Marines 1, Berkeley 0

[Jolly_Roger]

@Left Hand of Dorkness

Our high school allowed military recruiters to set up a table in the cafeteria. They also allowed me to set up a table right next to the military’s table, at which I had anti-war propaganda, information from the National Friends Service Committee, and the like. The recruiters sneered at me that their job was protecting my freedom of expression; I sneered right back at them that no US military action in the past three decades had had anything to do with protecting my freedom of expression.

Whatever military actions you refer to would be best addressed to the your local government representatives. You can’t reallyy blame the average soldier, sailor, airman or marine for where they get deployed to fight.

@Left Hand of Dorkness

As I saw it, that’s exactly how things oughtta be run. The cure for crappy speech is more speech.

The one thing I really, really wish were true, though, is that military recruiters should be required to uphold strict codes of honesty when engaging in recruitment. Misleading recruits ought to be a felony.

Daniel

Actually, they are. Recruiters caught breaking the rules usually get kicked out.

Well, I can understand the recruiters sneering back if you’re going to sneer at them. They’re only human…and most likely they were detailed recruiters. Meaning, they were hand picked to recruit for a few years before going back to their “normal” jobs. Thats only one of my issues with recruiting command. I was a detailed recruiter. The criteria they use to pick who should be a recruiter is fine except one thing…they don’t actually go far enough into finding out if the person has the right outgoing personality for it. I’m pretty friendly but I didn’t want to be a recruiter. Unfortunately those were my orders. I hated recruiting for a lot of reasons, but one in particular was going to high schools.

I won’t lie, I don’t relate to people that young . Unless they’re in a uniform I don’t want to relate to them. I don’t want to talk to them, I have zero interest in anything they do, and really, they annoy me far more than I did them. Hell, I left that place so fast when my new orders came through I didn’t even say goodbye to my friends…and they lived right down the street. It would take a different thread to tell you the horror stories I went through in recruiting. But trust me, I understand how people get frustrated with recruiters. I didn’t want to call some kid I don’t know to talk about the army just as much as he didn’t want to talk to me. I didn’t like it when I was in high school, and I know people don’t like it now. I don’t care if some kid joins or not, its his or her life. But those were my duties, and no one I worked with lied or misled anyone when we talked to them.

Can the current system be fixed? Probably. But it certainly won’t be by blocking recruiting office doors and making threats to ban recruiters from the city.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Jolly Roger

Whatever military actions you refer to would be best addressed to the your local government representatives. You can’t reallyy blame the average soldier, sailor, airman or marine for where they get deployed to fight.

I disagree: anyone who knows anything about the military knows the sort of assignments you might get. As I said before, by signing up, you’re agreeing to agree to be deployed in an unjust war. I think people therefore can be held responsible, even if one-step-removed.

That said, if I couldn’t hold them responsible for where they were deployed, then they also couldn’t take credit for where they were deployed; my sneering at them would be just as silly as their sneers at me.

Actually, they are. Recruiters caught breaking the rules usually get kicked out.

Being kicked out is the punishment for a felony? Then I should have been clearer: deceiving recruits ought to send you to prison for a few years. It’s a truly loathsome thing to do; it can get a young and impressionable kid killed.

Well, I can understand the recruiters sneering back if you’re going to sneer at them.

Absolutely. Although I think they sneered first; I just, in a self-righteous teenage way, disparaged the entire military, not them personally. I wasn’t all about the nuance when I was sixteen, unlike most teenagers.

Can the current system be fixed? Probably. But it certainly won’t be by blocking recruiting office doors and making threats to ban recruiters from the city.

I totally agree. Although I do believe that military recruiters are engaging in unethical work, I also think that blocking recruiting office doors is counterproductive, like so much of the idiotic activism I hear of coming out of Berkeley. It’s that sort of shit that got me out of radical politics in the first place: it’s stupid and ineffective.

Daniel

[Airman_Doors_USAF]

@Left Hand of Dorkness

I disagree: anyone who knows anything about the military knows the sort of assignments you might get. As I said before, by signing up, you’re agreeing to agree to be deployed in an unjust war. I think people therefore can be held responsible, even if one-step-removed.

You’re also agreeing to be deployed in the case of a “just” war. Unless you think we should reinvent the wheel every single time something comes up that requires soldiers, the standard that you espoused above is unreasonable. We have to have trained people and we have to have continuance, which means that there will always be soldiers, and they will always be sent to whatever war the politicians send them to. It is also for that reason that soldiers can’t make that decision for themselves. Imagine the anarchy and internal violence that would occur if half the soldiers refused to go every time there was a war, just or not (in your opinion).

