Comment by oneplane

5 years ago

Doesn't that mostly have to do with the amount of training, responsibility, leadership etc. that comes with military hierarchy? It can still get pretty bad (coverup and/or violence wise), but it seems that at least they have some sense of the relationship between violent actions and their consequences.

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oneplane

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trhway  5 years ago

>sense of the relationship between violent actions and their consequences

exactly. Whatever you use in warzone you're risking that the same can be used against you, thus all the conventions on warzone weapons usage and prisoner treatment. Thus all the training, so that your soldiers wouldn't cross [too frequently] the redline to trigger the response.

I remember reading for example that in WWI new young soldiers, i think in Russia, were sometimes issued old style non-flat 3-edged rifle attached combat knives. Whether the knife is flat or 3-edged wouldn't make any difference during the actual stabbing and the immediate time after that. Where it makes all the difference is outside of the immediate combat situation - those non-flat knives would make for unnecessary horrible very hard to heal wounds, and thus if you were found with such a knife on a battlefield you'd be killed right there instead of taken POW. So the older soldiers would make sure that the newbies would promptly lose the knives.

The situation is similar to hollow-point bullets - they create those horrible wounds without any tactical benefit on actual battlefield.

  • meheleventyone  5 years ago

    So the police should be able to inflict horrible wounds without tactical benefit?

    • trhway  5 years ago

      Coming to US from USSR/Russia where history is full of wars, i was initially stunned to learn that the barbaric hollow-points are ok in US. After some time here, i think one reason for that is that police here aren't really subject to the "relationship between violent actions and their consequences", plus the "dominant force" doctrine which has fear as a significant component, and the possibility of hollow-point dovetails to that like icing on the cake. In some sense that fear is the main tactical benefit.

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