Someone having the strength of personal conviction that they are right and their government is wrong, so much so that they are willing to uproot themselves and their family and move to another country is a coward?
Personally, when I was faced with the draft, I considered resisting, going to jail, or fleeing to Canada or Mexico, but I took the coward’s way out. I showed up at the draft office.
I guess the definition of “coward” is anyone who doesn’t do what you think they should.
After Muhammed Ali was drafted in 1967, he claimed to be a conscientious objector and eventually (1971) received exemption as a lay minister for the Nation of Islam.
After Muhammed Ali was drafted in 1967, he claimed to be a conscientious objector and eventually (1971) received exemption as a lay minister for the Nation of Islam.
If you accept the punishment (the lumps as you say) you accept the legitimacy of the authority (Bush) punishing you and, equally, the legitimacy of what it is they are doing (in Iraq); it’s like saying ‘Sure, I’m wrong, do with me what you will’. But it’s not ‘wrong’, Bush has no authority, no mandate, from the American people to pursue whatever the hell he’s doing in Iraq.
Hence, imho, you do nothing ‘wrong’ by rejecting this non-elected war of aggression, all you’re doing is rejecting the predominant, fake-reality mind-set that this administration has created with the help of the US media.
This war of aggression isn’t about protecting your country or American values or freedom, it’s about a non-elected, self-serving neo-con agenda. You want to die for corporate Texas? Then sure, they’ll welcome you as a patriot and play the songs and have you marching to the anthems while the flags flutter. That isn’t the reality, it’s what they want you, as a patriot, to believe, and, if truth be told, you – or millions like you – want to believe it because the alternative is unacceptable to your own patriotic inclinations.
Nothing patriotic or noble about serving on behalf of corporate Texas, let alone dying for it.
Regarding the little debate going on here, I was just thinking about the draft the other day. It still seems to me to be absolutely fucking insane that a group of people I don’t know could force me to help kill another group of people I don’t know, in a war to which I’m opposed. I see little difference between actually pulling the trigger, and merely serving in a non-combat role, thus freeing up someone else to pull the trigger.
I respect your decision to serve, please respect my decision not to serve.
All in all, considering the costs to the United States versus the benefits to the United States, do you think the war with Iraq was worth fighting, or not?
Why are you posting numbers from 13 months ago – why not check out WW2 ?
Thirteen months ago people weren’t even sure the war would happen, let alone with or without the UN, let alone that the whole WMD pretext would be revealed as manipulation . . etc, etc, it’s a different world now.
A new study based on a series of seven nationwide polls conducted from January through September of this year reveals that before and after the Iraq war, a majority of Americans have had significant misperceptions and these are highly related to support for the war with Iraq.
The polling, conducted by the Program on International Policy (PIPA) at the University of Maryland and Knowledge Networks, also reveals that the frequency of these misperceptions varies significantly according to individuals’ primary source of news. Those who primarily watch Fox News are significantly more likely to have misperceptions, while those who primarily listen to NPR or watch PBS are significantly less likely.
An in-depth analysis of a series of polls conducted June through September found:
48% incorrectly believed that evidence of links between Iraq and al Qaeda have been found,
22% that weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, and
25% that world public opinion favored the US going to war with Iraq.
Overall 60% had at least one of these three misperceptions.
**Such misperceptions are highly related to support for the war. **Among those with none of the misperceptions listed above, only 23% support the war. Among those with one of these misperceptions, 53% support the war, rising to 78% for those who have two of the misperceptions, and to 86% for those with all 3 misperceptions. Steven Kull, director of PIPA, comments, “While we cannot assert that these misperceptions created the support for going to war with Iraq, it does appear likely that support for the war would be substantially lower if fewer members of the public had these misperceptions.”
To show that, contrary to what you claimed, President Bush had a mandate from the American public before, during, and after the war in Iraq.
To first claim that the president needs a mandate from the American public, and then to back pedal and say that the American public is ignorant of the facts, is disingenuous.
