I’m not condemning anyone, I just refuse to participate in the patriotically correct constant verbal fellatio that the troops seem to feel entitled to.
I think BobLibDem’s post above yours captures a small minority of people here.
He is painting the entire military as guilty of all of the atrocities. That is the type of anti-military sentiment that sometimes occurs in many places, not just here.
There pro war people here, anti war people here, people who just want to bring the troops home and end it all.
There are also some people who are worried / complain about the hero worship aspect of our modern “support the troops” movement. Much of this is the continued modern backlash towards the anti-troop feeling of the Vietnam era.
That is not how you came across in your post.
My position is roughly as follows:
Military guys: I served in the military! I am awesome! Adore me!
Me: Piffle. The wars were unjust and atrocities were committed.
I have met hundreds of military personnel and know dozens well, and have never encountered anything like this attitude, even allowing for hyperbole.
We all know what Der Trihs says about members of the military. There’s also other users here who honestly believe that US troops are fighting the war in Afghanistan by carrying out indiscriminate attacks on civilian populations.
Perhaps they are using some measure of hyperbole to get attention; perhaps they don’t actually know what the word “indiscriminate” means. I’ll just take them at their word that they are writing out accurately what they really feel. Drawing a distinction between thinking that US troops routinely carry out indiscriminate attacks against civilians and calling them psychopaths is a rather slim exaggeration. It frankly reminds me of the former Ron Paul staffer who said that Paul isn’t homophobic, he just doesn’t get along with gay people.
I’ll just speculate that 90% of the anti-military hatred you’ve seen on this board comes from about ten people, representing a tiny fraction of the overall membership.
Of course, if you’re sufficiently generous with your definition of “hatred” that it covers anyone who expresses misgivings about American adventurism or administration policy, all bets are off.
Well, that covers about .0001% of the military. What’s your position on the other 99.9999%?
Again, I’d like some links or cites.
“The troops” are in general given a hell of a lot of credit, even by people who opposed a particular war. The ratio of “honoring” the troops to open contempt for them is probably a thousand to one. Even on the SDMB, a hundred to one.
The OP’s claim that the SDMB board has “A lot of anti-military hate” is, in my opinion, a total falsehood, and I challenge anyone to prove me wrong.
Yeah, agreed. There are a few posters, as has been noted, but by and large you get either a neutral view point or even a (slightly) pro-military one in general. On specific ISSUES concerning the military there is quite a bit of variation, but knee jerk hate? Only a handful of posters I can think of who regularly post on this board would qualify for that.
As others have said, I think the OP is basically a strawman, but if the OP really wants to to prove his or her case then lets see some links to this supposed SDMB military hate-age so we can see and judge for ourselves.
Let’s stick to the rule of refraining from calling other posters liars or accusing them of lying.
[ /Moderating ]
I really didn’t mean for it to sound like that, my fault.
We committed vastly worse atrocities in WWII.
Do you also condemn the American troops who fought in Europe because of the massacres of civilians, the killing of surrendering soldiers or the mass slaughter of countless civilians?
Beyond that, anyone who thinks there’s been a major war fought without any atrocities committed is woefully ignorant of history.
I think the percentage of people either on this site or RL who hate everyone in the military is quite small.
Beyond that, while I don’t mean to take shots at anyone, I don’t think this board is terribly representative of America and by it’s nature, it has some extremely vocal minorities.
We have a significant amount of people on this board who love pontificating on the mental inferiority of black people, the barbarity of Muslims and their irrational love of slaughtering the infidels, and the risks men run of being falsely accused of rape by evil women.
None of them are terribly representative of the board and the only reason they attract so much attention is because of how extreme they are.
I also think it’s very possible that members of all the above mentioned groups outnumber those who think all members of the US military are psychopaths.
On second look, this comes across as much snarkier than intended.
I was just trying to make a point and not imply that Bob was stupid or even especially insensitive.
My point was that sets rather impossible standards if he’s going to condemn any soldier who serves in an army that has any members who engage in atrocities.
Truth be told, I think the current US and British armies probably commit fewer than past British and American armies did.
Meh. Government has a lot of programs I don’t support. So I just pretend that all the money from my taxes goes to military pay.
I’m OK with saying I loathe the entire US military, about as much as I loathe any military (which is lots), and even I have never called the entire service “psychopathic criminals” - “all morally blameworthy”, sure, but not mentally ill.
But I’m not “America” [sic] so I don’t think I count.
Why do you feel that way?
On a serious note, do you also abhor all policemen around the world regardless of their country.
Certainly police have also been quite brutal and repressive. In fact, from what I gather, in conflicts where both the police and the military were involved, I.E. Northern Ireland and South Africa, the police in the form of RUC and their South African counterparts were vastly more brutal than their military counterparts.
I think it’s likely that military people were more likely than non-military people to respond to your poll. Just like if you put a poll that said “Have you been to China”, people who had traveled to China would be more likely respond than people who hadn’t.
Certainly in WW II there were shitloads of innocent Germans killed in American air raids. I agree that there is an effort on the part of the policy side of the military not to inflict unnecessary casualties. However, there is no shortage of rogue GIs that commit murder and other atrocities. Maybe that will always be true, all the more reason not to enter into war on such flimsy grounds as Bush did and all the more reason not to glorify people just because they serve in the military.