Would anyone else feel differently bout joining the military if Obama was prez?

[M Dogg™]

I love these Ron Paul people... lol.

No matter who is president, we as a nation would have to keep them honest. No president has been completely for the will of the people, it's hard to appease that many people. But, we have to hold the president accountable. Obama has a unique obligation because that's what his running on, and it's time we take our president and say, you said this, lets hold you too it.

[Teddy Roosevelt]

I love these Ron Paul people... lol.

No matter who is president, we as a nation would have to keep them honest. No president has been completely for the will of the people, it's hard to appease that many people. But, we have to hold the president accountable. Obama has a unique obligation because that's what his running on, and it's time we take our president and say, you said this, lets hold you too it.

You may have good reason to think that Obama will stop armed combat, but Infinite is being foolish if he thinks that just because Obama is half black and actually knows something about Muslims that joining the military won't have him deployed in combat/dangerous missions.

Then again if you really need the money, the the Navy would probably be the best of all services to join compared to the Marines or Army.

[Narrator]

Then again if you really need the money, the the Navy would probably be the best of all services to join compared to the Marines or Army.

Yeah, you can patrol the Persian Gulf in huge, multi-billion dollar warships that (in this day and age) will probably get destroyed by suicide bombers in speedboats. I think the Revolutionary Guard even train for this kind of scenario...no thanks.

If I were going to join any branch of the military (and lord knows I won't), I'd join the Coast Guard. Not only do you do nothing except domestic security, but those CGA chicks are damn fine. Coast Guard is maybe the one branch where the women actually look good instead of looking like dykes.

[JAZ]

Then again if you really need the money, the the Navy would probably be the best of all services to join compared to the Marines or Army.

Yeah, you can patrol the Persian Gulf in huge, multi-billion dollar warships that (in this day and age) will probably get destroyed by suicide bombers in speedboats. I think the Revolutionary Guard even train for this kind of scenario...no thanks.

lol. youre so retarded.

[Narrator]

Then again if you really need the money, the the Navy would probably be the best of all services to join compared to the Marines or Army.

Yeah, you can patrol the Persian Gulf in huge, multi-billion dollar warships that (in this day and age) will probably get destroyed by suicide bombers in speedboats. I think the Revolutionary Guard even train for this kind of scenario...no thanks.

lol. youre so retarded.

How so? Got anything better to say than that, pale face?

[virtuoso]

In my understanding of the military, U.S soldiers are paid peanuts compared to the mercs who now outnumber the official military presence in Iraq. Having said that of course, the mercs are there to do all sorts of foul shit and thus are bigger targets, that and of course could you really be a part of such foul shit? The army has a way of seducing people into the us and them mentality, they become your family, you protect your family no matter what and that means being complicit in horrible horrible crimes against people.

Food for thought for you, I have spoken to English soldiers who have come back from Afghanistan and said yeah that it's quite common knowledge that American solders will wipe out entire villages if hostiles are identified within the populous. If you recall also, i recently posted an article in which the rand corporation has compiled it's own statistics on the number of dead American soldiers and they put the figure at over 100,000, want to be another statistic?

As for Obama, he like the UK government, has pledged more troops into Afghanistan, I still find it amazing that there is so much outrage against Iraq (rightly so of course) but an almost deafening silence on Afghanistan.

[Narrator]

Food for thought for you, I have spoken to English soldiers who have come back from Afghanistan and said yeah that it's quite common knowledge that American solders will wipe out entire villages if hostiles are identified within the populous. If you recall also, i recently posted an article in which the rand corporation has compiled it's own statistics on the number of dead American soldiers and they put the figure at over 100,000, want to be another statistic?

That's how you fight back against guerilla forces. It's an extremely brutal business, but that is how it's done. Otherwise, the troops don't have much choice but to get shot at by unknown, shadowy insurgents who attack them with IEDs and distant AK/RPG fire, and it's only so long before they get pissed off and shit like Mai Lai happens.

I highly doubt the English troops are any better. These are the dudes who basically pioneered concentration camps. I guarantee you the Brits would love to take shit back to the days of the Boer campaign if they could.

[virtuoso]

Morality has fallen so rapidly in such a short space of time, I shouldn't' even be needing to say this, do not rationalize the mass murder of men women and children. Do not think for a second I don't know the tactics employed by the British troops even in Ireland either. The fact is it's evil, protecting the innocent is the job of the military! just because these pieces of filth disregard human life as nothing does not make it so.

[Narrator]

Morality has fallen so rapidly in such a short space of time, I shouldn't' even be needing to say this, do not rationalize the mass murder of men women and children. Do not think for a second I don't know the tactics employed by the British troops even in Ireland either. The fact is it's evil, protecting the innocent is the job of the military! just because these pieces of filth disregard human life as nothing does not make it so.

Right, I agree wholeheartedly. I just think it's important you understand that CI warfare brings out the worst in man. That was basically the point of the movie "Apocalypse Now" - fighting against guerillas is an extremely bloody business, and atrocities are part of that business. This is what happens to Colonel Kurtz...he's basically gone insane because he's really patriotic and wants to win the war, but the only way he can do it is through incredibly barbaric acts.

[Australian Bastard]

Morality has fallen so rapidly in such a short space of time, I shouldn't' even be needing to say this, do not rationalize the mass murder of men women and children. Do not think for a second I don't know the tactics employed by the British troops even in Ireland either. The fact is it's evil, protecting the innocent is the job of the military! just because these pieces of filth disregard human life as nothing does not make it so.

Right, I agree wholeheartedly. I just think it's important you understand that CI warfare brings out the worst in man. That was basically the point of the movie "Apocalypse Now" - fighting against guerillas is an extremely bloody business, and atrocities are part of that business. This is what happens to Colonel Kurtz...he's basically gone insane because he's really patriotic and wants to win the war, but the only way he can do it is through incredibly barbaric acts.

