Honor amongst...

Fred On Everything:

"...The Prussian officers who attacked Poland and wreaked horrendous death and havoc on Russia spoke voluminously of their honor. What honor? They were just amoral killers, the scum of humanity—but honorable amoral killers, and honorable scum, you see. The Japanese Army, of Nan Jing fame, believed that they were somehow honorable. Yes, and Jeffrey Dahmer too.

...Honor is important to militaries, which need to regard themselves as distinguishable from hit men for the Mafia. They aren’t, of course. Both kill people they don’t know on orders from people they don’t know in order to make a living. Is this not literally true?

When a man becomes, say, a fighter pilot, he agrees to bomb anyone he is told to bomb. Perhaps he has never heard of Lithuania, or Guatemala, or Baghdad. He has never met a Lithuanian, and no lithuanian has ever harmed him. One day orders come from above to bomb Vilnius. He does. Doing so, and doing so bravely, is a point of honor.

It is exactly what Guido and Vito do. A torpedo for the Cosa Nostra however has the self-respect not to lie to himself about what he is doing. (Although it is of note that Mafia dons refer to themselves as “men of honor.” Like Vlad the Impaler.)

Note that the notion of honor has nothing to do with right and wrong or human decency, and seems to be incompatible with them. Ulysses Grant said explicitly and at length in his memoirs that the invasion of Mexico was entirely unjustified aggression, and yet he took part in it. That is, he felt honor bound to do what he knew was wrong, and killed a great many Mexicans while doing it.

There can be no honor in unprovoked aggression, since it is simply wrong. Courage, yes, and toughness and endurance, and sacrifice. But honor, no. The Wehrmacht had all of these admirable qualities. As all armies do in varying degrees, the Germans committed atrocities, these being natural in war. As all armies do, it lied about them. To this day many Germans insist that the Nazi Army consisted of Aryan Boy Scouts, and it was the SS that did all those bad things.

Militaries pride themselves on doing their duty, and on following orders. But then they can be only as honorable as those giving the orders.

...Honor seems to me to be little more than systematized, prickly vanity coated inches deep in amour propre. When you find yourself among honorable men, I say run like hell."