It’s never so simple as we want it to be, and in this case it is even less so.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Airman Doors

You’re also agreeing to be deployed in the case of a “just” war. Unless you think we should reinvent the wheel every single time something comes up that requires soldiers, the standard that you espoused above is unreasonable. We have to have trained people and we have to have continuance, which means that there will always be soldiers, and they will always be sent to whatever war the politicians send them to. It is also for that reason that soldiers can’t make that decision for themselves. Imagine the anarchy and internal violence that would occur if half the soldiers refused to go every time there was a war, just or not (in your opinion).

I think it’d be a far better world if more soldiers refused to go to wars that they considered unjust. That doesn’t move me.

And if there’s a just war, that’s a great time to enlist. Keep in mind that I don’t think there are very many just wars at all.

I understand that you disagree, and I respect that disagreement; nevertheless, I think enlisting in the current military is not an ethical act. As I said, I know it’s a pariah-inducing position; I think I’m the only one in this thread that’s advocated it, and the few others on this board that do tend to attach the idea to odious ideas such as advocating the killing of US military personnel. That’s not remotely where I’m going.

Daniel

[Valgard]

@Ravenman

And let’s get this clear: Berkeley doesn’t really care about the principle of federalism. The city has long maintained that Berkeley is a nuclear-free zone, even though (a) the DOE doesn’t care and (b) UC Berkeley owns a nuclear reactor right smack in the middle of the city. So, the Feds and the state don’t really give two cents about Berkeley’s grandiose visions of being able to run matters of national (or international) policy within its city limits.

A little background on this.

Berkeley decided to make itself a “nuclear free zone” in 1986 - I was in high school at the time and we got many laughs out of this, the Soviet Union will steer their bombs clear of the city limits because somebody put up a sign? Everyone recognized this as a symbolic gesture at best.

Anyhow, the nuclear reactor at Etcheverry Hall was shut down in 1988 IIRC. Soda Hall (Computer Science lab) sits above that spot now.

[elucidator]

@Airman Doors

You’re also agreeing to be deployed in the case of a “just” war. Unless you think we should reinvent the wheel every single time something comes up that requires soldiers, the standard that you espoused above is unreasonable.,.

Why? Why is it unreasonable to demand a standard? If more soldiers demanded such a standard, wouldn’t our history be less bloody? Not to mention our future.

Its always this way, isn’t it, Dave? They pound the drums, they wave the flags, they shed the crocodile tears…and innocent people die. Outside of WWII, when the Japanese attacked us, when have we gone to war that we had to, that there was no other option? Your point would make sense if we had only gone to war when we had no choice, but that isn’t the history.

How are we faithful to our patriotism if we cooperate when our leaders do something dishonorable, even criminal? How does a man honor his country by participating in something he* knows* is wrong?

[Mr.Moto]

@elucidator

Outside of WWII, when the Japanese attacked us, when have we gone to war that we had to, that there was no other option?

I’m sure you have other opinions on this, but I don’t think we had real choices in Korea or the first Gulf War.

[Jolly_Roger]

@Left Hand of Dorkness

I think it’d be a far better world if more soldiers refused to go to wars that they considered unjust. That doesn’t move me.

And if there’s a just war, that’s a great time to enlist. Keep in mind that I don’t think there are very many just wars at all.

I understand that you disagree, and I respect that disagreement; nevertheless, I think enlisting in the current military is not an ethical act. As I said, I know it’s a pariah-inducing position; I think I’m the only one in this thread that’s advocated it, and the few others on this board that do tend to attach the idea to odious ideas such as advocating the killing of US military personnel. That’s not remotely where I’m going.

Daniel

There was thread months ago that i remember the “soldiers should refuse to go to war” came up in. Soldiers can’t refuse lawful orders to deploy, the entire system of a standing military would cease to function if people could pick and choose what orders they want to obey.

As for just wars…well, what you consider a just war may not be what others consider just. and there are probably a lot of layers of grey in between. I can understand your position and ethics, and it would be nice if the world worked that way. Unfortunately its just really not that simple.

[Zoe]

EddyTeddyFreddy: 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.

Whew! Thanks for the rescue! I can’t believe that I wrote such a sentence! My apologies to everyone in the military, those who love them and to my English teachers who long ago joined that Great PTA Meeting in the Sky.

Ravenman: To be clear, this was in 1990.

I wondered when I first read your post why you didn’t specify which Gulf War, but I thought maybe you were too young to remember another. Did you not want to be clear in your first post?

