
War Without End - chaseha
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/08/magazine/war-afghanistan-iraq-soldiers.html
======
ThinkBeat
The endless (and pointless) wars that our soldier are being spent on has a
relatively easy solution

Reinstate the draft.

That might seem counterintuitive since that would give us a lot more soldiers
to use, but it would give a lot of families, a lot of Americans real skin in
the game.

Wasting soldiers is easy as long as most people dont care and dont notice. But
when it is your daughter/cousin/ uncle/parent someone you know for a majority
of the population it becomes a very serious matter.

I say this as an ex-army soldier. I will be honest and say that I didnt enjoy
my time in the military very much, and forcing thousands and thousands of
youth to go through it means a lot of pain and uncomfortable situation, I
think the benefits would outweigh the sacrifices made to make this happen.

An alternate plan would it to be mandatory that family members of elected
officials to serve in the military and in wars, personally. (Not just sit at a
desk in DC pushing buttons) But there is so much corruption in those systems
that the children would probably be protected one way or another.

~~~
afsina
What an unbelievably bad idea. Mandatory drafting is involuntary servitude,
slavery. How about taking a non interventionist policy?

~~~
yontherubicon
Citizenship has historically been defined by military service, in that you are
not merely subject to the security apparatus of the state, but a part of it.
Because you are a part of it, you have a say in it. It was the removal of the
draft which necessarily removed the role of service from citizenship.

What do people who are not a part of the military care about non-intervention?
There is a reason we viliify the draft-dodger who becomes a politician and
sends others sons off to war.

~~~
afsina
Historically most ancient or medieval wars were fought by professional
soldiers.

Here is a Wikipedia quote

"The persistent old belief that peasants and small farmers gathered to form a
national army or fyrd is a strange delusion dreamt up by antiquarians in the
late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries to justify universal military
conscription"

I support Rothbard's view on the issue:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3TY5OhUJhw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3TY5OhUJhw)

~~~
yontherubicon
Not what I'm referring to. I'm referring specifically to those who owned land
and bore arms and were referred to as Citizens in Rome.

I find both the notions that conscription=slavery and that taxation=theft can
only be held by someone who does not believe in any sort of duty or obligation
to one's community, country, nation, or God, and that self-interest must
necessarily be one's sole (or at least primary) motivating factor.

~~~
afsina
No, community and state are two different things. Surely I do not accept
social contract theory. But I do not think we will reach a common ground
arguing this issue.

------
skrebbel
Typical NYTimes to underline all the poor dead & wounded American soldiers and
not a single word about innocent Iraqi and Afghani citizens, let alone the
insane wave of refugees across the globe that America's aggression has helped
cause.

~~~
mmjaa
Americans are simply not interested in the victims of their wars. It runs
counter to every iota of American culture, to acknowledge the failures of
their warrior-classes, alas.

But, you should know, the article did mention the casualties, at least glibly.
"Many more Afghani's have died than were lost in the 9/11 attacks", is the
only context the author can find, to appeal to his readers.

Its a sad state of affairs when the worlds greatest nation is populated with
its worst cowards. Americans should have a War Channel that shows them what
their military-industrial-pharmaceutical masters are doing around the world,
24-hours a day. Only then would the honour and pride demanded of American
servants of its military be placed in the proper context.

~~~
Joakal
Why did USA get so up in arms with Korea, Vietnam War, etc but not USA's
ongoing Afghanistan/(Iraq?) war?

~~~
krylon
Presumably because of the military draft, which was abolished in the aftermath
of the Vietnam war, IIRC.

~~~
HedgeSparrow
I also suspect fatigue. For a lot of US citizens, the war has taken place a
for a majority of their (our) life.

------
eadmund
I have a very simple proposal to insure success in any military campaign: just
make all tours of duty _accompanied_ tours, i.e. send families along with the
servicemembers, from the highest ranks to the lowest, and also make deployment
to a combat zone on the order of a decade or two, not a few months or a year.

I guarantee that any general staff whose wives & children are in the affected
area and who will be there for the next decade will figure out how to pacify
the region to the level of a Chicago or Detroit.

~~~
ckastner
That argument is very poor because it assumes that (1) pacification has so far
failed for lack of proper motivation of service members, and (2) bringing
their families in possible harm's way will properly motivate them.