Oh, bullshit. That’s not the way a demoratic republic works and you know it. I can’t decide that I didn’t elect any representatives to impose an income tax or a 65MPH speed limit and then freely ignore those laws because the government has “no authority, no mandate” to enforce them. We elect representatives and the President to run the government. If we don’t like the job they are doing or we think they’re doing the wrong things, we elect other folks next time around. None of that gives anyone license to pick and chose what laws they want to follow.
Any point you are trying to make would be better served by just making it instead of burrying it in a midden heap of jingoistic bullshit. Try communicating without the prophaganda and lies, will you?
Don’t try to make this about me. It has nothing to do with me or my choices.
If you are a citizen of the United States, you enjoy a comparatively luxurious lifestyle compared to most countries, you have freedoms virtually unheard of in most places, and you benefit from the strongest economy in the world defended by the most powerful military in the world.
So, when your country comes calling, asking for your service, you have three options.
Option one: You serve, be it in a military capacity or some other kind of service that keeps you out of what you would deem an “unjust war”.
Option two: You resist. You stand there with the courage of your convictions and you resist.
Option three: You decide that despite all of the advantages you have as an American, all of the privileges you would have nowhere else, that your country is worthy of your contempt and you flee so you don’t have to give anything back to the place that gave you so much.
That’s it. That’s the three options. I admire people who choose option one, and I very much respect the people who choose option two, as I am reminded so often, I fight for the rights of those people to exercise their right to dissent.
The people who exercise option three are comtemptible cowards, in my humble opinion. They owe, and are unwilling to stand up and face their responsibilities as citizens. I find that to be reprehensible.
Speeding ticket? Sorry. Drank before age 21, or smoked before age 18? Goodbye. Downloaded music from the internet? Hasta la vista, crook. Smokes pot on the weekends? Don’t get a job, hippie!
Because you can’t ever trust anyone who would break the law, no matter how arbitrary or unjust the law might be, right?
What does that have to do with the draft? If you’re really that biased against youth, just hang a “Whippersnappers Need Not Apply” sign on the window and turn away all of them.
I must admit, it’s pretty inconvenient to be shot and killed.
Care to list some of those privileges we Americans have that those poor, oppressed Canadians don’t have?
I’ll freely admit that when I say I’d steal Gunslinger and run to Canada I’d be doing so selfishly. I don’t want him to be dragged off to war and shot and killed. I want him to be here with me being warm and safe and alive. If it were World War Two where we were very clearly in the right and fighting for a just cause instead of some murky God-Only-Knows-Why-And-He’s-Sure-As-Hell-Not-Telling-Us-Plebeians I’d still want him to be here with me being warm and safe and alive instead of overseas being shot at and killed and dead. He might decide he wanted to fight in either case and then I’d let him do what he wanted because I do not own him but no matter what the circumstances are I would rather have my fiance be here with me, warm and safe and alive, than drafted into the army, being shot at and killed and dead. Yes, it’s selfish; no, I don’t particularly care.
Walloon, you posted a comperhensive list on the previous page about Republican Senators who served in the Armed Forces. But James Jeffords of Vermont is now an Independent, not a Republican. Furthermore, instead of asking how many Senators and Representatives served, ask how many of them have children in the Armed Forces, and how many of them have enlisted children. I don’t believe there are too many. Though I could be wrong.
I ask that because on the night of the Draft lottery in 1969, my grandfather had my father’s bags packed for Canada. My grandfather served in WWII, which a lot of people on this board seem to think was a valid, just war. Sure, it might have been, but it was horrible, just or not. He didn’t want his son to have to experience what he experienced.
Actually, I’ve always considered Americans to be consummate law breakers and general all around shit kickers. However, whether they are expressing displeasure with the Stamp Act or refusing to surrender their seat on a bus they have stood their ground and fought for their convictions.
People who find a law completely unjust and yet lack the fortitude to either obey the law or fight the law are cowards.
“Those that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Ben Franklin, (1759)
