Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters So...how bout Charles Askins, Jr.?

jwp

Justification denotes justice. We normally confer that to the system. But, if your "justification" requires only that you are satisfied in the correctness of your actions, then it opens up a broad spectrum of potential acts to which one can personally find justification.

A man can kill someone just because he wants to, and still find that the act could be justified in all manner of circumstances. The decision to kill or to let the person live can be done in war or in legal circumstances. You don't have to kill the robber who wants your money. You can let him have your money. That you decide to kill him is a personal choice that you can justify. Society can justify it. But there will be a lot of people who would say, you could have survived without killing him.

Dan

I agree with your assessment. At one time at least killing Osama would have been is an act of war, but with today's administration, who knows

Osama is a mass murderer IMHO

Surprisingly, so far I don't believe (and I could have missed it) that anyone has trotted out the, "Hey, he was a public figure who supported hunting and the right to bear arms, so we can overlook a few killings that may not have been on the up-and-up," line.

Perhaps it was not as black and white as many want to believe

All this leaves me wondering

Where's the orgasmic, obsessive satisfaction in deifying or demonizing someone whom you've never met and really know nothing about?

just curious

and puzzled

You are repeating yourself Ken.

Yep

I am not daemonizing anyone

It is clinically interesting to observe antithetical moral-high-horsemanship jousting, don't you think, Ken? When does moral ascension become condescension?

One thing I've learned. We all "think" we know someone. Truth is, we only know part of that person. Whether or not we like, or even respect that "part" matters only to the person making the judgement. Normally, it doesn't matter to the other party.

One lesson I learned early on was that no matter how terrible the suspect was, if you looked, you could find something redeemable in their character. I always looked. Not because I wanted to redeem them, but because in order to get the confession, I often had to make some form of bond. It didn't stop me from being disgusted with them, but it opened a window for me that helped me to realize that we are all animals in the end.

Dan

Exactly. My heroes are the men I grew up with, that I ate Sunday dinner with. They were the ones that parachuted from a crippled B17 only to land on a church roof, break their leg and spend 2 years in a POW camp, or spend months in the Punch Bowl in Korea. They taught me to shoot, fish, and how to do things. They were human, sinned, and were no means perfect. But they were the real deal.

I cannot understand how anyone lionizes someone they do not know intimately, I have no connection with people that hold sports figures, writers, or actors up as heroes.

Actually, there's a Kill Warrant out on OBL. So by theoretically killing him, you wouldn't be satisfying YOUR desire, you'd be carrying out the order of a democratically elected government...ours. If the killer got some sort of personal sick pleasure from the killing, while it would still be legal, it would also still be sick.

As far as killing the enemy, there are problems with granting an open license. Have been since warfare was invented, and it kept up with technology after WW I. No poison gas, for example. The biggest problem is if you do to them before they do it to you something that falls outside the pale, you look like Hitler. Or like OBL. Which leads to Kill or Capture warrants being placed on your head. And say if you used poison gas to kill people, soldiers or civilians, all sorts of retribution would be justified by the enemy.

Escalation of hostilities is what started WW I and II. Acts, outside the pale of what was considered acceptable, led to extermination camps of those the Third Reich considered enemies. No one thinks these acts were justified.

"Acts, outside the pale of what was considered acceptable, led to extermination camps of those the Third Reich considered enemies. No one thinks these acts were justified."

But Gene, there ARE those who think they were justified. Both at the time, and even today. Luckily, they are in the minority, but how much of a minority is needed to kill 6,000,000 people, or foster a war that kills 55 millions.

As for there being a "kill" order out. That's specious. No one can be "ordered" to murder if they don't "want" to. Even those ordered to attack, don't have to fire to hit, or to use their bayonet. Every act is a personal decision.

We condemn from a distance.

You were in war. You undoubtedly either knowingly killed, or knowingly participated in killing. It was "war." At the same time, we justify war in our own minds as being righteous based on our beliefs. Whether or not we are correct is not up to our own interpretation. It's up to the one who has the authority to judge us eternally, if we so believe.

Dan

History, and common sense must rule here. Like executing a mass murderer, some feel it's never justified, but most people do.

Killing ain't necessarily murder, especially in war. However, murder can occur even in war.

No one is ordered that OBL MUST be killed. It's not a mandate, it's an option. It's from what I understand, a "Kill or Capture" order, and if the guy gets dusted, the dust-er will be justified in the eyes of the U.S. Since capture seems highly unlikely, it's mostly a kill order.

I never thought about the "righteousness" of my actions in Viet Nam. That's a strange term implying a moral imperative, emphasis on "imperative", which few of us felt applied. If I'd done anything morally reprehensible, I might have, but I never did.

What was morally reprehensible to you might not be to someone else. The Japanese felt perfectly justified in their treatment of the Chinese or even to US POWs. We speak from a plaform of morality that exists only in our own world. To someone else, we are weak.

Indians killed babies. They felt justified. We then felt justified in killing Indians. It goes on and on.

Dan

Yes, but the ones you mentioned were operating withing the context of their particular cultures.

Askins was not.

There are "cultures" and "sub-cultures." Gang members who kill indiscriminately are acting within the context to their "culture" without benefit of out acceptance. That they are acting outside the law doesn't matter to them as long as they are working within their own personal code.

Hunting down and killing the man who rapes one's daughter is legally wrong; but not necessarily morally wrong to everyone.

Like I said. Those who "knew" Askins, didn't "know" everything, or for that matter understand everything.

I'm not defending Askins, beyond accepting that we all have the capacity to follow our own code of morality as it suits us. The line between us and him, is as simple as motivation. It doesn't take much to change a man.

Have you seen the video of Iwo Jima where the Japs are being rooted out of their burning bunkers and shot down as they emerge, many unarmed? Can you tell me the difference? Once a man identifies an enemy - for whatever that term evokes - then terminating that enemy is a simple thing.

Dan

I can tell you the difference...first, the killing of enemy who surrendered was done in the heat of the moment, kind of like the justification you noted for killing a rapist, and second, the process of accepting a surrender endangered American lives, as a lot of them shammed surrender in order to kill Americans and themselves in suicides. And third, the act of taking prisoners back to a POW holding area over dangerous ground was perilous to guards assigned to these tasks.

There simply is no parallel to war and other circumstances (as Askins was in). A WHOLE different set of rules applies.

It's easy to justify that whole different set of rules isn't it?

So why then, did we accept the surrender of thousands of POWs?

It was up to the individual as to whether he would hold fire, or fire to kill. Some killed. Some accepted the prisoners. So, your set of circumstances do not apply across the board. You can justify it, while another soldier would not. Your acceptance of those circumstances as being justification, only illustrates which direction you would undoubtedly go if you had the Garand and the unarmed Japs were squirting out of the bunker in front of you.

Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't judge you and would probably do the same.

I'm sure Askins was a real "expletive," but I'm also sure he wasn't a real "expletive" to everyone. He selected his friends and I'd bet his personal code forbade him from harming them. Everyone else was an enemy. I believe he loved family above all else, at least no one has any rumors of his killing his relatives for schitz and grins.

He was a "hardcase." Sort of a Doc Holliday or Wes Hardin in the 20th Century. He didn't fit in. But, given another time and place and we'd be writing his history in a different light.

Dan

Vlad Dracula is a hero to his people. But judging him in any other light, the impaling of thousands of people just doesn't seem justified.