Antiwar protests.

Setanta

Yes. Discriminate slurring beats the pants off indiscriminate slurring.

As always, there is a problem in making claims or descriptions of a group (eg, men are more violent than women) because, though the claim may be valid in a general or statistical sense, there is no guarantee that it is true in any individual case.

The misuse of generalized slurs is pretty common in political discourse (Rumsfeld speaking about the French, Billy Grapham's kid speaking about Muslims, me speaking about Americans) and I think we are all obligated to put the hex on such sentences when we come across them as their use is as clear an example of lazy thinking and destructive public dialogue as I know of.

But on the other hand, there are those things we can validly say about groups, this being the territory of sociology or auto insurance rates, for example. Calvin Trillin spoke to this some years ago in a dialogue with some other humorists where one was protesting 'jewish jokes' on the basis of 'what can you say about ten or twenty million people?" Trillin, himself jewish, observed that one can make reference to the culture, and proceded to tell a very lovely and very funny little story.

There has been a lot of study on the process of military training and education. It is designed to produce a certain sort of social outlook which, in any other social context, would be considered deeply pathological. Imagine a boy scout leader spitting in the face of a 12 year old scout, "YOU'RE A WORM! WHAT ARE YOU?" I'm...A WORM, sir!"

And of course, the organization is on the opposite end of the scale from 'democratic'.

Joelo- Welcome to A2K Sounds like you have a lot of good opinions, so com'on in...............the water's fine!

thank you phoenix I'm just finishing up school right now and on other... less civil forums I've found myself going through quite a frustrating cycle of rubbing core beliefs which I do not enjoy but tended to get sucked into. So for now I'll read where I can and chill and hopefully become a part of this forums community in time . I'm not used to forums with this many users with 140 page topics so I'm going have to do ALOT of reading to catch up!

BLatham, millions of Americans who now lead lives unworthy of any but piqueayune (sp?) criticism were once put through that process of military indoctrination, and it is by no means incontrovertible that this process permanently damages the object of such streatment. That was unkind of you to make the remark about discrinate and indiscriminate slurs--there was no such intent in what i wrote, and you were just taking advantage of the text to "score." I object to any slurs directed at a "class," GI's being one such class. In particular, i am incensed by GI-bashing because i was once a GI, and that in the era when these usually well-meaning, often lonely and disoriented young men were screamed at, with accusations of "baby killer," and spat upon. I was spat upon at Sea-Tac airport when i came back to the "world" from overseas. Therefore, GI-bashing in particular is offensive to me. Henrygreen was way off the deep end when it comes to the consideration of moderate and thoughtful exchanges of views, no doubt about that. I was really offended, however, at his vicious attack on Mysteryman, based simply upon knowing that he is a serving member of the armed forces. Beside the dubious rectitude of his assertions about the casaualties suffered among Iraqi children and the scope of the prospect of malnutrition, absent intimate knowlede of Mysterman, the role he played in this military action, and his personal feelings about Iraqis and performance of his duties, Henrygreen hadn't the least justification for what he wrote. One thing we can never validly say about groups--at any event, those groups which have not proclaimed in advance that murder, rapine, plundering, etc., or other criminality are their objects-is that the members of such a group are to be considered evil based soley upon participation in the group.

Setanta -- When two intelligent people like Blatham and Henry Green (and myself, though on a significantly inferior level), are as critical as they are of the military, it might be worthwhile to pause for a moment and listen and do some self-questioning. Henry is offensive -- and right. Blatham is tactful, thoughtful -- and right. You are almost always right, but on this occasion I think you are self-dramatizing -- and wrong.

Nulla rosa sine spinis, in fact.

Setanta


Truly, you misread here. I had/have not the slightest intention there to be rude or disingenuous...it was simply the fun of wordplay that led to that sentence. I'm very sorry you took it the wrong way. I consider you a old and valued friend, and I'm a great admirer of your ideas and knowledge who is sincerely pleased to see you again.

Welcome, Joelo -- you're a great addition. Much appreciate your kind words, too. Hope you'll find time to join in as often as possible.

The question of how one ought to regard soldiers is not simple. A fellow I've recently come to know was, as a very young and innocent young man, in Nam beginning in 62. He assumed that his presence there was justified and necessary at the time. He now thinks pretty much precisely the opposite. As you know, he is indeed not alone.

For a whole set of complicated reasons, young men are easy pawns for war fodder. Their enthusiasm for the project tells us nothing at all about the validity or justification of the project. The accounts coming out of the civil war period in Burundi when the Tutsis and Hutu genocide was occuring pointed to the ease with which young males might fall to the most horrible deeds.

My loathing, and it is very deep, is towards the people who cultivate this propensity in young males, and send them off to wars which are initiated in the service of interests which are NOT those young mens' interests. These people NEVER put themselves at risk, but live lives of great comfort.

So when a young American soldier (or a young Belgian soldier) believes in his cause, I do not assume he is wrong, but I certainly don't accept that he is right, and my acceptance of his viewpoint is greatly tempered by the fact of the social and phsycological dynamics in play. Of course he will commonly say precisely the sorts of things said above - my nation is good, my cause is good.

This isn't easy stuff, which you know as well as I. For the community at large to point to young males and say, "you are TOO eager to go to war, and you are TOO eager to believe what you are being told" is not a disservice except to that contingent which desires the easy access to and use of young men as pawns.

IF the military are necessary, they are so because as citizens of the world we have screwed up. They are our symbols of failure. Because we don't like to think that we fail (as individuals, as a nation), we pump into the category of military **GLORY** **STRENGTH** **HONOR** and all those other bits of Hollywood fluff we're so good at using to cover up reality.

