Why I don't support the troops.

Post Reply New Topic

Sand: Agreed, and I expressed my gratitude towards those who have protected their country in such conflicts earlier in the thread. But after Korea, I haven't seen the military really do anything commendable. That's why I limited my claims to "the past 50 years" and not all of history. I know WWII was necessary.

I respect your argument, but I still think that the majority of the soldiers (not the psychos and idiots, who are in the minority) in Iraq and Afghanistan need and deserve support. Mind you, both wars have been run so incompetently I'm more worried about their superiors than anything else.

What frightens me about the current situation is that the current administration and to a degree the previous Clinton administration seem to have been using your favorite author and his novel 1984 as a governmental working manual. Almost from its inception the USA has proclaimed marvelous ideals and performed consistently in hypocrisy in acting on them. For most of its history there has been a battle between the forces acting for those ideals and powerful agencies seeing to it that they were not met. Within the last decades the citizens of the USA seem to have become almost totally subdued to the huge financial powers directing the country. The informational technology revolution has made it possible to provide almost absolute control of the population and unless something happens within the next few years to counter the government clampdown the USA will become a government of absolutes and this is a true tragedy.

I think this is a more important reason than the motivations of those who join the military. Once you've joined, you have a lot less choice over what you take part in, and if your country has a history of interventions that would be defensive only in Bush's sense of preempting any possible threat not only to the country but also to the profits of the companies funding the politicians, then reflexively supporting the troops is morally dubious. At least, if by "supporting the troops" you mean supporting whatever they've been told to do.

For those who think I denigrate the integrity of the US political system without cause, I recommend reading Gore Vidal's account of the US intervention in Guatemala in 1954, included in his book Dreaming War.

If you think the intervention in Guatemala (and the following four decades of civil war costing about 200000 lives, mostly at the hands of government supported death squads and the army) was a one off, work through this list of military interventions and see how often the intervention was a response to a serious threat. Add the wars against the native inhabitants of the continent, and see how many of the treaties were broken by the US government whenever it was convenient.

More names from Orwell? Whats new.. all he does is fingerpoint and call names of all those who dont support his feverish brand of lunacy.

We need a foothold in the middle east from which to stage the upcoming war with Iran. The free world must annihilate the horrible blight known as Islam or suffer the consequesnces of a death cult hell bent on either converting or killing the population of the world..

Anyone who refuses to grasp the truth of this deserves to have a love one killed in the next terror attack. You either stand up and support the cause or you detract from it. Detractors arent worthy of the same freedoms and liberties the rest of us find to be inalienable.

Fred, I take back what I said in another thread about hoping you would go away. Please stick around- PPR needs more comic relief. Seriously, that post made my day.

Stalin tried to annihilate religion. Looking at Russia today, I see he failed. Repression and political terror even on Stalin's scale won't do it. There is, of course, the approach of killing everyone who believes in the religion you target. If that is what you mean by annihilating Islam, you will need more than a war against Iran's 70 million people. The worldwide population of Muslims is somewhere between 1.2 billion and 1.6 billion. How free would the free world be if it committed genocide on that scale?

But perhaps you have another plan for annihilating a major world religion. Do tell.

This is the same kind of wrongheadedness we get from the Westboro Baptist Church. I think Orwell would fit in there.

Sorry, I don't know about Westboro Baptist, so your allusion went right past me. Anyways, I tend not to get along too well with fundies, which I'm guessing Westboro would be.

But anyways, please elaborate on how I would fit in there.

QFT!!

Hahahahahaha that post was genius.

because they are having a hard time right now?

westboro protests soldiers' funerals implying their death was a result of god hating gays.

Oh, don't bother debating Fred, it won't get you anywhere. He believes in class warfare between Democrats and those evil repressors, the Republicans, but he also supports the Republican-pushed "war on terror." He also thinks gay guys who hit on hetero men should be the victims of hate crime but it's OK for a straight guy to stalk a lesbian and try to "turn her into an honest Christian woman." Methinks he's just a troll. But he's funny, so I'm cool with him trolling our board. His entertainment value really is quite remarkable.

Orwell, just found this on wikipedia, they look a right laugh (in a 'laugh or cry' kind of a way).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westboro_Baptist_Church

Westboro hates the troops, celebrates whenever someone is brought home in a box. They are unworthy of the freedoms they enjoy, ironically provided by brave men & women few who put their lives on the line to ensure that this blatant undermining and disrespect can continue. Freedom is freedom, I guess.

I'm ignorant about this whole mess and don't in any way support it either.
My question: I can understand why our stupid president got involved (although I believe his reasons were all wrong), but what I don't get is why other countries, such as the UK and Australia, also got involved. Anybody know?

BTW you can hate on me all you want for being ignorant about this - I don't care. But now I'd like to be less ignorant about it.