warrior’ as a person engaged or experienced in warfare (Merriam-Webster, n.d.-b). The portion of 300 we would focus on is the scene where Leonidas asks the Athenian ‘soldiers’ their professions. They answer potter, sculptor, and blacksmith. All 300 of the Spartans are professional soldiers. Going back to Merriam-Webster, the definition of soldier is one engaged in military service; a skilled warrior (Merriam-Webster, n.d.-a). The U. S. Air Force Academy (USAFA) defines warrior ethos as “the embodiment of the warrior spirit; tough mindedness, tireless motivati…

1) "You don't get to define what a warrior is - a warrior does war, period"
That came from the USAF. In this document.
Now, I'm all up discussing why I drew a semantic line in the sand to distinguish two starkly different ways of being a professional destroyer of things and killer of people.

You're absolutely right, too.
And you have nurtured my thought-process, pushing it up a notch.
And I have given my conclusions when asked by @alexjubelin.bsky.social in his podcast #LeCollimateur to talk about my article. It's in French but I'm going to lay out the main points here.

To those who rightly objected that the Romans were really not a great example for modern ethical military behaviour, yes, you're right but I will elaborate why I picked that example. To those who objected that the worst crimes of last century were committed by disciplined conscripted soldiers...

I wrote this a while ago, as a Twitter thread. As such, it's a mixture of shitposting banter, academia and military briefing. And a lot of people objected. Some had very fair points, some were just your usual #antiwoke keyboard warriors, so they can go fuck themselves.

Second :
#Hegseth is opening Pandora's box. #Warrior Ethos is not a docile tool, quite the opposite. If anything, it is highly incompatible with #fascism and holds the seed of the destruction of any authoritarian regime.
But I'll come on to that later.

First let me address my piece's shortcomings.

On the Toxicity of the ‘Warrior’ Ethos Military organisations follow a romanticised image of warriors. But few understand how or why the 'warrior ethos' is toxic to military culture.

First :
I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO.
I warned against it, and it's here, rotting the moral spine of the most powerful army in the world. Hegseth didn't start it, he's reaping from ground fertilised by moral decay.
wavellroom.com/2020/04/28/o...

Ok.
Let's talk about #SoW (what an apt acronym) #Hegseth's last pronunciamento. As much as I feel nothing but Schadenfreude seeing generals being at the receiving end of a bullshit briefing in a reverse Uno karmic proverbial return of the boomerang, I have a few things to says.

Is British defence policy just a case of moving deckchairs around the titanic?

Une calamité à la fois s'il vous plaît.