Lest what I say be misunderstood, it's not the fault of the soldier that he must serve but the fault of the society which makes it necessary for him to serve. If we did it right, we would face our screw-ups which produce war and speak of the military as a necessary evil and those who become soldiers as honorable men/women tragically sacrificed to clean up our mistakes. But we don't. And worse, the biggest flag wavers and supporters of the **GLORY** **STRENGTH** **HONOR** charade are the guys behind the desk, the guys who haven't seen action and wouldn't know how to act, and too many who come out of the other side of mayhem who are willing to cheat others into believing it's all about **GLORY** **STRENGTH** **HONOR**. Every military parade is a story of past failures.

To win a war is a failure? Yes. There shouldn't have been a war in the first place. But what about Hitler? Saddam? Right, what about a country which freely traded with and on Hitler and Saddam, knowing what they were, and then deciding, oops, we screwed up, we'd better go get 'em, no matter how many lives are sacrificed.

And above all, no matter how much truth we must hide to do so.

Forward ! He cried, from the rear
And the front went down . . .

BLatham, you've hit on the source of my irritation with what you'd written earlier. For his very survival, a soldier must learn to be somewhat of an automaton, to obey without question. This is crucial in tactical performance. I've never had a drill instructor use personal insults, nor heard them used on someone else. But i've had that common experience of trying to strip, clean and reassemble a complex piece of machinery--in this case, an M14 semi-automatic rifle--within a very brief, specified period of time, while the drill instructor stood at my shoulder, screaming at me that i was slow, why did i do it that way, did i really think i could beat the clock . . . and to good purpose. If you're crawling through the mud, and your weapon jams, you have to be able to strip it, clean it and reassemble it, and put it back to use, under the considerable pressure of being at the receiving end of live fire. Although there have been bad incidents of the abuse of recruits, largely the purpose of the drill instructor is to make the recruit into a soldier, who has sufficient intelligence and initiative to use sophisticated systems, and is sufficiently conditioned in crucial skills to perform them quickly, unthinkingly, under intense pressure.

So the soldier is conditioned to obey without questioning. Hence, the example you provide of the Vietnam Vet who at first trusted to those placed in command of him, but later coming to the conclusion that the war was unjust. This is another reason i am sensitive to criticism of the common soldier. After the destruction of Pickett's division at Gettysburg, as the survivors dragged back to the Confederate position on Seminary Ridge, Lee rode among them, to tell them they'd done well, and that it was all his fault. And, indeed, in the properly organized military, this is absolutely true. The commander is always responsible, the common soldier almost never responsible, for the consequences of the operations undertaken. So the soldier is placed in an extremely difficult position, to the like of which the rest of us are rarely or never exposed. He must obey orders of his superior officers and non-commissioned officers, and yet, we expect them to know that you don't line up civilians and shoot them down. In Mogadishu, clan gunmen would commonly lie down in the street, with a woman standing in front of him, and children sitting on his back, and then fire from between the woman's legs--this was reported on more than one occassion. The woman was, of course, cover . . . so that the target soldiers would not at first know where the fire was coming from. The children were body armor, to protect him from grenades. During the horrible incident which was chronicled in Blackhawk Down, soldiers reported various nightmare situations: a woman crossing the street with a baby in her arms suddenly drops the infant (with apparent disregard) and opens fire with a pistol; a boy of about five or six years of age bursts from a doorway, spraying the street with the fire from a Kalishnikov; clansmen run crouched behind a donkey lead by a white-haired old man, stooping to fire beneath the creatures belly.

Combat has taken on horrendous new dimensions. Hospitals and Schools may be the source of incoming fire; a potential, murderous assailant may be male or female, young or old, even a child. How much greater the burden placed upon the judgment of the common foot soldier; how much greater the responsibility of those who send them into a war; how much more vile the crime if they are wrong in so doing.

Say a prayer for the common foot soldier
Spare a thought for his back breaking work
Say a prayer for his wife and his children
Who burn the fires and who still till the earth

Welcome, Joelo.

It's 'picayune'.

Set, I always enjoy your POV, particularly your vast knowledge of history. I can maybe (though he does so most eloquently for himself) speak for blatham when I say that we all hope for a day when Memorial Days mean something even more noble than mourning deceased warriors.

Something like the death of war, perhaps.

What a nice way to put that.

Thanks.

I may borrow that for one of my letters to the editor on the issue.

Yes, i second Frank's opinion, you've expressed that very well.

I just become dismayed when so many proceed so eagerly to beat our plowshares into swords, and our pruning hooks into spears, to put into the hands of trusting young men and women, who are then (sometimes) scurriously vilified for doing precisely what we've hired them to do--when the blame rests elsewhere, and the only honor involved in the situation is that displayed by the private soldiers, who have kept faith with the oath they've taken.

It's all y'all's.

Add me to the list - both Frank's and Setanta's are very much on point!

How do we do that, Setanta? I agree wholeheartedly, but how do we separate the truth from the fiction, the perps from those they use?

Must!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What I'd like to see (since we're in an antiwar protest discussion) and have wanted to see for two years:

A group of people in front of the White House day after day, chanting LIAR LIAR LIAR alternating with SHAME SHAME SHAME. Day after day. Rain. Shine. All of us contributing a day here and a day there. Unending.

I could not hope to offer a solution to this problem. Although a continuous demonstration at the White House might get some initial media attention, i doubt that there would be a constructive long term effect. The only political action which can change the current status quo in the short term is to "throw the bum out." And that, in pragmatic terms, means assuring that a Democrat is sent to the White House next year.

I do wish we could "study war no more" . . . but for the time being, the world which we inhabit is far too dangerous to live in without an effective military--and this administration has, in my opinion, made it a much more dangerous place, and made the need for our armed forces that much greater.

In other words, achieved their Primary Goal!!!!!!!