I paraphrased your statement, which is entirely different from misquoting it. If you feel I have mistreated you in debate, you have recourse available to you.
Paraphrases do not belong in quotes. This is one of the availible recourses, are you suggesting I use another?
How is it different from being a policeman, fireman, Alaskan crab fisherman or any other dangerous job? I like crab legs and all but I’m not about to get on a fishing boat in the Bering Strait. Am I less deserving to go eat at Red Lobster? Am I less deserving of police protection because I don’t grab a blue hat and a nightstick and go busting drug dealers myself?
Look, if I wanted to quote you, askeptic, I would have done so thusly:
That is pretty much the agreed upon convention around here.
Putting quotation marks around things can denote a paraphrase in standard English, and it is clear that that is what I was doing, since I would have quoted you in a quote box otherwise.
If you have an issue with this, take it up with a moderator. But I’ve done you no wrong.
You are not this obtuse are you? You do not see war as any different than crab fishing? Killing other humans is all in a days work. That is typical of those who have never had to do it.
mmsmith537
Let’s make this far more direct, and this applies to MM and anyone else who supports the war in Iraq.
Would you be prepared to go to Iraq in the front line, and kill another person ?
If you do not want to do this, then please justify your giving the authority to others who will order the military to do exactly what you are not willing to do.
I don’t care if you are too old, too young, too female, or too anything, what I want to know is, would you go out and kill another person on instructions ?
What if they were shooting back, would you still be prepared to go to Iraq and risk being killed in order to further your beliefs ?
What if your son or daughter was enlisted and refused to kill another person, what would be your attitude then ?
It’s dangerous, unpleasent business, often producing results where the value of the outcome relative to the cost is questionable. Sounds not that far off.
You know, personally, I saw the film Fahrenheit 9/11 9/11 with a friend of mine, Matt. Matt was angered by it, but I thought it made a really good point. However, I could agree with him on one point, the exact same one being made by the OP. In the end of the film, Moore asks senators to sign up their (adult) kids for service. Matt’s point was "How dare they ask a father to sign up his child, when that could lead to the child’s death.
On the other side, I told him at the time, there is the obvious. How can you have a war if there are no people, who must be the children of someone. toadspittle, this is the sort of schizophrenic thinking common in our country, and most other countries as well.
Mr. Moto, I think askeptic has a point regarding your use of quotation marks.
I think you would have been better off using italics or some other set-off with a text that clearly indicated that you were not actually quoting him. For example:
«It would appear that your attitude is one of shut up until you’ve done some killing or, perhaps, shut up until you’ve done some killing in those wars with which I agree.»
Quotation marks are a tricky business. They are a legitimate indicator of irony in a single word or a very short phrase, but in a longer clause they definitely give the appearance of a quotation (hence the term quotation marks).
I don’t think you intended anything dishonest on this occasion, but I would urge you to be careful in fututure constructions.
askeptic, given the fairly extensive use of the [ quote ] function that Mr. Moto has employed, I am willing to cut him some slack and accept his explanation on this occasion.
You may now return to your rancorous exchange already in progress.
[ /Moderator Mode ]
NIMBY, but with republicans, wars and children, rather than democrats, powerplants and back yards.
I think the argument that if you don’t want your own family members to serve in the military (or you yourself), that you cannot support military actions is untenable at best.
As has already been stated in this thread, there are many careers, and many choices in life, that are risky, and that one would want a loved one to not be involved in.
That doesn’t mean, however, that one must forefit any benefit from those careers and deeds. They were entered into by choice. In particular, those in the armed forces have chosen to serve their country in a rather dangerous capacity, and have given their trust to the government (whether or not that trust is well-placed is a subject for a different thread). I refuse to see why I or anyone else should never be able to support any given military action just because I have chosen to not enlist.
