Mr. Dibble is a fatuous asshole. Today, anyway.

Yes. I mentioned this earlier. Some, I guess, don’t realize it. Others wilfully ignore it as it makes it harder for them to draw a straight line from signing up with a military that is involved in an (assumed for now) immoral war and those soldiers then being labeled as immoral themselves.

The fact that you actually have to phrase it like that is the reason I didn’t even open this damn thread for a bit. Sal not only ignored my questions, but his arguments and those of his confederates are built on shaky ground.

In a way, isn’t all war immoral? It’s immoral to kill people right? And if we assume that, isn’t every soldier from every nation throughout history guilty? Was the Roman empire the most evil fucking thing ever? These people can’t seem to deal in anything other than philosophical absolutes.

I’ve decided to just ignore idiots, it’s pointless to argue with them

In other words, magellan01 and JollyRoger, lay down your arms. It is immoral to fight a battle of wits against unarmed men.

While I agree on the last part, I would not say that all war is immoral. Killing someone is either justified or it is not. Not justified = immoral. Justified = moral. I think the problem the people you refer to have is that they start with conclusions: the war is immoral, anyone having anything to do with supporting the war is similarly immoral, etc. It doesn’t make for good discussion. But stick around, I think, particulalry on these boards, it helps that they see that not everyone agrees with the views kneeled before as holy in their insular worlds.

I was being facetious.

I was being facetious, and trying to point out the bullshit of building philosophical absolutes on an assumption.
Double post. D’oh!

Let me explain this a little bit better.

If we assume that the war is immoral, then we might as well assume that the war itself is a “war crime”. And if we do make that assumption, then… well, Mr. Dibble et al. are right. If the soldiers are fighting in war crime action, then they’re guilty of war crimes.

But the logic in that is moronic. A does not equal B which does not equal C, unless you “assume”, for the sake of argument of course, that they do. I can assume, again for the sake of argument, that a tomato is equal to a Volkswagen, but that doesn’t make it so. There’s just no use in arguing about the anti-lock brakes on a tomato.

I’m sorry, I’m having trouble tacking this discussion seriously.

My point, Magellan, is that you, me, and JollyRoger are giving up the rhetorical high ground if we don’t call them on their bullshit assumptions. I guess I will stick around, even though I’m about to open a can of very angry bees, and ask one question for the other side. They want to make A = B = C, but I don’t think they can prove that A even equals B… So I ask:

How is the American action in Iraq, in and of itself, a War Crime?

Oh, I don’t know… maybe because we wrecked a country and killed thousands upon thousands of civilians for nothing? Because we reduced a functioning capital city to something like Port-au-Prince, only worse? Because we sent a first-world health system back to subsaharan African levels? Because we caused millions of Iraqi citizens to flee beyond their borders, losing everything?

I actually think it’s up to you to justify the war, if you want to tell us it’s not a crime. Hell, even the people whose side you think you’re on, to wit Magellan and Jolly Roger, think the war stinks.

Nope, the ball is still in your court. You’re still arguing from a standpoint that war itself is a war crime. Is all war a crime?

No I didn’t answer it for the same reason you wouldn’t answer me directly if I asked you the date upon which you ceased raping 12 year old girls.

Actually, I’ll give as good an answer as I can, though fuck knows why I’m attempting to answer, for you, a question you are the perfect person to answer. Here goes:

If you apply a narrower definition of immorality than mine, you will come up with a lower number of people who have been immoral. Thus, if you ignore the basic immorality of personnel who join up to a military that regularly fights immoral wars and just take notice of the any other immorality such as raping civilians, you will come up with a lower figure. Orders of magnitude lower.

Well, duh.

They voluntarily joined an immoral war. You answered for me. Any other moronic questions? Two down, how many to go?

I understand that you do not consider the war to be immoral. I know that our respective positions on this point are opinion. But the point where you go wrong is here…

As I understand it, the OP didn’t pit MD because he denied MD’s position that the war is immoral and fucked up, he pitted MD because MD was of the view this reflected badly on the troops.

