Factual question: Could the Marines (perhaps MPs) legally clear out the protesters interfering with the office doing its business if the cops didn’t do anything?
I would think that if protesters were outside a base interfering with the goings on inside, they military would deal with it.
Not that I think the Marine Corps would or should do anything, just wondering if they could.
If folks don’t like the military, fine. But portraying outright lies that military recruiters are merely looking for “bullet sponges” is odious.
It’s cool that you got to see Daniel Ellsberg. And of course it was no lie that the war would last for years. It was purely speculation at that point, but it has. And we don’t know yet how many Americans will be lost. But we do know that hundreds of thousands of people are being killed and millions displaced.
I’m questioning whether it was legal for lawyers to advise you on strategies for avoid the “upcoming draft.” I guess that would depend on what they said. Again, they would have to assume that you were intelligent enough to know that having a draft was speculative at the time and that no draft was in place. You did know that, didn’t you?
I suppose that some “progress” has been made in streamlining brainwashing techniques since Nazi Germany, but it seems to me that fascists have always been effective and so are we. I don’t know whether are brainwashing is the same or different. Certainly the propaganda techniques are the same as the fascists.
We don’t use the same techniques because those who want to join the military are naturally mentally weak. (Fascists aren’t particularly mentally weak either – just wrong.) Uneducated is not the same as mentally weak.
Overall you weren’t lied to. There was much speculation by everyone at the time and the final results are still not in.
I do find it fascinating that there are public schools that are so liberal. Here in the South a program such as that would never take place. Were the girls also taken out of class for this program?
BTW, Ellsberg was a marine.
testing, testing…1…2…3…
Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be bullet sponges…
I doubt it…despite what they used to do on the A-Team, MPs don’t have legal authority to operate outside of military bases. There are probably exceptions to the rule, but it is the duty of the local polive to protect the recruiting station. One that the police in the video apparently failed.
So, lemme get this straight, HSHP. I get elected President. I remember all those Dopers who expressed opinions contrary to mine. I write a Dubya-style executive order implementing confiscation of all their income. It’s not censorship, because I didn’t prohibit dopers such as yourself from speaking, I just saw to it that there were CONSEQUENCES for doing so.
Good to know. I, personally, think you’re perilously close to defining censorship out of existence, on a practical level. I’ll get you for that, should I ever become President.
Why wouldn’t their part of the law be “Don’t Ask”?
Revised score:
Berkley: 0, Marines: -974 (as of February 8)
I don’t know if this number includes the 15 marines who have taken their own lives in Iraq. It does include those in the Marine Reserves.
He came to my school several times. While I was very interested to see him the first time, I came away with the impression that he is a nut whose life had not advanced at all in the two decades between the Pentagon Papers and when I saw him. Every President was Nixon, every war Vietnam, etc.
To be clear, this was in 1990. And the specific allegations included that it would take months for our ground forces to get through the tank traps, berms, and moats of flaming oil, and then many more months to fight to Baghdad and take it over. This was presented in the same air of authority as Bush said that Saddam had WMD. The entire effort by Ellsberg wasn’t to inform us, it was to scare us.
Give me a ring when the Marines start using that “you need to protect your race” tv recruiting ad.
I’ll give you a chance to edit this, because I really hope there’s a word missing somewhere.
No, of course the girls weren’t taken out. We had a day off for International Women’s Day, and the idea of segregating boys and girls (especially for a propaganda session) probably wasn’t even considered, as it would be bizarre, quaint, and misogynistic. Again, these several hours had nothing to do with education, it was entirely with politics, and it should have never taken place, no more than a school in the south should have had an assembly on the “grave and gathering threat” posed by Saddam’s WMD programs in 2002.
Oh, geez, thats an unfair blanket statement and insult to anyone that ever served in any form. Why do people that don’t like the military always justify it by claiming that saying the people in it are some sort of sub-standard, unable-to- form-critical-thoughts cro-magnons? People in the military could just as easily say the same thing about civilians and call them gutless cowards. Its nothing short of childish name calling. Its not true or fair to say, its just a way to claim some kind of intellectual and moral high ground.
Zoe, I don’t know if you’ve had a bad experience with the military or not, but whether you have or not. I’m sorry its colored your perceptions of it. I’ve had bad experiences with cops but I don’t boil it down to “people who want to be cops are just bullies that want to beat on minorities”, just like I don’t think that people that don’t want to join the army are “chicken-livered sissies”.
I probably shouldn’t have posted that, because if things run true to form there will be the obligatory joining the military is pure evil/ the war is all the military’s fault/soldiers are mindless killing machines/ etc posts…mostly from people that have never been in the military.
I know I am.
If you ever start an Army Corps of Running Away, give me a call.
This is my most pariah-prone opinion around here, but I don’t think joining the military services is a morally positive, or even morally neutral, action. It’s not just conducting your own business: it’s signing up to be put under the command of someone who can (and these days will) put you in a position where you pose a very significant risk to the lives of innocent people. They won’t order you to shoot an unarmed civilian, but they might order you to patrol a neighborhood with engagement rules that will result in a stray bullet blowing up a car with a family inside. When you’re going into that office to sign up for such an assignment, you’re agreeing to agree to initiate force against that family, should the order come down.
As long as we’re engaged in an unjust war, it is unjust to join the military.
Daniel
So, where are they? Where’s this massive pile-on? Hear the crickets?
No problem with being scared. I wasn’t begrudging anyone for that.
“Massive pile on” are your words, I did said “IF” which leaves some room for it not happening. The only thing I hear is someone that was just itching to making a smart-ass remark, for the sake of making a smart-ass remark.
So, you make a prediction, and if it comes out, you’re right, but if not, you’re still right? Nifty. Tails you win, heads, you don’t lose.
Yes, it is. I do that when I comment on the weather, too. I told my friends it might snow here this weekend, but its been blue skies and 45 degress for days. Gosh, I was wrong. Boy, am I red in the face. But I did say *if things run true to form there * so I can accept being wrong. Heck, I’m happy to be wrong about that. I don’t see how I can be faulted with thinking that I’d see posts like that since its happened in the past…and I could actually say that I was right since the Left Hand of Dorkness did say
[qoute]As long as we’re engaged in an unjust war, it is unjust to join the military.
[/quote]
I disagree with that, but I can understand the reasoning behind it.
Considering that you posted your reply to my “prediction” within an hour, I can probably make another guess. You’re bored and just looking to argue with someone. Hey, I could be wrong, but I can’t think of another reason for your post. Lucky me, I’m not bored enough to actually care.
Whoa, whoa – I think Zoe is being misinterpreted here. The phrasing of the offending sentence is ambiguous, but I went back and read it in context:
What I believe she meant (and she can of course correct me) is this: (1) We do use the same propaganda techniques as the fascists, but (2) neither we nor the fascists use them because the targets are mentally weak; rather, the same techniques are used because (3) in both cases the targets are uneducated.
Now, you can argue all three of those subpoints, but I don’t believe Zoe’s overall point was that military recruits are weak-minded or subhuman.
That would be very unlike the Zoe we know.
…and I respectfully apologize if I misinterpreted Zoe’s comment. I only meant to say that its unfair to say that people that join the military are all mentally weak, not to offend Zoe or anyone else.
You’d be hard pressed to find anyone as fair and even-handed as Zoe.
That was a joke. I don’t run from nuthin’.
Except proctologists and eggplant.
S’okay. Ravenman read it the same way you did, and I had to slow down and parse the thing to extract what I believe the actual meaning was. If I didn’t know Zoe as I do, I could just as easily have misinterpreted it.