Example: there’s a war, I believe the end result will be of great benefit to the country/humanity. However, I don’t have any desire whatsoever to enlist in any of the armed forces. I have other careers I’m working on, and frankly, I don’t want to put myself in that kind of physical danger or give up that many personal freedoms in my job. But, I can see that the ‘greater good’ will be served by the war, so I vote for the guy who supports it. Where’s the hypocracy?
I believe the point here was that at this point the armed forces is a chosen profession. At the point in which we’re drafting other folks’ kids to fight, then they’re different. Not that there isn’t responsibility for war supporters for what happens during the war, but that it’s not hypocritical to send “other people’s kids” to fight. We send our armed forces, all members of which are there by choice.
I’m with askeptic on this one, and his hints about chickenhawks is an accurate assessment. I find it telling that some of the most vocal pro-war “celebrities” and politicians almost to a man avoided war when it was their “turn in the barrel”, and their children do not have to fight in this one.
The attitude of “We’ll fight to the last drop of your blood” seems to fit.
Isn’t the overall question kinda dumb in the sense that if your children are old enough to join the miliatry, they’re old enough to make their own decisions? A parent can’t “send” an adult child to war or anywhere else without that adult child’s consent.
Forgive me if there are subtleties that have escaped me.
Wouldn’t you be a hypocrite if you said, 'I support the war, but I wouldn’t want to fight over there". I don’t see anything hypocritical about saying you support the war but wouldn’t want your kids to fight in it.
I could be wrong but I think joining the military is a sort of “Russian Roulette” to most people. My guess would be that most people join for the opportunities it can present for them, a way to further their education, and for some people, the only way out of really bad situations.
I would think it’s a really really small percentage that’s happy to be there.
I also think they entrust their lives to people who they think will use war only when necessary. That’s where I think they went wrong.
To paraphrase Groucho, “I would never support a war that I wouldn’t join.”
How about, one is normal economic activity. The other is not. Or if you decide you won’t go on your next trip to the Bering Strait, because it’s too dangerous, you can’t be imprisoned or shot.
Or consider that the war effort is being seriously undermined by a lack of recruits (the Alaska fishing industry, OTOH, is humming along nicely, according to my nephew). The stop-loss policies that the Army have in place can’t keep a proper-sized force in the field for very much longer, and recruitments have dropped precipitously. A recent Newsweek article said it was more than half. Perhaps the “let someone else do it” argument just doesn’t apply any more. If half the country won’t fight because they disagree with the war, then the other half is going to have to step up a little, or we should leave now before we’re really humiliated.
I’m sure it’s uncomfortable to think about, but it could be worse. In World War I women organized and walked the streets handing out white feathers to young men who were not in uniform.
As a person who is, for a variety of reasons, currently in a lower tax bracket, I see nothing wrong with reinstating the 70% bracket to, among other things, buy me a new car, increase my financial aid, give NPR more money, and institute free national health care.
I trust that our non-fighting tough guys have no moral objections to my proposition.
Imagine a president. Let’s say it’s President Palmer, just so we take the whole issue of Bush out of it. Now imagine that his son or daughter is in the army. Do you want that President to urge Congress to declare war based on whether he does or does not want to send his kid into combat?
Parents are generally not rational about sending their kids into mortal danger. An urge to go or not to go to war can be irrational enough without the added irrationality of parent/child issues.
In a war as unnecessary as this one, I do think it’s a tad hollow to support the war but not serve in some way that directly helps the effort.
It is really easy to support something when there is no sacrifice involved. It would be like saying you support manned exploration of Mars, but being unwilling to fund NASA’s budget. With something that incurs major financial and human costs, what good is support if the individual doing the “supporting” doesn’t want to help pay in all the ways that count?
The difference between a war of agression and fire fighters is simple: one is not vital to the well-being of our society and the other is. That means that if one supports the idea of an action that inevitably will result in people dying and is completely unnecessary, they better damn well be prepared to be involved in it. Otherwise, it would be like wanting a baby but not wanting to give birth to it, let alone raise it. In effect, you’re not supporting it all. You just think the idea of it is neato.