You haven't demonstrated (1) and it disregards movitations such as a desire
for advancement (higher ranks), or not getting shot at (lower ranks), and (2)
can have many outcomes (there are faster ways to get home for an individual
than winning a war), the least probable of which is the outcome you
"guaranteed".

You're merely appealing to emotion while simultaneously disregarding all other
(and much more relevant) factors leading to a drawn-out war.

------
mnm1
What would "winning" these wars even look like? There is no answer to that
because these are not wars that are meant to be won. How can you win something
when you don't even know what winning means? These are simulacra wars unlike a
war like WW2. Every war America has fought after WW2 has been a simulacra war,
not intended to be won but intended to advance random political goals at the
expense of our soldiers lives. It's as if America is stuck in a loop,
relieving WW2 over and over again but without any actual enemies or wars to
fight. Thus we create simulacra wars, wars that shouldn't exist, wars for
profit and politics. No one in their right mind could possibly believe these
wars are making us safer or whatever the propaganda du jour is. A lot of
people just simply can't grasp the idea that they are being duped and lied to
by their government, sent to die for nothing. I hope that tuition money is
worth the ptsd or the lost limbs because people fighting these wars sure as
hell aren't doing anything good for the rest of us Americans. That's why we
have the constant "support the troops" bullshit at football games and
everywhere else. If there was really a threat, if there was a real necessary
war, that bullshit would be unnecessary. Men willingly volunteered to fight in
WW2. Today, you couldn't have a draft without mass upheaval, protests, and
resistance. I'd rather go to prison, my ultimate nightmare, than fight in
these simulacra wars for others' profit. If there was a draft, I'd rather
protest by shooting my commanding officers and die than fight in a bullshit
war. Clearly though, there won't be a draft but about 1% of the US population
is either so desperate for money or delusional that they are willing to fight
these staged, unwinnable, simulacra wars. And so on and on they will continue.

~~~
baud147258
Wars are always fought to advance political goals. I agree that in that case,
the goals are shitty.

~~~
mnm1
Yes, I should have specified shitty, niche political goals not in the interest
of the country or its people.

------
apo
_On one matter there can be no argument: The policies that sent these men and
women abroad, with their emphasis on military action and their visions of
reordering nations and cultures, have not succeeded. It is beyond honest
dispute that the wars did not achieve what their organizers promised, no
matter the party in power or the generals in command. Astonishingly expensive,
strategically incoherent, sold by a shifting slate of senior officers and
politicians and editorial-page hawks, the wars have continued in varied forms
and under different rationales each and every year since passenger jets struck
the World Trade Center in 2001. They continue today without an end in sight,
reauthorized in Pentagon budgets almost as if distant war is a presumed
government action._

Except for the mention of the World Trade Center, this could be a telling of
the US involvement in Vietnam.

Back then, it was the highly dubious Domino Theory that hawks waved around to
browbeat anyone suggesting that such a war was un-winnable, morally
indefensible, or just plain hair-brained.

Today it's the equally dubious umbrella of Terrorism.

Having recently watched Ken Burns' Vietnam documentary, it seems nearly
impossible to understand the thinking of the war's supporters. Unless, that
is, you replace the word "Communism" with "Terrorism."

~~~
cryptonector
The domino thing wasn't that crazy. China, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia. Then
what? Philippines? Thailand?

Of course, the right answer was that we couldn't take on all of those burdens,
not even one, really, not for long. But in the aftermath of WWII, I think it's
not surprising that this wasn't understood.

~~~
s_m_t
Everyone seems to also forget the then recent success of the Korean war. At
risk of confusing what was known then and what is known now, well, look at NK
vs SK today. Vietnam under socialist control turned out to be not anywhere as
extreme but it would have been hard to guess that right during China's "great
leap forward". Of course, things didn't turn out as well for neighboring
Cambodia.

~~~
eadmund
> Vietnam under socialist control turned out to be not anywhere as extreme

Not as extreme as North Korea? No, but even the Soviet Union wasn't as extreme
as North Korea. The subjugation of South Vietnam under North Vietnam was
pretty brutal though — the Boat People didn't spring from nothing.

~~~
baud147258
I remember working with a Boat People on my first job. He was a cool guy, but
we never talked about Vietnam.

------
javajosh
The underlying problem is _comfortable war_. It's comfortable for us - we give
up nothing, there is no draft, no extra tax, no rationing. Even the soldiers
live in relative comfort at base, with air conditioning, plentiful food,
computer games, etc.

