jc6chan wrote:
Ok, so I have heard for the millionth time of how a person needs to support the military of the country they are living in since the soldiers "fight for their freedom blah blah blah...".
First of all, in a lot of the conflicts, the cause and effect of soldiers fighting for a citizen's freedom is not always true. Take Canadians in Afghanistan for example. The 9/11 attacks were on AMERICANS, not Canadians. The reason why we are on Bin Laden's hit list for terror attacks is because we invaded Afghanistan. Besides, do the miltiary prescence of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan really have an impact in Canadian's freedom? If anything, the terror threat against Canadian citizens have INCREASED as a result.
Secondly, doesn't the thing I wrote in the title of the thread kind of takes away our freedom to judge the whole war situation by looking from a neutral standpoint? The thing is that there will always be biased propaganda that your government wants you to hear.
Not convinced about my point? How about the fact that it was a bad thing for so many Germans to support the Nazis during WW2?
Thanks to the Internet and lack of censorship, we can now know better not to fall for the government's tactics. I believe we all shouold have the freedom to judge for ourselves whether what the troops are doing is actually for a good cause.
Think about it...would you want all Lebanese to blindly support Hezbollah? Would you want all Tamils to blindly support the LTTE? Would you want all Gazans to support Hamas?
And so it is, why would any country in the world want its people to blindly support their troops?
Thanks for reading.
Support optional topic
I am not a fan of war, but in Canada the troop support is for the peacekeeping missions of Canadian military personnel, and empathy for the families who have lost a relative due to violence in Afghanistan. Bereaved families wonder about the sacrifice of their relatives, and this is a sensitive issue so if a group protests the war these relatives wonder if the sacrifice is worth it, knowing that the relatives were volunteers, and not conscripts, and that the victims' honour be recognized. There is probably some guilty feelings, in the sense that these soldiers died for us and the rest should be grateful, or even a sort of shadenfreude in that Person X died instead of Person Y.
Many Canadian soldiers died because of roadside bombs planted by insurgeants. Many families who do not have soldier relatives are trying to make sense of this randomness of death. I have no idea if this makes more sense, J6, but putting a face to war and naming highways and making memorials to the dead makes each death mean something more.
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Radiant Aspergian
Awe-Tistic Whirlwind
Phuture Phounder of the Philosophy Phactory
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18 Oct 2010, 1:23 pm
