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NorthernGent -> RE: Thinking *BIG* (10/5/2006 11:08:46 PM)
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ORIGINAL: nefertari
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ORIGINAL: NorthernGent
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ORIGINAL: nefertari
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ORIGINAL: NorthernGent
You're misunderstanding me. I no exactly what part the British Government have had in this. My post is not intended to generate into a tit-for-tat my Government is better than yours scenario.
Your comment that they'd die for your freedom is not relevant here because your freedom is not, never has been and never will be under threat from another country. The only threat to your freedom is your Government that is currently embarking on a programme to limit your civil liberties. The whole freedom line is simply intended to con people into thinking war is a just cause.
In terms of the executioners comment, like it or not they are executioners carrying out Government orders. Willing or unwilling executioners? It's open to debate. I imagine there is a significant proportion of the army who are wondering what they are doing there.
Take the meat off the bones and think of it like this - the Government creates the foundations for a large army, they send them somewhere to kill people, the public support this. Take the politics and the packaging away and this is exactly what we have.
So I guess Pearl Harbor wasn't an attack on our country then. Just a myth?
Yes, of course it was an attack. However, it was an attack in the age of serious imperialism where there were countries across the globe who wanted a slice of the pie. The world has moved on since then and this was/is an isolated incident as opposed to a general trend of attacks on the US i.e. as it is the exception to the rule then it should not be used as a means of insecurity.
For the record, I wasn't using this as a means of insecurity. We were attacked, but we won that war. I was just pointing out that we have, in fact, been attacked.
How about 9/11?
Iraq has nothing to do with what happened in New York. The 20 men were North Africans and Saudis. Where does Iraq come into this?
I never said Iraq had anything to do with 9/11. Never. I was against the war in Iraq from day one. This comment was in response to your comment that we've never been threatened.
Do you have any idea how many people signed up for military service immediately following 9/11? There was an extraordinary influx in military recruits. These people signed up because they wanted to protect our country. Our lives. Our liberties. Call it what you will. I know without a doubt that if we were under attack these people would do whatever it took to protect us. That in and of itself demands our respect. Our government has put them into an impossible situation. I absolutely refuse to slander them further.
See my view in an earlier post. If you're not for analysing it and prefer to stay in the comfort zone of emotion-driven thought then let's agree to disagree.
Let me see if I can break this down for you. A lot of people signed up for the military after 9/11 out of desire to do something for their country. Their intent was to protect their country. I dare say that most of them did not sign up with the intent to occupy another nation for years with no end in sight in a steadily declining situation in which they are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Yet, if the situation came about and we were under attack they would fight to protect us. That is why they have my respect.
The emotional aspect of my post is driven by your use of the word executioner in describing our troops. I guess you weren't around when our young men came home from Vietnam. I was only a small child then, but many of my parent's friends served and they were forever changed. Those troops were put into an impossible, no win situation. I witnessed these men experiencing flashbacks (literally jumping behind furniture and yelling and screaming) and breaking down with no resources to turn to and a society that was condemning them. I refuse to do that to our troops who, I reiterate, more than likely did not sign up with the intention of becoming an occupier of another nation.
Yes, our government is and has been attacking our civil liberties since Junior took office. That he was reelected absolutely floored me. That so many Americans support the erosion of our liberties in the name of national security proves both the effectiveness of our governments propaganda and fear mongering, as well as the ignornace of many of our citizens.
True, and both of our Governments are making us the most despised people on the planet right now and who can blame them - after all, we elect them.
I don't blame them. There are a lot of people in my own country that I despise because of their greed and arrogance in regards to politics and social policy.
In case you've missed, it's kill or be killed daily in Iraq. The insurgents are killing their own people. The Shiites are killing the Sunni's and vice versa. It's not exactly cordial there.
Not relevant to what we are discussing because the descent into chaos began around the time the US and British armies turned up on their doorstep.
It is extremely relevant. It's kill or be killed. It may have been started by our governments but our troops are sent there and have to choose to live or die. Execute or be executed. Yet you can sit there and arrogantly call our troops executioners. What choice have they been given? Or maybe we should just have our troops sit idly by (I mean they are already there) and let the insurgents kill their own innocent civilians and our troops.
I suppose when you aren't losing the number of troops to death in Iraq and Afghanistand that we are it's quite easy to sit back and judge them and call them executioners. How many friends have you lost to this insane war?
Indirectly, this logic allows the Government to get away with this. When we start viewing armies for what they really are then it is plausible that we will do something about this madness.
I don't have much good to say about our military's practices as a body of government. I, however, am not talking about it in that aspect. I am speaking of the individuals that signed up with either otherwise good intentions, no idea what they were really getting into, or because of lack of opportunity. The point of the OP, unless I'm mistaken, is to take care of our troops.
To add an emotional point of my own, I wonder how the families of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who have died are thinking about this? I doubt they see US and British troops as merely caught up in a mess.
The vast majority of Iraqi's want us out (I think the last poll I read was 82%, with varying timelines of withdrawal from immediate to near futre). I want our troops out. I didn't want our troops there to begin with. It sickens me to no end that so many innocent civilians have died. The arrogance of those that say that we are fighting terrorism there so we don't have to fight it here appalls me. (And, by the way, there weren't terrorists in Iraq until we were there.) So, by that logic their life is less valuable than ours. There is nothing remotely Christian, or even human, in that line of thinking. There are certainly some American politicians that need to be tried for war crimes.
By the way, the majority of Americans do NOT support the war in Iraq. Many of those that did initially (being fed the lies and fear by Junior and his boys), have since seen the light.
I never said different. I can add, based on mori opinion polls, the numbers who have supported this illegal invasion are not too dissimilar on both sides of the atlantic. 47% in the US, 46% in the UK at the end of 2005.
It's not a war. How can you call the invasion, bombing and exploitation of a country that posed no threat to the US and Britain a war? It is an illegal invasion and if we are ever going to prevent our Governments from doing this sort of thing we need to tell it how it is rather than stay in an emotional comfort zone that prevents us from stating it is an illegal invasion where death squads are carrying out the Governments orders and the public are doing very little about it.
It is an illegal invasion. But to the ones living there, I'm sure it feels like much, much more.
The thing is, this turned into a whole debacle about Iraq when my initial point was in regards to our troops, not Iraq. Bring them home. Compensate them. Provide them with the medical care (physical and mental) they need. Our country has a history of not providing for it's troops once they are home. In fact, in 2005 (I believe, may have been 2004) Congress was providing emergency funding to the tune of billions of dollars for the "war". When a Democrat congresswoman tried to get a couple million tagged onto that emergency appropriation for the desperately underfuned and overwhelmed VA, it was rejected saying it wasn't a "cost of war." Huh?
Ok, so we have common ground on many things. In terms of the executioners comment, Governments have used the notion of "fighting for freedom" for centuries in order to 1) coerce people into signing up for wars 2) justify mass slaughter.
If we keep restating soldiers duties as "fighting for freedom" then we are reinforcing Government propaganda and creating the foundations for the next Iraq.
As stated, I prefer to call the army what they are - death squads who, at a conservative estimate, have killed more than a hundred thousand civilians in Iraq. They may be coerced and they be manipulated and I'm not arguing they are not deserving of care when they return to the US.
The point is this, if we tell this how it is and the public understand how it is then public outrage will increase against invasions of this kind. If there is sufficient public pressure put on the Government then they won't be in a position to order these invasions and if you don't have an invasion you don't have US soldiers dying in their thousands (3,000ish?) and there will be no need to even talk about Government support for returning soldiers.
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