I don’t have a problem with the story, just the clumsy and forced linkage to the Iraq war, as though this particular war (as opposed to war in general) was a factor. What were the 1946 stats among veterans 20-24? The 1954 stats? The 1974 stats? Red’s claiming (indeed, crowing) that this war is especially bad and I’m calling him on it.
Great response to the factual factual evidence provided. Or, to borough from 'luc’s playbook: Oooh look! Shiny!
Color me impressed.
You ‘win.’ Whatever that means to you I gather you think it important.
Thank you for taking the time to do just so.
~Red
You took something that was known (military suicide rates higher than average) and speciously linked it to your bias (“see, this proves the war in Iraq is bad!”) This isn’t exactly a great, pride-worthy accomplishment on your part.
There are a great many valid criticisms of the Iraq war to be made. This isn’t one of them.
Pity that’s the way you choose to rebut facts, for there’s nothing particularly “specious” about them.
I agree with your first sentence. I have shown your second one to be false beyond reasonable doubt.
Enjoy the rest of your evening. Rest assured I won’t waste mine on this, throughly debunked, line of so-called reasoning.
Evening to you, soldier.
Once again, I am amazed and abashed by the flexibility of The Law. I had always thought it granite and monolithic, but no, it is far more akin to boiled spaghetti. It is, of course, entirely legal to execute an innocent man, so long as the proper writs are signed, the “i”'s crossed and the "t"s properly dotted. Its a darn shame, of course, and shoulders are solemnly shrugged.
But I am naive, only a country boy, who would have thought that a war against a nation that has not attacked, and was not about to attack…well, that must be at least a misdemeanor. Malicious mischief, perhaps, or loitering with intent to slaughter. One of the petty crimes of carnage.
But our soldiers should be apprised of these findings, no doubt many of them are as confused and idealistic as myself, they ache for the counsel of hard-headed realists, who can carefully explain and parse. Perhaps a sports metaphor, like how if the reciever in football can get both toes one inch on this side of the line, its a touchdown. You know, make a comparison that shows the tortured reasoning in a favorable light.
Then, even though he may be burdened with the knowledge that he has been used as an instrument by immoral men, to advance a policy both heartlessly cold and catastrophically stupid…it is entirely legal. What a weight might be lifted from their shoulders, to have this worrisome thought evaporate!
It was legal! Gee, that’s swell.
Is anyone in this thread arguing that legal=good? If so, we should properly call him a fool. Just as we would call fools those who believe that all that is unwise or immoral is necessarily illegal.
I can’t speak for everyone else, but I was talking about the legality of this war because we’re in a thread about a court decision which rested on whether certain persons were refugees from an illegal war.
Lemur seems to be making this equation:
Here he conflates immoral and illegal. He then adds,
Again, he confuses “immoral” with “illegal.” Those of us who consider this war to be immoral certainly believe that a soldier ordered to participate in it has been ordered to do something immoral.
What we should properly call him, though, is not a Great Debates subject.
Daniel
And carried your point admirably, and mercifully concise (some guys can’t be right about something in less than a thousand words…)
But consider: how many of our soldiers are equipped for that sort of sophisticated thinking? They might be fuzzy-minded naifs like myself, who simply cannot fathom that an aggression based on lies and misinformation is legal, but their refusal to collaborate in it is not. That can be kinda tough to swallow if you are, as I am, not real bright when it comes to the precise parsings of legal thought. Young men tend to think of the law as that which prevents you from doing things you shouldn’t, its confusing when they find that the law is frequently useful in forcing you to do what you ought not.
Kind of makes you wonder. If German boys had fled the Wehrmacht, making those flimsy claims about legality, would we have offered them sanctuary?
There is a difference between a belief that we ought to obey the law in our democratic country regardless of our ethical qualms, and a belief that that which is legal is therefore good. The former rests on arguments about the social contract, the fallibility of individual moral judgment, the gray nexus between moral and policy disagreements, and the very nature of democracy and justice. The latter is just silly and easily refuted (as has been demonstrated by **Polycarp **already in this thread, and **elucidator **again just now).