Give me a ring when the Marines start using that “you need to protect your race” tv recruiting ad.

According to standard propaganda techniques, it’s not the idea so much as how you phrase it. Hitler used very carefully chosen words to convince the people. He spoke in “glittering generalities.” So did Clintonat times. So did Bush. So does any President attempting to lead a country to war. It’s not the message that’s the same; it’s the technique.

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.

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.

How did you find out that he had come for that purpose? How was he able to sound like an authority and a nut at the same time?

Here is a little more information about that scarey Daniel Ellsberg:

Daniel’s book Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers reached bestseller lists across the nation. It won the PEN Center USA Award for Creative Nonfiction, the American Book Award, the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association Prize for Non-Fiction, and was a Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

In 2005 the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation awarded Daniel their first Fellowship for his lifetime commitment and continued efforts toward the advancement of peace, nuclear disarmament, and truth-telling.

In August 2005 the Ellsberg Fund for Truth Telling was established to enable Daniel to continue the work he is uniquely qualified to do as a prominent whisteblower—speaking, writing and activism to encourage more national security whistleblowing and to alert the nation to the dangers of government abuses of power.

In December 2006 Daniel was awarded the 2006 Right Livelihood Award, known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize,” in Stockholm, Sweden. He was acknowledged “for putting peace and truth first, at considerable personal risk, and dedicating his life to a movement to free the world from the risk of nuclear war.”

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Jolly Roger

There was thread months ago that i remember the “soldiers should refuse to go to war” came up in. Soldiers can’t refuse lawful orders to deploy, the entire system of a standing military would cease to function if people could pick and choose what orders they want to obey.

You say that as if that’s a bad thing. Our country originally wasn’t intended to have a standing military. It’s only after a bunch of farmers got pissed off at unfair tax practices that the Constitution was written to include a standing military.

Soldiers certainly can refuse lawful orders to deploy, and I believe they are morally obligated to do so should they be ordered to fight in an unjust war. Whether they see it as unjust or not is irrelevant: what’s relevant is whether it’s actually unjust. Lacking a mechanism to prove this point objectively, however, I’d settle for soldiers refusing to deploy to fight in a war that they personally believe is unjust.

I know the world doesn’t work that way. Things can change, and we ought to be working toward a world that does.

Daniel

[MrDibble]

@Jolly Roger

There was thread months ago that i remember the “soldiers should refuse to go to war” came up in. Soldiers can’t refuse lawful orders to deploy,

You are confusing "shouldn’t (in my opinion) for “can’t”. They can and they have.

@Jolly Roger

the entire system of a standing military would cease to function if people could pick and choose what orders they want to obey.

If only we should be so lucky.

@Jolly Roger

As for just wars…well, what you consider a just war may not be what others consider just. and there are probably a lot of layers of grey in between.

That’s why I’d leave “just” war up to the UN or similar. If you have to have a military, which I’m not convinced you do.

@Jolly Roger

I can understand your position and ethics, and it would be nice if the world worked that way. Unfortunately its just really not that simple.

Why not?

[Jolly_Roger]

[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
You say that as if that’s a bad thing. Our country originally wasn’t intended to have a standing military. It’s only after a bunch of farmers got pissed off at unfair tax practices that the Constitution was written to include a standing military. [/qoute]
The military picking and choosing what orders to obey? It is a bad thing. Then you have battalions of soldiers doing whatever they want. That would probably be a lot more dangerous than it sounds.

@Left Hand of Dorkness

Soldiers certainly can refuse lawful orders to deploy, and I believe they are morally obligated to do so should they be ordered to fight in an unjust war. Whether they see it as unjust or not is irrelevant: what’s relevant is whether it’s actually unjust.

Who decides that? I believe they are morally obligated to uphold the oath they swore to obey lawful orders. We could both be right…we could both be wrong. Thats why the military is obligated to obey orders. Whats the point in having a military that can just say “I don’t wanna!” whenever they want?

Lacking a mechanism to prove this point objectively, however, I’d settle for soldiers refusing to deploy to fight in a war that they personally believe is unjust.

No military I know of works that way. No military I can think of could work that way. It would be anarchy. I might believe its unjust that the military doesn’t allow me to smoke pot. A few weeks ago there was discussion with some military disagreeing on why others get paid more for having spouses. Maybe they think they shouldn’t show up to work on time because of it? Maybe my assistant thinks its unjust for me to order her to work weekends. and what if a situation is “just” but Pvt. Snuffy just doesn’t wanna go?

