When I said I’m tired of saying this, I meant the same thing over and over. Which is kind of what we’re all doing.
[QUOTE=MrDibble]
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.
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This is actually where we disagree. I’m not the one who pitted you btw.
Driving drunk is a crime, whether you realize you’re drunk or not. Enlisting in the military is not a crime.
The war in Iraq is a mess. We all know that. But simply joining the service does not morally taint a person. As I said, most enlistees don’t go to Iraq. You can’t know the intent of every single person who has enlisted so prejudging them is unfair. It doesn’t matter if you like the military or not, blaming the soldiers for the governments decision is BS, given the structure and nature of the military. No one has been ordered to rape and murder, and soldiers that do are punished.
No one has been able to come up with a better way of running things other than “We don’t need a military” or “They should just not follow orders”. Those ideas won’t work in reality. You and I both know they have to follow lawful orders given to them. The difference is I blame the administration for putting them in this position. You think its the soldiers fault for being a soldier in the first place.
If you have a problem with the military, fine. Its not like you’re the only person to dislike the service for one reason or another. If someone is somehow being culpable for the Iraq fiasco by joining the military for whatever reason, then maybe we all have to be culpable in America. They ought to put signs up at immigration warning folks that they will have to share the taint of this by becoming a US citizen. I don’t think thats a fair judgment either, just as becoming a republican doesn’t automatically mean Bush makes your moral choices for you. But then I tend to paint people with a finer brush than most.
Oh, and just FYI, I was not voluntarily involved in recruiting, I didn’t want to be a recruiter. But I follow the lawful orders given to me and to be honest, who are you to judge me in any way even if I volunteered? I could have volunteered because it would have stationed me close to home, or I may have wanted the training person to person training in recruiting school. Judging someone for volunteering to be a recruiter prior to 2003 or after would depend on their intent, not the job wouldn’t it?