I was conscripted at age 18. I'm a lot older now and it blows my mind more and more at how war and veterans and victories and leaders are celebrated and therefore... legitimized.
The masses are made to think fighting a war (soldier) for someone else (the president and the military industrial complex) is an honorable thing to do.
Because patriotism. Which is bullshit. We share this little blue ball in space with all of these people who scare us, whose ideals we ridicule. And people who love and live and dream like we do.
There is no honor in violence. Even less in oppression. Regardless of justification.
This is something that bothers me, perhaps even more in current circumstances.
Our military recruitment model targets people who are primarily just poor. Then we call them heroes and treat them like shit.
But by calling them heroes it implies they signed up for purposes like patriotism and honor. Not the reality that a lot of them are just shifted into it for lack of better options. It’s a grave disservice to soldiers to hide their struggles with bullshit praise.
There may well be heroism involved in military service, but it’s used as blinders to avoid the fact that we have screwed over vets for years ever since, idk, the bonus army; and fully intend to continue doing so.
US military recruiting now targets more middle class than poor people. The poor people too often fail to meet entrance standards due to not having a high school diploma, low test scores, history of drug abuse, criminal record, or medical problems.
Obesity and intelligence are certainly problem factors, but I just don’t believe middle class millennials are the ones going to the military. I have to believe it’s still the poor who aren’t disqualified. Open to contradiction though.
It’s ok to recruit poor, unskilled people. Honestly it makes a lot of sense and is good allocation of resources if you’re acting under the premise that we need soldiers.
It’s not ok to claim that they’re there because of their values and to lie in saying that they’re a treasured part of the society.
I volunteered at 18 just after 9-11, reached the same conclusion pretty quickly...
I fear the US political establishment learned the wrong lesson from Viet Nam. Avoiding the social costs (like the draft) to our current military engagements overseas has allowed the US to be indefinitely at war for 18 years.
The problem is there are those who don’t share your idealism and would take this position and take full advantage of it.
Vietnam might have been a boondoggle of a war. But it certainly better than had we folded and let the dominoes fall in many places where there was some discontent but not nearly as much as there would be with Soviet style governance.
Certainly there were smarter ways to wage the war, but short of taking over the corrupt local govt there wasn’t much else we could do. We suggested land redistribution and other forms of reform, as we implemented successfully in South Korea but the South Vietnamese wouldn't have it.
While the estimates of total casualties vary quite a bit, an enormous number of people were killed in Vietnam. It was basically a genocide. Even if you believe in the domino theory (personally think that was nonsense) there's no real scenario where the war could have been a net positive.
The US put that corrupt local government in power by the way.
Are you suggesting that the US government was right to indiscriminantly bomb a small nation halfway around the world for self-determining into a style of governance disliked by the US?
Or are you suggesting the North Vietnamese were a tool of the Chinese or Russians? In which case - like Robert McNamara - you would be told by the former foreign minister of Vietnam that you should read a history book[0], because you have no knowledge of the region's history.
The Vietnam war was a disgrace waged for no valid reasons, accomplishing nothing except ending the lives of millions of Vietnamese people. To defend it in this day, with all the benefit of hindsight, is utterly beyond the pale and should rightfully be compared to supporting other historical atrocities such as the genocide of Native Americans.
Using your argument, how exactly do you know better than the Vietnamese in the South (minus the Viet Cong) who wanted the
US's help to combat the North's aggression? They literally fought alongside the US.
Why do you assume that the aforementioned “small nation halfway around the world indiscriminately bombed by the US government” is Vietnam and not Cambodia?
Do you think the US was right to carpet-bomb Cambodia?
I suggest you talk to members of the first generation of the Vietnamese diaspora living in the US and see what they think about the war.
No war however done is good to have. Some wars are necessary and come with great loss. It’s unavoidable. There were many mistakes in Vietnam-the whole war, but it wasn’t pointless. The middle eastern wars we went into are pointless. Those are local conflicts and we should let them settle their own scores.
The Vietnam war was more than about Vietnam. Kennedy knew that.
Thankfully I live in Seattle, so there are quite a few Vietnamese people. Generally once you get to know them they'll open up about how the war was (to repeat) a disgrace waged for no valid reasons, accomplishing nothing except ending the lives of millions of Vietnamese people.
Of course, if some random American comes up to them demanding their thoughts on the Vietnam war they might have a different answer.
You should consider re-examining your belief in domino theory.
The largest Vietnamese communities in America (i.e. in Southern and Northen California) still universally fly the South Vietnam flag. You can often see this flag flown with the American flag.
You simply don’t know. The whole country and its neighboring countries got destroyed by the Vietnam war. I am not sure if a communist takeover would have been worse for the regular citizen. When you look at Eastern Europe I think people were better off under communist government compared to the devastation a war may have brought.
The problem with this as a general policy is that it is bad game theory. It means bad actors get to win by threatening to cause more damage fighting than if they win without a fight. You're always hostage to threats from bad actors.
I know. It’s a very complex situation. But I think we should also not blindly accept a lot of wars as “ necessary “ and better than the alternative.
It’s also often not clear who is the good or bad guy. As far as i know in Vietnam for example the main goal was to get rid of the colonialists. If the west had accepted that maybe north Vietnam wouldn’t have aligned with the Soviets. In addition the west also aligned with highly corrupt leaders in the south. We see the same dynamic in the Middle East. Out of short term interests we ally with highly corrupt dictatorial governments there and then we are surprised that things blow up in our face.