We should choose, as a society, to make war uncomfortable for us. It is the
moral choice. We should have a draft, which puts the children of the wealthy
and powerful at risk. We should have extra taxes, and ideally there should be
rationing.

Then see the popularity of diplomacy rise.

~~~
saiya-jin
> We should have a draft, which puts the children of the wealthy and powerful
> at risk

If you're wealthy its super easy to avoid going to war, it doesn't matter
which country we talk about. Bribe physician to have some made-up condition
(ie Trump), or get drafted but end up doing some safe job on military base
back home/outside of any real danger (i think Bush jr).

Wars are fought by poor under-educated classes (thats where drafting/hiring is
aimed at), smart person sees how pathetic the causes are, how incompetent
political and military leadership is, and how stupid it would be to lose life
or health for no good reason (and very probably introduce hefty chunk of evil
into this world).

You can get all the adrenaline thrill doing extreme sports (and much more),
you can get paid better elsewhere and it must be kinda hard to strike the
patriotic tune when country being attacked by your government is half across
the globe, never set a military foot on US soil nor threatened it in any way

------
b1daly
Even though the weird Qanon movement is delusional on the particulars, when it
comes to pointing out the obvious betrayal of regular folk by cabals of elites
milking the system for their benefit is strikingly on point.

~~~
pavlov
Hitler also had a point that the Treaty of Versailles was unfair to Germany.
Neither Qanon nor Hitler deserve to be absolved of their dangerous lies this
way.

~~~
mmjaa
Comparing Qanon to Hitler is such a sad and tragic way to run from the truth.

~~~
enraged_camel
Bringing up insane conspiracy theories on Hacker News is what is actually sad
and tragic.

------
aestetix
[https://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/08/world/threats-
responses-i...](https://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/08/world/threats-responses-
iraqis-us-says-hussein-intensifies-quest-for-bomb-parts.html)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/world/from-the-editors-
th...](https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/world/from-the-editors-the-times-
and-iraq.html)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/24/world/threats-
responses-i...](https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/24/world/threats-responses-
intelligence-defectors-bolster-us-case-against-iraq-officials.html)

Many more where that came from. There is a case to made that the US wouldn't
even be _in_ Iraq if not for the undying support of the Bush administration's
agenda, by none other than the New York Times.

------
antisthenes
If you are a soldier and find other reasons to fight rather than for the
person next to you, then I wonder if you're fit to fight at all.

 _You know what I 'll say? I won't say a goddamn word. Why? They won't
understand. They won't understand why we do it. They won't understand that
it's about the men next to you, and that's it. That's all it is._

~~~
guelo
Sorry but that makes no sense from a policy point of view.

~~~
dang
Soldiers don't make policy.

~~~
Fomite
And yet I find the answer to "Why did you sign up?" to be "To defend the guy
next to me!" an odd statement.

Should no one be a soldier in peacetime? Because logically, if the
hypothetical guy next to you isn't getting hypothetically shot at...

~~~
dang
It isn't why people sign up; it's why they continue to fight after the reasons
they signed up have become destroyed in them.

------
imgabe
And the same forces, including the NY Times, are currently trying to push us
into a war with Russia.

------
exegete
Also "National Emergency" without end and without oversight. The National
Emergencies Act [0] allows the President to declare emergency powers, but it
must be renewed annually, and he must give a report to Congress on how much
has spent on the emergency and the status.

Bush declared a national emergency after 9/11, and renewed it every year.
Obama did the same. Trump the same. No reports to Congress. Congress has never
asked for a report. Nothing but "the threat continues". [1]

More recently Trump used it as a way to force retired Air Force pilots back
into active duty.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Emergencies_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Emergencies_Act)
[1]
[https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2017/09/14/perm...](https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2017/09/14/permanent-
emergency-trump-becomes-third-president-renew-extraordinary-
post-9-11-powers/661966001/)

------
hprotagonist
_With this anniversary, prospective recruits born after the terrorist attacks
of 2001 will be old enough to enlist._

All else aside, that just ain’t right.

------
Rapzid
Apologies for the tangent, however I just noticed that up to 150% zoom in
Chrome the pictures will maintain their size while the text grows. That's
pretty cool.

I mean, it seems obvious and I've never had to deal with this(does it rely on
em or screen percentage sizing?!), but the way the Times formats the article
seems to play particularly well with zoom.

