Olentzero, your great-uncle sounds like a brave man. You should be proud of him in any case.
Been wrestling with this one since your post. There is no way I would deny my Uncle Fred was a brave man - to jump off a ship and make your way to a beachhead under fire and threat of almost certain death, is brave, whether under orders or not. No doubt he was also scared shitless.
But proud of him? I can’t say I am. He did what he was required to do by the situation he was in. I think it boils down to the fact that I view the Second World War as something necessary - a step that had to be taken in order to beat back the Nazi menace - but not as something good. I’m told he was an excellent mechanic and loved to tinker with radios; if he’d lived and been a pioneer in the automotive or telecommunication industries during the Fifties or Sixties, I’d certainly be proud of him then. But there’s nothing good in war - only what is necessary to win. There’s no reason to be proud of anyone there.
What is “honorable conduct”? Abiding by the rules of war? Is the US dishonorable because it refuses to abide by the rules of war which speak against use of land mines? What does any of this talk of “respect” and “honorable conduct” actually mean? Could you explain it to an extraterrestrial? Why should they believe the US soldiers did something good by the actions they performed in uniform versus similar actions by others who were not in uniform? What are the litmus tests?
Enjoy,
Steven
I assume you agree that Afghanistan is a “war of any sort”. Ergo, there is nothing to celebrate in the war in Afghanistan.
And actually, you are mistaken. You did make an assessment of some war, in that you stated unequivocably that that was without justification of any sort. Therefore you either meant that no wars can be justified, which makes you a fairly soft pacifist, or you were making an assessment of a specific war. If that specific war was Afghanistan, you are at least smart enough to try to back off from so obviously unsupportable a notion.
OK, actually what happened is that you forgot there was a war in Afghanistan, and reacted as if Iraq were the only theater of action for the US and its allies.
Tough when a jerking knee leads you astray, is it not? 
And now you are saying that there is something to celebrate in war - namely bravery and heroic self-sacrifice in defense of a cause.
Which is all that Mr. Moto’s threads are about in the first place.
Well, it would seem that you classify the award of battlefield decorations as “excessive”. In which case, my point stands. You are being self-contradictory, in that you allow Kerry’s decorations to pass unchallenged, even for service in a war such as that in Viet Nam, but stick your nose into threads celebrating the same sort of heroism in the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Nope, just someone who notices inconsistency when he sees it.
You want to be a self-serving hypocrite, go ahead. All the more contrast to the untarnishable heroism of those who are willing to fight in a good cause.
Regards,
Shodan
It’s amazing the sort of conclusions one can reach when the best argument they can resort to is semantic quibbling. As a matter of fact I don’t think the war in Afghanistan is justifiable, and even if I did I would still disagree that the government should cite killing 20 people as bravery, much less have it celebrated in public.
Killing 20 people is not bravery. Rescuing 10 in a life-threatening situation is. An EMT rescuing climbers trapped on a mountainside during a blizzard on Mt. Hood is just as brave as a medevac soldier rescuing the wounded under fire. People risk their lives and sacrifice themselves whether there is a cause present or not - what cause was there when the rescue workers, firemen, and police went into the Murrah Building, the World Trade Center, or the Pentagon? None except saving lives. “Defense of a cause” is meaningless in defining bravery and self-sacrifice and is only an attempt to justify a war when there is opposition to it.
No, I classify killing 20 people at one sitting as “excessive”, i.e. excessive performance of a horrible but necessary obligation put upon soliders in time of war. There’s no need to celebrate such excess, which is what citations for bravery are, but that’s not what I deem “excessive”.
There is a lot more about Kerry I am dissatisfied with, disagree with, and would challenge him on, than the citations he received in Vietnam. Had the SDMB been around thirty-five years ago, and had Mr. Moto started a thread on John Kerry with the same intent in mind, I’d be there saying what I’m saying now. As it is, there’s a whole pile of political shit that Kerry’s producing now beside which his medals pale in significance. There are bigger fish to fry in his case.
My father is in his 70s now but in his closet he still has a Marine jacket with a blue diamond and a large red numeral 1 in the center. He earned that patch on Guadalcanal with the first Marine division. In addition to his duties as a rifleman he operated a flamethrower and did demo. While I don’t really know, I assume he killed quite a few people and I am intensely proud of him for doing so.