All animals in the universe are “hostage to threats from bad actors.” Most fights in the animal kingdom are avoided by a simple size comparison between two animals, after which the smaller animal submits.
Size is an implicit threat, one that can never be eliminated. How exactly do you propose to eliminate the implicit threat of one animal/group of animals simply being larger than another?
Because in reality both animals implicitly know that the conflict policies are somewhat hardwired as: 'If you push me too far, I will fight you on the beaches.'
Knowing that that is the policy that is implemented, and that fights are always risky, whether a fight occurs will be determined by the reward size and the predictability of the outcome.
I would think most fights in the animal kingdom are predation, where the prey faces death and the predator, starvation. Perhaps you had just dominance fights within the same species in mind?
Predation is an example of a fight that is NOT avoided. I have all species in mind. I am almost directly quoting Dawkins’ “The Selfish Gene.” A raccoon does not attack a grizzly bear because of a simple size comparison. Thus, the lives of both animals are spared and a fight is avoided.
When you read about WW2 you see the same thing in the German side and also sometimes on the Allied side. Generals and politicians knew that the battle was lost but instead of giving up they made the front soldiers fight to a certain death. That while the leaders who made decisions lived in splendor.
Same with the current American wars. When they invaded Iraq in 2003 the military was understaffed and it took years for the leaders to admit that and adjust. So solders were dying while at the same time a lot of defense companies made good profits and there were tax cuts for higher incomes.
I always wonder how wars would go if as soon as a country was at war, leadership had to live in conditions like a front soldier and nobody would be allowed to make a profit from war related business. I bet we would have much less wars.
Agreed. That has actually been publicly suggested, and supported, by a retired general:
" Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our steel companies and our munitions makers and our ship-builders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all other things that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted — to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get."
Or conscript children of top politicians. And not some cozy job far from any possible danger, but right at the center of it. I guess US wouldn't invade another country half around the globe even if whole population would have to switch to Flintstones-like cars.
If I could elaborate more I was just thinking of various statements of political philosophy that people have made to me in the past.
“The Golden rule is the one thing that all religions have in common.”
“Liberals just want to spread the misery around.”
“What we need is facts and logic, not emotion.”
“Liberty, equality, fraternity.”
“An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
I can’t tie this all up in a bow but there are some interesting themes and counter themes there. If I was a philosophy major I might be able to make more sense.
I know of Twilight Zone episodes to have used that. Specifically one I can think of is the Dachau Nazi "doctor" comes back to relive his glory days, and is forced by the ghosts who still live there to forcefully feel their pain for the rest of his life. It's supernatural, but still the same idea.
There were also episodes of Outer Limits that did similar, but with a machine that forced them to live with the crime they committed.
I believe Black Mirror also did some of this as well.
One thing shown by modern politics is that you're absolutely correct: Plenty of people in modern society are happy to act (and in particular, vote) in a way that will hurt them as long as they think someone who deserves it will be hurt more. Not to mention that some people simply won't be hurt by things that other people can't handle.
Bingo. That uneven distribution is why them Yankees seem to be fine with all these wars.
The World Wars brought violence directly to the Asians and Europeans, devastating Europe from London to Moscow, and all over Asia. Rich and poor got it, good and hard, in their on backyards.
Vietnam devastated... Vietnam. It was an economic blackhole for the US -- ditto for Iraq and Afghanistan -- but the average American is driving larger, nicer cars then ever, while living in comfy McMansions. Northern Virginia and Southern Maryland (Washington DC suburbs) are wealthier than ever -- all Top 10 richest counties in the US. They don't feel this pain, and probably never will, save for the small handful of volunteers shipped to Iraq/Afgan/etc.
I think it's highly dubious to suggest that the average American is better off due to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is as the post you replied to said - the weapons sellers make money, while the rest of Americans pay them through taxes.
The losses in human like were over 3 million for Vietnam and SE Asia, and 58000 for the US. That’s a discrepancy of like 50x. Also Vietnam was destroyed and ruined whereas the US was untouched.
War does not happen because of any cold, calculating, sinister motive, it happens because of (fear of) boredom. Peace is boring, war is exciting, and gives people a sense of purpose (do you know that suicide rate is way down during war time?) and a chance to be part of something eternal. This is why history is to such a large extent the history of wars. Because that's what capture our morbid interest. This is why war, conflict and violence dominate movies and TVs and fiction.
The effect of boredom on a large scale in history is often underestimated. It is the main cause of war, revolutions, electoral surprises, etc.
The problem in this case is with the plight of the ditch digger, not the value of conscription.
EDIT: also, you left off this bit: "...provided the ditch digger turned soldier doesn't get maimed, killed, or psychologically damaged fighting a war for his elite masters."
You may not know this but ditch diggers also like to have a peaceful life and live to see their children grow up. They value life as much as anybody else.
The masses are made to think fighting a war (soldier) for someone else (the president and the military industrial complex) is an honorable thing to do.
Because patriotism. Which is bullshit. We share this little blue ball in space with all of these people who scare us, whose ideals we ridicule. And people who love and live and dream like we do.
There is no honor in violence. Even less in oppression. Regardless of justification.