Agenda+-+Day+Ten

Today's Assignment:

 * **Complete the Research Proposal requirement**
 * **Listen to Program #2 of the My Lai Audio Files**
 * **Reflect upon the My Lai material in relation to Grossman's insights on atrocities (Grossman pp 196-227)**
 * **Complete reading Chapter one in Hillman's //__A Terrible Love of War__// (pp1-42) and scan through the remainder of the book.**


 * Introduction: (30 min)**
 * **Hand back analytic essays**
 * **Collect Research Plans**
 * **Comments**


 * Activity One: (30 min) - students briefly (2 min) introduce research ideas/plans**


 * Activity Two: (45 min) Discussion on Grossman's writings on atrocities and the My Lai tapes**
 * **Read the following:**

//Atrocity Discussion://
//Killing is wrong but socially sanctioned and even imperative in war. Atrocity is wrong and condemned socially (ie the Geneva Conventions) even in war. Why?//

//Atrocities we’ve touched upon in this class// //Explanations//
 * //Among the Dani, atrocity, the killing of non-combatants (women and children) is socially sanctioned and celebrated (the Dani are non-signatories of the Geneva Conventions)//
 * //Achilles mutilates Hector’s dead body and refuses to surrender it to Priam//
 * //Many as Hedges describes, ie. The Israeli soldiers first taunting then murdering Palestinian boys//
 * //McNamera’s admission of complicity and perhaps authoring war crimes in WWII and Viet Nam.//
 * //Many as Grossman describes, ie. The Case study of Katangese gendarmes rape and murder of nuns in the Congo//
 * //The My Lai Massacre//
 * //The “faucet” metaphor of generating enough but not too much violence and hatred of the enemy//
 * //Revenge as an outcome of incomplete processing of grief (acting in the anger stage)//
 * //Unleashing of Thantos forces in the id//
 * //The bonding, empowerment that atrocity creates//
 * //Political benefit of creating terror.//
 * //Reports of atrocities create solidarity through disbelief and increased solidarity among supporters – the outrage at the very idea that “our boys” would commit atrocities can redouble support. Grossman states “ This simple, naïve tendency to disbelieve or look the other way is, possibly more than any other factor responsible for the perpetuation of atrocity and horror in our world today.//

//Everything we have studied indicates that people commit atrocities in war. This is consistent, having occurred in every war we’ve studied or touched upon. It is not, however, universal in that most combatants do not commit atrocities.//

//Given the fact that some people will commit atrocities in war, why is it important to uphold wartime rules against atrocity and to punish those who commit them?//

//Grossman answers thus:// //“Despite its short-term benefits, atrocity as a policy is normally (but not always) self-destructive” because://
 * //It makes enemy soldiers less likely to surrender and therefore more likely to continue fighting and inflicting casualties//
 * //The bonding of atrocity becomes entrapment in that “it turns every other force that is aware of their nature against them.”//
 * //The empowerment of atrocity also invigorates and enables the enemy. War criminals in the face of defeat are forced to become “dead enders” who know that they cannot surrender.//
 * //Atrocity creates division and animosity between the perpetrators of the crimes and their fellow soldiers who have not done so while witnessing the crimes.//
 * //Atrocity complicates the healing process that people who have killed or participated in war must undergo to re-establish their psychological well-being and reintegrate into home front society. Killers, rapists, and torturers who cannot reintegrate threaten the well-being of society at large.//
 * //Grossman indicates that social sanction of atrocity leaves “a group or nation trapped in the dead-end horror of the atrocity cycle.//

//“Atrocity…is the most repulsive aspect of war and that which resides within man and permits him to perform these acts is the most repulsive aspect of mankind. We must not permit ourselves to be attracted to it. Nor can we in our revulsion, ignore it.” We must instead “know it, name it, and confront it.” Thus atrocity has no place in war that civilized societies wage and those societies must identify and punish the perpetrators of atrocities.//

//In this light, how do we judge the American response to My Lai and more recently Abu Graib? How do we judge a president who by word condones and supports explicit policies of atrocity?//


 * Activity Three: (15 min) preparation to engage Hillman's __A Terrible Love of War__. Discussion: Chapter One "War is Normal"**


 * ASSIGNMENT FOR NEXT WEEK - 4/9**
 * **Read chapter one in Hillman.**
 * **Read chapter two, three, or four, depending on which discussion group you were in on 4/2. If you were a one, you read chapter two. If you were a two, you read chapter three. If you were a three, you read chapter four. You need to read those chapters closely because your group will be summarizing your chapter and presenting that summary to the rest of the class.**