Anyway, add me to the lisy of “dense motherfucking knuckledraggers” who take pride in someone who did an unpleasant job to the very best of their abilities.
Testy
Well, I agree with you on one point, Olentzero. All of those folks are brave. And I think recognition should be paid to bravery in all of its forms.
We practically strained our arms, as a nation, patting the New York City firefighters and policemen on the back after September 11th. If an EMT rescues climbers on Mount Hood, don’t you think he’ll make the papers at least in Washington State?
These heroic soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, on the other hand, are being ignored. Try to find news articles about them. They simply don’t exist.
As I stated before, that’s the sole purpose behind these threads. I’m not trying to make any political statements with them. I can do that quite well in other discussions.
Then if I understand you correctly, you are asserting that decorations awarded for conspicuous gallantry in combat are always wrong and inappropriate. And that therefore Kerry should be as ashamed of mentioning his decorations as you would like the heroes cited by Mr. Moto to be. I am sure you can see how consistently ignoring the one, but harping on the other, makes it appear that you are being, at best, inconsistent.
And here we simply disagree. Killing 20 people, in defence of many innocent others, is bravery, and a highly commendable form to boot. Fighting and killing in (for instance) Afghanistan and WWII advances a worthy and justifiable cause - freedom for the innocent, defeat for Hitler’s Final Solution, overthrowing the horrible Taliban, or removing a dangerous and obnoxious tyrant from Iraq.
FWIW, the attitude that “fighting for freedom is our only option, but we ought to act as if we were ashamed to do so” is an attitude with which I have so little sympathy that I find it difficult to debate it. If we are going to ask our young men and women to sacrifice themselves for the freedom of the rest of the world, so that we can reap the benefit of their willingness to die for our principles, and then to make it clear that they best not expect to receive in return even the thanks of a grateful nation - well, I can think of no way to make it more likely that nobody will be willing to make the sacrifices sometimes necessary.
There are people in Afghanistan and Iraq who hate me, and want to kill me and my family, or enslave my wife and daughter under a burqa, or steal the oil of my ally and use it to build an army to attack his neighbors. My nephew (for example) is one of those who is willing to go halfway around the world and try to stop them from doing that and worse. And when the government recognizes his service with the Bronze Star (he has two so far), don’t expect much patience from me if you want to tell me he ought to be sorry for what he has achieved.
Regards,
Shodan
Oh, of course. I had forgotten that we, here in the land of the free and the home of the brave, are one of the few proud peoples who are able to disagree with our government, and that the poor backward peoples of the Middle East are of one bloodthirsty slavering tribal mind, unable to think for themselves even were they physically capable of doing so. EVERY Iraqi wants to see our precious freedoms destroyed under a choking cloud of sarin, botulism, and anthrax. EVERY Afghan wants to stone our wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters to death for even daring to think about showing a bare ankle. EVERY German wanted to exterminate world Jewry. EVERY Japanese thought it a divine mission to spread the power of the Empire across the whole of the Pacific. The more of them we kill(ed), the better it is/was for all of us. How silly of me to forget that.
You’re damn right I hope your nephew feels sorrow for taking human lives like that, Shodan. And you’re damn right I think you’re a knuckledragger for being proud of your father’s success in killing another human being, Testy. War is not something to be celebrated and remembered proudly, even if real acts of bravery occur in its prosecution. It is an unavoidable consequence of a society based on competition, and should be viewed as one of our worst habits. It shouldn’t be trumpeted from the mountaintops - “Look how many WE can kill!” And that, with the one exception of Cunningham, is what you’re doing, Mr. Moto. No politics, no statements about particular wars, just triumphantly proclaiming American superiority in the butchery department. I find that deeply repulsive.
As I see it, he wasn’t alone in acting jerkishly.
Definitely–the people comparing the killing of twenty humans to a fucking video game were being huge jerks.
Daniel
Would you expand on that, UncleBeer? That thread kinda did get my dander up more than I was trying to let on, but if I was being a jerk there I do want to know about it.
