30 Jul 2022

59

Peacetime Casualties: The Human Cost of Conflict

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The kind of violence that the State exercises usually lacks from diverse discussions associated with the violence problem. For instance, books concerning aggression normally perceive topics that range from hormones to homicidal criminals while failing to mention capital punishment, protestor beatings, looter shootings, or war, which serves as the most remarkable type of “official violence.” Concerning the latter omission, it is especially astonishing. The reason for this is that unparalleled mortality associated with wars is adequately documented and equitably contemporary, such as the murdering of more than 46,000 young American men from 1963 to 1973, in line with the significantly higher number of people from other countries who died during the Vietnam War (Aronson, 2003) .

Questions therefore arise as to why this form of official violence seems to be lacking in discussions pertaining to aggression and murder. A key explanation to this revolves around the idea that wars together with other kinds of official violence are usually unique since they are in the guise of governmental legitimacy (Aronson, 2003) . When the U.S. CIA hires assassins to eradicate foreign leaders, when an airplane bombs a village, when National Guardsmen utilize deadly weapons to end violent activities, or when police officers shoot looters, the killings that emerge emanate from the orders given. The orders in this case are normally hierarchical. Elected or appointed officials issues the orders while the unified deputies institute them leading to actual killing (Archer & Gartner, 1976) . For these cases, the homicides that emerge are considered essential to realize certain official objective, such as ending the growth of a foreign ideology, hinder future potential murders, stem private property destruction, or control the parties opposing governmental violence. Official violence might also be warranted as retaliatory in responding to alleged risk of illegal conflict or actual illegal violence (Aronson, 2003) . Therefore, official killings are distinct from illegal violence because they emerge from the orders that the government issues. Several agents who act in a collective manner carry out the killings while these acts are justified as aimed to attain a higher purpose. The differences that prevail in this sense serve as the ones that lead official violence to be legitimized (Aronson, 2003) .

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The legitimization process has emerged fruitful because many citizens seem to consider governmental violence as unproblematic and adequate. It is possible to find public mandate concerning official violence. For instance, a survey carried out in 1968 revealed that 57 percent of the countrywide sample supported the idea that any individual insulting a police officer should not complain in case he is arrested in return. The public mandate regarding official violence comprises of even intense homicide acts (Couch, 1968) . An additional 1968 survey by the Gallup organization revealed that 61 percent of the interviewees supported orders whereby the police would shoot looters on sight in the event of race riots (Darrow, 1972) . They perceived this kind of act as the ideal way of handling the looting problem. Furthermore, in 1969, approximately 48 percent of Americans believed that shooting served as the ideal way of handling protests by students on campus (Brndura, 1973) . In this case, it becomes apparent that the kind of tolerance directed toward official violence can offer explanations concerning the continued perception by the public that rioters and riots are violent. This is irrespective of the fact that the number of individuals murdered by authorities in the event of civil disorders has consistently surpassed the number of persons murdered by rioters by around 10 to 1 (Aronson, 2003) .

Concerning the kind of official violence that the State exercises, therefore, it seems to cause significant amount of harm while no major discussions prevail concerning the problem. In this case, it seems that the widespread support that the public has toward the actions of the State are largely to blame for such kinds of issues within the society.

References

Archer, D., & Gartner, R. (1976). The myth of the violent veteran. Psychology Today , 94-111.

Aronson, E. (2003). Readings about the social animal. London: Worth Publishers.

Brndura, A. (1973). Aggression: A social learning analysis. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Couch, C. (1968). Collective behavior: An examination of stereotypes. Social Problems, 15 , 310-321.

Darrow, C. (1972). Crime and its causes. New York: Crowell.

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