Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Dutchling]

Morocco wasn't even involved in the Arab Spring. Tunisia had elections just recently in which a bizarrely moderate Islamist party won a slight majority, but could be blocked by a coalition of the other secular parties.

There were protests in Morocco, I'm sure of that. And the king did some concessions, it just doesn't look like what happens in the other countries as (I think) the country has a lot more freedom compared to the other Arab states. I didn't know the Islamists were blocked from governing though. Guess not everyone was very happy with them.

[SalmonGod]

and low-level soldiers are drilled into obeying orders without question, which makes sense because otherwise there's no way you could rely on them obeying orders they might not like. So it's not really surprising that they often stick to the chain of command during coups.

I guess it's this part that confounds me the most.  I want to imagine some limit to the effects of military brainwashing, but the willingness of a soldier to violently oppress his own people stomps all over that notion.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

There really isn't anything bizarre about that Islamic party. They are fairly religious, way too conservative for my taste but not ax crazy.
What did you expect? Talibans?

For the standards of the region, allowing homosexuals to exist is a fairly liberal attitude. Iraq doesn't criminalize it de jure, Jordan doesn't criminalize it de jure but does de facto, and as always Israel remains a wildcard. All North African countries bordering the Mediterranean criminalize homosexuality at the moment, so this will be a change of pace for Tunisia. Forcing women to wear veils or not varies greatly by region, so that doesn't surprise me too much, but most everything else about their stated policies does.

It takes a special caliber of evil to be like the Taliban, though. That it keeps them out of power alone still makes me consider US intervention in Afghanistan justified, everything else notwithstanding.

[olemars]

The egyptian junta has been very careful keeping soldiers out of the general violence in the protests. It's the security police that get to do that bit. Keep in mind that the bulk of the soldiers are conscripts and not treated particularly well either, and I remember som talk about discontent in the mid-ranks. The last thing the junta wants is defections ala Syria.

[ed boy]

I want to imagine some limit to the effects of military brainwashing

Look up the stanford prison experiment. It turns out that morals are surprisingly flexible things.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I want to imagine some limit to the effects of military brainwashing

Look up the stanford prison experiment. It turns out that morals are surprisingly flexible things.

No, it turns out that if you know how to play an authority role, it is possible to sometimes supersede a person's moral conviction through their conditioned trust of authority figures.

[ed boy]

I want to imagine some limit to the effects of military brainwashing

Look up the stanford prison experiment. It turns out that morals are surprisingly flexible things.

No, it turns out that if you know how to play an authority role, it is possible to sometimes supersede a person's moral conviction through their conditioned trust of authority figures.

You say 'sometimes', but I would argue that it is more prevalent than that (or at least, more prevalent than sometimes implies). Of more than fifty outside people to see the experiment in progress, it was only one person that objected to what was going on (and eventually got it shut down early).

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Both Stanford and Milgram were optimized to give as strong authority figures as possible. Such precision is much less common in normal interactions.

[ChairmanPoo]

Then again, ranking officers likely qualify as such

[Zangi]

Authority, military commanders have that in spades... and soldiers tend to be broken down to follow command.  So technically and theoretically, they are more likely to follow their commanding officer.

Heres the thing though, if military leadership are the ones who defect, soldiers under their particular command will be more likely to follow suit... or at least they'd be able to make a choice.  So a shake-up in the mid to top ranks is what you'd want to see to get defections.  Theoretically.

[SalmonGod]

I point people to the Stanford and Milgram experiments all the time, but those aren't directly applicable to what I was commenting on.

It's one thing to mistreat an imprisoned criminal, whom we are culturally conditioned to view as subhuman and especially when you are a part of the law enforcement institution that grants you moral superiority over a criminal that is independent of your actions, or to ignore your better judgment as applies to a total stranger that you can't even see when under pressure from someone presented as an expert.

It's another thing to undertake an explicit duty to protect the very population from which you were recruited, and then directly harm that population when ordered.

[Kogan Loloklam]

No SalmonGod, it isn't.

History shows that time and time again. Military participate in horrid acts when ordered. It's rare for people to call out others acting inappropriate in that matter in the military, and mythical when it is done in the heat of the moment. It does happen, but people who do are extraordinary. Too bad they are ALWAYS treated like crap when they do.

[Zangi]

*snip*
It's another thing to undertake an explicit duty to protect the very population from which you were recruited, and then directly harm that population when ordered.

Actually, they may join the military for different reasons other then 'protect your people'.  A living wage, get out of X free card, free room and board, the army is cool, and whatever have you.  Mind you reasons for joining an army in 1 country can be vastly different in another.
Also, who knows if the military of country Y is even instilling upon their recruits 'protect your people'.  I think its more likely to say 'protect your country' or 'protect your king.'

On another note, there are different interpretations of who 'your people' are.  Like Iraq for example, Sunni vs Shiite....

[Willfor]

For anyone who has ever considered the way modern militaries are trained, the answer is sort of obvious for why this is. The military training doesn't enhance your thought process, it breaks it. You are being broken down, and rebuilt. The parts of your brain that make you hesitate before going against orders have been actively targeted for eradication or suppression. (You are pushed and pushed and pushed, and if you fight against the push, more weight is added to what you have to do) If successful, you are no longer an individualist, you are a collectivist. (They stop punishing you as an individual and start punishing you as a group. You don't just hurt yourself when you disobey, you get all of your friends hurt too.) You have a new family, and that is the people who have gone through the hell you've experienced and come out the other side. (The tendency to bond with people who have gone through the same shit you have is used here to cement a unit together)

Resentment is then built between you and your supposed 'brothers'. Now let's step into the brain of that soldier:

Fucking civilians thinking they know what's good for the world. They don't understand what it's like to go through the hell you've experienced becoming a soldier. They think they know what it's like in the 'real world' but they've never really seen what hardship is like, have they? No, the only people who have actually been through what you have are your brothers in arms. If they want to make it into a fight, we can make it into a fight. That's what I was trained to do, right?

Obviously this can't apply to every soldier. However, this is the ideal position of a soldier, and what people who are paid to train soldiers are trying to create. The bottom line is that they want to get the most bodies from the state of "I'm afraid of killing someone" to "I will not hesitate to kill someone if I'm ordered to. Or if you make me." That's the job, and those are the qualifications, and damn if they aren't good at getting those results.

There's a very good reason why people who have been trained to kill have a difficult time transitioning back into civilian life.

[SalmonGod]

Sigh...

Yeah... last two posts make a lot of sense.  I was also aware of the type of brainwashing a soldier goes through, but hadn't really considered the cultural divide that creates between civilians and soldiers or how the bonding process between soldiers creates that sort of inclusiveness.

Resisting the urge to say many more things here...