Being against the wars but supporting the troops is an illogical position: http://revcom.us/a/082/troops-en.html I agree. The troops are welfare queens. We taxpayers feed, clothe and house them. We pay for their healthcare and benefits while they chase imaginary WMDs, sing stupid songs and slam their dicks together. They haven't protected us from a legitimate threat in over fifty years. They should get their hands out of our pockets and get a proper job. I'm happy when I hear about them getting killed. That's one less sociopath coming home to beat their wife, fill up our prisons or end up homeless on our streets.
This is stupid. If your family is in a war you don't agree with you should not support them, pray for them, care about them? LOL What a rubbish thread.
And if a member of your family was a rapist? Would you support him going out to rape people on a daily basis? The point is that if the wars are wrong (and they are) then you can't separate the individual from the action. Politicians don't pull the triggers. Soldiers are guilty.
Thread makes perfect sense. Problem is a lot of 18 year olds don't know as much truth as they should, and they sign up. If not enough people signed up for the army, navy, marines ect ect that might bring more war on our own land. I can only imagine if not enough sign up would government try and force something for more recruits, thus more fighting on our own ground might arise. If kids dont sign up, a world army will start to collapse.
They are only pawns in the game being controlled and manipulated by the higher ups who profit from war. Sure there are many soldiers who are lowlife asshats. But there are even more who are just looking for a way to feed their families or to pull themselves out of the gutter. The government takes advantage of these people and manipulates them into thinking that it is their duty to do what they do. To say that the military hasn't protected us at all in the last 50 years is being extremely naive. I'm not saying everything they've done is good....that's far from the truth. And a lot of the time the only reason they have to protect us is because of the bullshit that the generals and politicians are doing.
So it's alright to do illegal and immoral things for personal profit? You could make that same defence for drug dealers and mafia hitmen too. If you're justifying the killing of civilians because a soldier 'pulled themselves out of the gutter' from it, what CAN'T you excuse with that logic? Would you support the 9/11 hijackers if they committed that atrocity to feed their families too?
You rely on the horror stories that the media reports for your knowledge of what's really going on. Which means you really have no idea of what's really going on over there, minus the gruesome exceptions. To quote Tomas Jefferson......"A man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers."
I think that you have a distorted point of view here. a us soldier is different from gang rapist/lynch mob: 1 many believe that they are fulfilling their duty to their country 2 in some cases, militaries can actually do things which are necessary/ beneficial. as a member of the military, you don't get to pick whether you are in a "good" or "bad" war. in many cases you won't be able to participate in a "good" war unless you've gone through training and are ready to deploy. that means being prepared to serve as you are ordered. the us never should have gone to war in iraq. and our newspapers and other journalists totally dropped the ball on questioning the "wmd" reports (I think they willfully didn't do good journalism) and failed to rebut the spurious claims that the war was part of "the war on terror". however, after the us invaded and sadam hussein was killed, it was clear that the us became the only force that was preventing sectarian violence. as many iraqis as there were who died in this war, even more would have died if the us had immediately pulled out it's certainly true that the slogan "support the troops" has been used to manipulate the public into supporting the war. however, I think one can "support the troops" by advocating their safe return and the end of the war often us soldiers do bad things, as either part of their duty or on their own accord. there is a moral culpability that goes along with that. but I don't think that we should therefor cheer their deaths. would you back wbc in their protests of soldier's funerals? american citizens (and if you're an american, this includes you) are involved in paying taxes and supporting the economy of a nation that does bad things, engages in war, etc. does that mean that the wtc attack was justified? does that mean that killing any american is justified because the american government sometimes does bad things? I would say no. essentially all people possess moral flaws. that doesn't mean that we should therefor support the murder of people. are you sure that there are no us soldiers who are less of a sociopath than yourself?
Ignorance is no excuse. Yes, you do. You always have a choice. This is Muhammad Ali: He was drafted into the Vietnam War and refused to enlist. He was stripped of his Heavyweight Title and could have been sent to prison but he still refused to enlist. That is what a man of principle does when put in the situation you described. He has more dignity than the entire US military put together. The modern armed forces don't even have a draft. They chose to enlist, they made the decision that they wanted to become tools of US imperialism. What, did they think they were going to be fending off invasions from Canada and Mexico? Of course not. They would be used to wage war for the profits of oil companies and weapons manufacturers. There wouldn't have been any sectarian violence in the country if the war hadn't happened. There was none before the war. The US is to blame for the sectarian violence flaring up in the first place. Besides, the US did a piss-poor job of preventing it once it started. The main reason the violence has decreased in recent years is because Iraq is a highly segregated country now, each denomination having its own areas. It naturally burned itself out. However, the level of violence is STILL higher than it was in the pre-war period. I disagree with their message but have no problems with their methods. If their protests annoy pro-military people then that's a good thing, but I don't believe in god so don't think he hates fags. If you don't see the difference between paying taxes and picking up a gun to invade a foreign country then I feel sorry for you. Try asking the million dead Iraqis what they think. I've never harmed anybody.
go ahead and feel sorry for me if you'd like, but it seems to me that you are just dodging the question. what difference is there between paying taxes and participating as a soldier? your tax dollars buy the bullets that go in the gun. what makes you think that you are morally superior to us soldiers? you participate in the economy that makes the war machine run. you likely put gasoline in a car, gas derived from oil that was the real reason for the invasion. do you really have the right to condemn us soldiers from a high horse? well, obviously they wouldn't answer. but there are many people in the world, including many of the living iraqis who believe that all americans deserve to die because we are participants in american society, that it is proper to kill american civilians in retrubution for america's participation in the iraq war. do you agree with them? do you think it would be ok for an iraqi to kill you in revenge for the war?
That logic is absurd. Using that method you'd quickly create a chain of responsibility that includes practically everybody in the world, from taxpayers and car drivers to manufacturers who sell paper and pencils to the government. The fact is that those people are so far detached from the situation that they're irrelevant. However, a soldier has a gun in his hand and he's firing it. Or playing with a joystick that'll fire a missile from a drone into a group of people. You must be a complete fucking moron to not know the difference. The military are DIRECTLY responsible for conducting the war. Taxpayers are not.