Word, they can be driven to the point where it begins to make the most sense in that type of situation.  A friend of mine in East Timor recently told me how they nearly wiped out a whole wedding party over kids with toy guns pointing them at them. There is a very real human element to it aswell, as in 'survival, mutherfucker, do you want to?' Dudes ive known since we were babies, come back changed,  but after a few weeks they begin to get open again. Wu-Tang is for the babies.

I think Afghanistan will get more help in the next few months if not in a year, we have troops already scheduled to go there for next year, alot of people banking on that deplaoyment, also, its something we (as in NATO allied countries) and the mainstream LEFT can probably agree on more easily as opposed to Iraq...


"its my job" he'd say, I do it for pay..."
-Bob Dylan, the story of the Hurricane.

[virtuoso]

Alright, my bad I thought you trying to say it's understandable, see here is the thing, I know on an individual basis these soldiers flip out but their commanding officers are cold cruel and calculating, they give the order to give these ticking time bombs to do whatever they want. I bet ya that is the reason for the massive number of suicides of troops because they either committed a terrible act of butchery and in the cold light of day can no longer with themselves, or soldiers who have witnessed fellow soldiers blowing kids brains out, have watched entire villages being mown down by bullets, helpless to stop it and so end their life to end the pain.

[Narrator]

Alright, my bad I thought you trying to say it's understandable, see here is the thing, I know on an individual basis these soldiers flip out but their commanding officers are cold cruel and calculating, they give the order to give these ticking time bombs to do whatever they want. I bet ya that is the reason for the massive number of suicides of troops because they either committed a terrible act of butchery and in the cold light of day can no longer with themselves, or soldiers who have witnessed fellow soldiers blowing kids brains out, have watched entire villages being mown down by bullets, helpless to stop it and so end their life to end the pain.

But see...THIS is the part I can never agree with you on. You're always looking for conspiracy theories, always trying to find some "evil" person who's behind it all. Because you read too much of this Prison Planet stuff.

The COs  are hardly any different than the men on the ground. They don't fight house-to-house and get shot at day in and day out without being able to tell who the enemies are, but they are under orders to achieve their objectives (i.e. secure this village, make this highway safe for convoys, etc.).  They get incredibly frustrated in the same kind of way - no matter how many times they "pacify" an area, it always erupts into chaos again sooner or later, and they keep losing men.  Same basic circumstances...and that's where you get atrocities in places like Fallujah in 2004 and the Mukaradeeb massacre.

I would agree that suicide rates are increasing for the reason you said...seeing the kind of stuff these kids see (and please remember most soldiers in Iraq right now are 18 to 25) really does take a toll on their mental health.

[virtuoso]

I wasn't suggesting it was some secretive plan, look I have spoken to high ranking sergeants before and they are very dismissive of life. I am saying those who give the orders to carry out what has become practice are more guilty than those who actually do so. A conspiracy is shrouded in secrecy usually but this is much worse, this is just brazen, they have turned these soldiers into inhuman monsters and have compounded the situation by increasing the length of their tour.

[Narrator]

I wasn't suggesting it was some secretive plan, look I have spoken to high ranking sergeants before and they are very dismissive of life. I am saying those who give the orders to carry out what has become practice are more guilty than those who actually do so. A conspiracy is shrouded in secrecy usually but this is much worse, this is just brazen, they have turned these soldiers into inhuman monsters and have compounded the situation by increasing the length of their tour.

I don't think I have ever met a soldier (from the most senior to the most humble) who wasn't "dismissive of life". That's part of the job. Any job that involves killing requires you to be dismissive of life when it's between yours and theirs.

"They" haven't turned these soldiers into anything...the circumstances in which these soldiers operate have. That is the nature of this war, of ANY guerilla war. That's the lesson we should have learned in Vietnam, and which the Israelis should have learned in South Lebanon. Nobody in a Western army is capable of dealing with the enormous stresses of fighting this kind of war without resorting to brutality. Actually, I think the biggest part of the problem is the fact that these men go into Iraq with some idea that they're going to liberate the population from the Islamists, and make Iraq into this wonderful Arab democratic country, and then when they find out how complicated things are, they get disillusioned. On the one hand, they're supposed to be converting the population to democracy, and yet they have to handle the reality that the insurgency runs deep into the population. Military doctrine just hasn't learned to handle this contradiction.

BTW, there's a quote from 4th25's album that has always haunted me, but it goes a long way towards explaining the way that CI warfare fucks with a soldier's mind:

"I don't care if he was handcuffed then shot in his head,
All I know is dead bodies can't fuck with me again."

[virtuoso]

I agree with what you have just said but "They" simply referred to the military and when i say they have turned them into monsters, you have to look at the torture being instigated in the prisons which was taught to them by the CIA instructors, that is after all what the reports conclude into the torture, they are not the acts of individuals but systematic torture whose techniques have been taught to them by experts in that field. I was referring to turning soldiers into monsters because despite the stresses and strains which the soldiers have already born the brunt of, they then make things ten times worse for them by forcing them to stay on the tour much longer, or forcing them to go back, extending the number of tours they have done. Finally when their commanders tell them everyone is an enemy and so to ascertain all enemies are dead, that you must kill everyone regarding of age and gender, then clearly they are turned into monsters.

You make a good point the savagery and horrors of vietnam were beyond words but this is much worse now because while these events and incidents were deplored, now they are justified and the perfect example being the torture, the response was well so what torture has always been a part of the dirty side of the game. That completely misses the bigger point, by justifying torture in such a public manner, it starts the torrid slippery slope into which morality is waved goodbye as it drowns under the weight of such depravity.