The civilian officials that command the military should be the ones to refuse to get involved in “unjust” wars. Obviously we pretty much fucked up in electing the right people for that. But the military itself isn’t to blame for that. They’ll catch all the flack, for it though. Wonder how Rumsfeld is enjoying his retirement? No one protests in front of his place.

I know the world doesn’t work that way. Things can change, and we ought to be working toward a world that does.

Daniel

yeah, we could hold the government officials that get us into these messes accountable. We probably won’t, though, so people will blame the easiest on the street targets…the military, mostly the recruiters. Meanwhile the people that gave the military its orders can sleep peacefully while the servicemen can be faulted for only following their mandate of obeying lawful orders. After all, we can’t sully our good name by you, know, charging the officials with wrongdoing.

[Ravenman]

@Zoe

I wondered when I first read your post why you didn’t specify which Gulf War, but I thought maybe you were too young to remember another. Did you not want to be clear in your first post?

If you don’t know what the Gulf War is, then my lack of specificity is no excuse for your ignorance. The term clearly applies to the 1990-1991 war.

According to standard propaganda techniques, it’s not the idea so much as how you phrase it. Hitler used very carefully chosen words to convince the people. He spoke in “glittering generalities.” So did Clintonat times. So did Bush. So does any President attempting to lead a country to war. It’s not the message that’s the same; it’s the technique.

You didn’t say the Marines use “standard” propaganda techniques. You said they use “the same propaganda techniques as fascists.” Pro-war or pro-military propaganda isn’t necessarily fascist. For example, the “Why We Fight” documentaries/propaganda by Frank Capra are about as pro-war as things can get, but that doesn’t make Capra a fascist propagandist. Fascist propaganda techniques would tend to include appeals to racial superiority. If Marines never make appeals to racial superiority, then clearly there is a significant difference between Marines propaganda techniques and fascist propaganda techniques. Therefore, your argument is crap.

How did you find out that he had come for that purpose? How was he able to sound like an authority and a nut at the same time?

What purpose? I assume you mean to scare students about the upcoming war. Well, he was invited by school officials to speak to a mandatory assembly that was 100% devoted to anti-war and anti-military speakers. He presented his case of 100,000 dead Americans as not a worst case scenario, but as “this is what’s going to happen.” And as far as being a nut, that was my impression from seeing him at this assembly and at least one other occasion (IIRC, my history teacher invited him to speak to my class a couple years earlier), and, to top things off, he supports the 9/11 Truth Movement which alleges that the 9/11 attacks were a government conspiracy. 9/11 Truthers are nuts. That’s all there is to it.

[Mr.Moto]

@Left Hand of Dorkness

Soldiers certainly can refuse lawful orders to deploy, and I believe they are morally obligated to do so should they be ordered to fight in an unjust war.

From the Uniform Code of Military Justice:

ART. 85. DESERTION
(a) Any member of the armed forces who–
(1) without authority goes or remains absent from his unit, organization, or place of duty with intent to remain away therefrom permanently;
(2) quits his unit, organization, or place of duty with intent to avoid hazardous duty or to shirk important service; or
(3) without being regularly separated from one of the armed forces enlists or accepts an appointment in the same or another on of the armed forces without fully disclosing the fact that he has not been regularly separated, or enters any foreign armed service except when authorized by the United States; is guilty of desertion.
(b) Any commissioned officer of the armed forces who, after tender of his resignation and before notice of its acceptance, quits his post or proper duties without leave and with intent to remain away therefrom permanently is guilty of desertion.
© **Any person found guilty of desertion or attempt to desert shall be punished, if the offense is committed in time of war, by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct, **but if the desertion or attempt to desert occurs at any other time, by such punishment, other than death, as a court-martial may direct.

ART. 90. ASSAULTING OR WILLFULLY DISOBEYING SUPERIOR COMMISSIONED OFFICER.
Any person subject to this chapter who–
(1) strikes his superior commissioned officer or draws or lifts up any weapon or offers any violence against him while he is in the execution of his officer; or
(2) **willfully disobeys a lawful command of his superior commissioned officer;
shall be punished, if the offense is committed in time of war, by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct, **and if the offense is committed at any other time, by such punishment, other than death, as a court-martial may direct.

