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

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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:

--- Quote from: virtuoso on May 21, 2008, 05:45:48 AM ---
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.

--- End quote ---

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:

--- Quote from: virtuoso on May 21, 2008, 09:31:45 AM ---
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.

--- End quote ---

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.

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