How odd. Earlier in this thread you were getting a thorough pasting because you attempted to defend the proposition that Saddam had a meaningful link to AQ. You refused to engage and begged off. But suddenly now you “want to discuss” underlying issues about the war. No doubt once you’re asked for cites on relevant factual points you’ll say you’re “not interested” huh?

The rest of your post is just drivel: we both understand that not all war is immoral. My first post in this thread implicitly conceded that when I explicitly accepted that only a percentage of wars that a US soldier fought would be unjustifiable. I also understand that people are going to differ in their opinions on when war is immoral. The only interesting point in contention in this thread is whether soldiers who join up are also tainted.

Presumably you would also agree that one can’t avoid the immorality of killing people just by describing it as part of a war. If I just decide I want my neighbour’s house and go kill them and then describe my actions as being a land war to gain territory, you’re not going to give me a free pass are you?

On the other hand, if my first shots at my neighbours miss and they kill me with return fire, you’d give them a free pass, right?

Now, as you’ve said, the basic starting point is that “it’s immoral to kill people” so if you suggest any given campaign of violence and killing is not immoral, the onus is on you to say why, right?

Plus your whole “war crime” thing is dumbass. A “war crime” is a particular type of legally defined offence. I think we can all agree that not every war and not everything done during a war constitutes the offence of being a “war crime”. But that doesn’t mean jack shit for this discussion, unless you are seriously going to argue that the only type of immorality is war crime, and I’m sure you’re not that stupid.

Princhester, have you ever even opened a history book?

Well, I thought Sal and I had reached an understanding that we both have differing oinions. We even had a beer over it, I think.

I don’t agree, obviously, that merely joining the military makes one immoral because of Iraq. A lot of people that have joined in the last few years aren’t in Iraq and will NEVER go to Iraq. But if they’re guilty just for joining than so are all of the people that paid taxes to employ them in the army, navy, air force and marine corps. I don’t want to go through that argument again, mainly because I just got up (its sunday morning here) and I need some coffee, and then I need to take my dress blues to the PX…cat hair seems to melt through my garment bag.

I think I’ll paint the ceiling yellow. No, maybe blue.

Do you have a point?

Knew it. The idiot never opened one.

So you don’t have a point?

We’re talking about Iraq here. And I’ve told you why I think that particular war is immoral. If you think it’s a moral war, give us a reason or two.

I’m back. Couple of things:
I’d like to point out that I never said all US troops are immoral. Only those who agree to deploy to Iraq are.
Secondly, I should clarify that when I say “an immoral war” I mean “the US military is an immoral actor in the war” - since there are always at least two sides to a war and I believe only the initial aggressor is to blame for starting it. I’ve already dealt with the niceties of what constitutes “initial aggressor”
Thirdly - in my moral viewpoint, people who pay taxes are coerced into it, and therefore don’t suffer a moral negative weight for doing so. It is the government that chooses what to do with your taxes, they take the moral hit. You have no choice whether to pay taxes or not. At least, you don’t here - the Gov’t takes the money before you’re paid. If you don’t have free choice, you can’t be a moral actor in the process. Yes, you could leave the country. But I consider that a far-fetched response. Still, if you refuse to leave and instead pay coerced taxes, I can agree that there is a moral cost to the choice. Unlike magellan, I think it’s vanishingly small - say, if we had to put relative weights to things, a year’s worth of taxes is the same moral negative weight of willingly serving 5 mins in Iraq, to me.

All of which is of course irrelevant to me, your pittee, as I don’t pay taxes in the US. I take it from all the frantic tax arguments that I’m therefore free to continue criticising the US prescence in Iraq without worrying about the threat of tu quoque ?
Lastly - If you did vote for a congressman who voted for the war, there is a slight moral taint to that. Also, if, as DT said, you voted for Bush in 2004 - for whatever reason - you’re also tainted, and a lot.

Now, anything else I can address? I see you’ve carried on without me.