I suspect that it is elements of the first view that you’re seeing in Lemur’s and others’ claims in this thread, but I don’t want to put words in their mouths. Since I don’t agree fully with that view, I won’t attempt to defend it except to show that it is different from the view that **elucidator **is lampooning.
Bryan, you have mentioned the relevance of when these soldiers signed up – before or after September 11th. Have you considered the irony of linking that date to anything having to do with the invasion of Iraq?
Every school teacher in America should have the children make temporary tattoos to show their parents: * People from Iraq did not use planes to attack New York. Iraq is not the enemy. BIG MIXUP!*
I know that you know better. But it is so deeply ingrained in our thinking.
The legality of illegality of the war simply is not relevant to the Canadian court’s decision here. The federal court did not make a decision concerning the legality of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Whether or not the invasion was “legal,” and what constitutes a legal war (if any wars are legal; to be honest, legality strikes me as being quite beside the point when you’re slaughtering innocents) and how that differs from morality is an interesting topic, but I think it’s important to reiterate that the Canadian courts were not ruling on the legality of the war. They were ruling, specifically, on the validity of a refugee claim which, at least on its face, was transparently ridiculous.
If I implied that the Canadian court was ruling on the legality of the war, it was entirely unintentional. I was addressing upthread those who claimed the war was illegal under US law because of the UN charter, and then subsequently addressing those who decried the conflation of illegality and immorality. In other words, I didn’t start the hijack, they did! 
Which is to say that you don’t fully* disagree * with that view, there is some room for nuance. Or has your precise meaning evaded me, once again? Perhaps if you typed slower.
For myself, I “lampoon” that view only because its all I have, I’d harpoon it if I could. Twist it around real good, yank it out and stick it again. Its an idea worth hunting down and killing, hang it on a nearby mountain to show off. Might stink up the place.
Once again, with feeling, the mere fact that a war may be illegal does not relieve the members of the armed forces from following their legal orders.
Your use of the phrase “that view” in this post refers to both of the two positions I was seeking to distinguish. Have I failed so miserably?
The only reason I mentioned it, in passing, was because of vagueness in Red’s cite about rates of desertion of soldiers in their first “term”. “Term” wasn’t firmly defined, though typical contracts can be two or six years. While considering the latter number, it occurred to me that we’d just passed the six-year anniversary and I suspect that event increased recruiting dramatically. That’s all.
In fact, recruiting has been consistently high since 2001. In addition to swelling the ranks, the American military picks up an increased number of a people who won’t stick it out (and desert) as well as an increased number of people with psychological problems (who may kill themselves).
Red’s follow-up cite amount suicide rates just shows he missed my point again. It’s not this war that is provably increasing suicide rates; any war might do. He’d have to compare rates not to 2001, or to 1980 (when such stats were first recorded) but to other wartime periods. His own cite, amusingly, reports the previous spike in suicides was 1991, during the first Gulf War. Was that war even as unpopular than this one? For that matter, the article specifically mentions suicides in Iraq and Afghanistan. Is the latter as unjust and unpopular as the former, now?
I have noticed, since I’ve arrived, in the articles and columns in the Citizen, an occasional comparison and equivalancy of Canada’s activity in Afganistan to the US’s activity in Iraq. I don’t get it, myself.
Have to admit, neither do I. Frankly, the whole effort to gain the appearance of parity with Yanks is a bit disturbing, like we’re the dorky kid trying to mingle with the cool crowd.
I would love, however, for a Canadian to bag Osama bin Laden. And some bolder statements from Ottawa about how any American who repeats the lie that the 9/11 hijackers got to their country through ours should be taken out and flogged, but that’s just me. I don’t want us to look like we’re trying to be as cool as the Americans. I want us to boldly declare that we are cooler than the Americans. Suck maple, Uncle Sam.