ART. 94. MUTINY OR SEDITION
(a) Any person subject to this chapter who–
(1) with intent to usurp or override lawful military authority, refuses, in concert with any other person, to obey orders or otherwise do his duty or creates any violence or disturbance is guilty of mutiny;
(2) with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of lawful civil authority, creates, in concert with any other person, revolt, violence, or disturbance against that authority is guilty of sedition;
(3) fails to do his utmost to prevent and suppress a mutiny or sedition being committed in his presence, or fails to take all reasonable means to inform his superior commissioned officer or commanding officer of a mutiny or sedition which he knows or has reason to believe is taking place, is guilty of a failure to suppress or report a mutiny or sedition.
(b) A person who is found guilty of attempted mutiny, mutiny, sedition, or failure to suppress or report a mutiny or sedition shall be punished by death or such other punishment as a court- martial may direct.

ART. 134. GENERAL ARTICLE
Though not specifically mentioned in this chapter, **all disorders and neglects to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces, all conduct of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces, and crimes and offenses not capital, of which persons subject to this chapter may be guilty, shall be taken cognizance of by a general, special or summary court-martial, according to the nature and degree of the offense, and shall be punished at the discretion of that court. **

Forgive me for saying so, but I don’t think you have any particular right to tell soldiers what they are obligated to do. Their legal obligations are pretty clear, the penalties for not living up to them can be severe ones.

Demanding that someone face such penalties (and again, they can be quite severe even if the death penalty mentioned above isn’t imposed, which it generally isn’t) isn’t your call to make. It is arrogant, unrealistic and carried to an extreme would be an illegal act itself.

[Jolly_Roger]

@MrDibble

You are confusing "shouldn’t (in my opinion) for “can’t”. They can and they have.

Well, i believe you know what my meaning was. It wasn’t that complicated. But if you want to get nitpicky, ok, they shouldn’t refuse lawful orders to deploy. ** Mr. Moto** has posted some of the reasons why

If only we should be so lucky.

Don’t get your hopes up, then. We won’t be.

That’s why I’d leave “just” war up to the UN or similar. If you have to have a military, which I’m not convinced you do.

I’m not convinced that that we don’t. i’d rather err on the side of caution and have one.

Why not?

Because generally, for many adults, the world is complicated. since neither one of us can control that asking why not is a silly question. If you or I knew the answer we could solve the problem.

[Mr.Moto]

@Left Hand of Dorkness

Soldiers certainly can refuse lawful orders to deploy, and I believe they are morally obligated to do so should they be ordered to fight in an unjust war. Whether they see it as unjust or not is irrelevant: what’s relevant is whether it’s actually unjust. Lacking a mechanism to prove this point objectively, however, I’d settle for soldiers refusing to deploy to fight in a war that they personally believe is unjust.

I’m going to expand on this just a little bit.

In your world, individual soldiers refusing to deploy might be punished, but large groups of them would indicate a failed policy that needed to be changed. The problem is that the military treats large groups of people doing this far harsher than individuals doing so - they’d treat it as mutiny or conspiracy where the individual crime would be punished at a lower level.

Soldiers cannot collude to miss movement - that ratchets up the penalties big time.

Also, I will note that I served during a relatively peaceful time, and I’m not a combat veteran - and still I saw more than my share of AWOL cases, people missing movement, gross insubordination and the like. You’d serve to make these existing problems far worse by instituting “reforms” that totally gut military discipline.

A military cannot allow soldiers to opt out once they sign up. Sorry. If it is a lawful order, they have to follow it.

[elucidator]

Finally, leaving it to the soldiers is a cop out. Its our responsibility. Period. Full stop. If the people lead, the leaders will follow.

[Liberal]

@elucidator

Finally, leaving it to the soldiers is a cop out. Its our responsibility. Period. Full stop. If the people lead, the leaders will follow.

Why, you closet libertarian, you.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Mr. Moto

Demanding that someone face such penalties (and again, they can be quite severe even if the death penalty mentioned above isn’t imposed, which it generally isn’t) isn’t your call to make. It is arrogant, unrealistic and carried to an extreme would be an illegal act itself.

You’d be entirely right, except that by agreeing to follow the order, they essentially demand that other people face much worse penalties: they risk forcing someone else who is a civilian to die, based not on the civilian’s choice, but on the military personnel’s choice. If it’s not my call to make to demand that the soldier face prison time, it’s even more so not the soldier’s call to make to demand that the civilian face risk of death. If my call is arrogant, theirs is even more so.

When you agree to agree to fight in an unjust war, you’re agreeing to agree to risk a civilian’s life for an unjust cause. That’s morally unacceptable.

Daniel

[Richard_Parker]

@Mr. Moto

…carried to an extreme would be an illegal act itself.

How? Can you try civilians under the UCMJ?