Look, I’m kind of sick of this argument, but going by what you just said, Mr. D:

A person in the military doesn’t have a choisce either on what orders to obey, unless its an unlawful order. So just you have to pay taxes, they have to obey orders. This isn’t a secret, everyone in any military on earth knows that. The government issues the orders so unless they are illegal the soldier, airman or marine has to follow them. Disobeying orders has harsh penalties, so while you might have to suffer a bit from choosing not paying taxes, its not any easier for someone not obeying orders, As I said earlier in the thread, you have more freedom to act than the serviceman. An order to go to iraq is not an illegal order. If its immoral to not just disobey orders pertaining to iraq, why isn’t immoral to pay taxes and sit back at home calling other immoral for following orders to deploy? I’ve got a few buddies there now…I guess they are the devil’s stepchildren for not disobeying the lawful order to deploy.

If you aren’t a US citizen, fine. That doesn’t matter in the discussion as its formed right now. My only concern in the whole thing is how peopke seem to want to blame the military directly for doing what they were directed to do from the first time there WAS a military…anywhere. Seems to me that a lot mmore may change for the better if the energy was directed at the people giving the orders, not at the soldiers. Guess its just to easy to sit back and blame the easy targets than it is to, you know, maybe do more than blab on the internet about how evil the military is.

I’m done with this, because I know the response is “They knew what they were doing when they enlisted”. Thats not particularly true or fair, but to explain it to you would waste my time and yours. Besides, I’ve already explained it. Since I habe committed the cardinal sin of reenlisting since Iraq started you probably think I’m an evil bastard anyway.

No-one’s coercing you into replying. :slight_smile:

You didn’t volunteer to pay taxes. I think the whole tax argument is a red herring anyway, and as this is a pitting of me is in any case irrelevant. I don’t fund your immoral war.

You people make me laugh. The jump you make from “immoral” to “the Devil’s stepchildren” is all in your own heads. I’ve never said how large the moral taint of Iraq servitude is, just that there’s a taint. I guess the military trained shades of gray out of you?

It wasn’t me who introduced it. And this entire thread is about MY moral judgment, supposedly, so no, it does matter.

There’s a name for this logical fallacy (a subset of ad hominem), but it escapes me - what makes you think I don’t attach a lot more moral culpability to the leaders? And how is it relevant, anyway? Morality is not a zero-sum game. Start a thread about the morality of the war’s leaders. I assure you, I’ll have plenty to say.

Again with this ad hominem bullshit. I do do things in the real world to protest the war and to lessen the impact it has on its innocent victims. But that’s irrelevant to whether my moral judgment is consistent, which is the only attack on my stance that’s at all intellectually valid.

When it comes to discussing morality, yes, it is. Informed choices are what builds moral culpability. You can either argue that they were uninformed (which, BTW, no-one has yet AFAICT) or they didn’t have a choice to enlist. Otherwise…

You are all arguing that they don’t have a choice. I’m saying they did, when they chose to enlist with the chance of going to Iraq.

It’s morally equivalent to choosing to drive drunk, where there’s a chance you could kill someone. You might make it home OK, in which case the moral weight is , IMO, not as big as if you actually hurt someone.

For all those who didn’t have that free choice (either through enlisting pre-2003 or being re-upped by stop loss etc), the same moral judgment doesn’t apply. But to e.g. the injured guy that other thread was about, who enlisted 2005, it very much applies (The fact that if he could, he’d willingly go back there really sealed the deal in my mind.)

Hasn’t stopped you so far.
Your entire tack hasn’t been about attacking the logical basis for my moral stance, but rather dodging and weaving and arguing an entirely ad hominem sideline - I could be guilty of the most immoral offences imaginable -e.g. I could be a Haliburton director, or I could be GW Bush- and it doesn’t change one wit of the validity of my moral view of soldiers in Iraq. Tu Quoque doesn’t make for valid counter-argument to anything, and I’m not Christian - “let him who is without sin…” is mindless pablum to me.

I have no love for any military - I know what it’s like to live in a police state. But that doesn’t mean I don’t see the necessity for a self-defence military, and on the whole I view military service as morally neutral. However, I’ve confined myself to judging the morality of specific situations. I’d need to know, for instance, if you were voluntarily involved in military recruiting post-2003 before I’d judge you too harshly.