Mr. Moto, have you seen my queries regarding standards for determining what behavior should be worthy of respect or considered “honorable”? I’m of the opinion there is no way to draw these lines without having people whose acts were indistinguishable from those in your “War Heros” threads on both sides.
Enjoy,
Steven
And then Olentzero posts something dishearteningly stupid and half-witted, and thereby sacrifices any sympathy he may have garnered from his earlier, more nearly reasonable posts.
If you can post anywhere where I stated or implied that every Iraqi blah blah blah, feel free to do so. Or else just stick your lies up the ass from whence you pulled them.
I thought you had a position you had achieved via reasonable thought. I see that I was wrong.
Regards,
Shodan
What can I say, Mtgman? You’ve set up about half a dozen strawmen. Do you really want me to go through them all?
Most of them involve the fallacy of viewing historical events using modern sensibilities. The My Lai example brings up a crime that American servicemen were arrested and punished for. If My Lai was a reflection of American values, why was Calley arrested and imprisoned? It doesn’t make any sense.
In the case of land mines, the U.S. did not sign the treaty for a very good reason. The treaty sought to protect innocent people from getting killed by land mines. This is not an issue with American land mines, as they are all placed in the Korean DMZ. No innocent people go wandering through there.
Those mines do a great job of protecting our forces in South Korea, in addition to South Korean military and civilian populations. They are also mapped so that they can be removed if the Koreas are ever reunited.
The United States also has done far more than any signatory to the land mine treaty to actually go out and clear land mines in former battlefields. So we’re far from hypocrites when it comes to land mines. We’re not blowing innocent people up, and we’re clearing lots of landmines off the face of the earth. And we don’t need a signature on a piece of paper to do this.
Seeingas how you haven’t come off as entirely sympathetic from the get-go, I suppose I can deal with the loss of whatever sympathy you did have. Or do you presume to speak for everyone who’s either posted or read this thread so far?
I think you are either missing the point or are living in some kind of alternate reality. No one is glorifying war, least of all those who have been there. What is being glorified is the courage of men and women who, in the face of almost certain death, excelled at carrying out the tasks assigned to them by the people of their country.
Would it have made you feel better if Mr Moto had prefaced his thread with some kind of moral disclaimer and a bit of hand-wringing about the death of the poor people who were trying to kill Americans?
As you say, war is an unavoidable consequence of competetive societies. Given that this is the case, we should indeed glorify these men and women who are busting their asses to carry out tasks that are and will always be necessary.
Testy
War is the only circumstance in which killing another person is considered by some to be unquestionably morally acceptable, and that only because war makes a necessity of killing. Citing someone for killing a large number of people, and holding that up as a noteworthy example of the best of the human spirit, is making a virtue out of necessity. And what is necessary is not always what is good.
I did not vote for Bush in 2000, and when his administration began mobilizing for war in Afghanistan and Iraq, I involved myself in organizing against both those wars. Please demonstrate to me how, as a “person of my country”, I had any role in assigning the US military the task of invading those two nations.
You’ve reached a conclusion unsupported by my posts. I have not said that a society based on competition is a permanent phenomenon - on the contrary, I believe that competitive societies are a historically transitory form of human society and can be actively done away with, thereby eliminating both the basis and the need for war.
If you’d just answer the question I posed in my first post in this thread I’d be fine. "Are you saying these conventions [uniformed combatants, avoiding civilian casualties, etc] are objective lines of demarcation by which we can determine if various parties to armed conflict should be “worthy of respect?”
That’s exactly my point. Standards change depending on your time and place in history. Change your PoV and the “insurgents” are the “heroes”. I’m trying to figure out if you feel your PoV is objectively superior to others and why. Tell me why the widows and orphans of the men killed by your “heroes” should respect the acts which cost them their husbands and fathers. Because those men were wearing uniforms and their loved ones weren’t?
Enjoy,
Steven
From the original thread:
Glorifying war? Maybe not. But there were plenty of people trivializing the bloody deaths of twenty people.
Mr. Moto behaved respectfully and respectably in that thread, I think. Plenty of other people did not. Plenty of other people seem to think that war is a cereal commercial, is a boy scout venture, is an action movie, is a video game.
That, not muffin’s response, is what I found repellent about that thread.
Daniel