So you’re saying that it’s a wise course for a country to take that every single person who supports a war must fight in it on the front lines?
Let’s see that would mean (even if we assume that women won’t be permitted to fight and will stay on the home front):
-Large shortage of college professors, and High School teachers
-Extreme shortages of firemen and police officers
-Extreme shortages of construction workers and public utility workers
-Extreme shortages of taxi drivers and bus drivers
-Shortages of artists, musicians, professional athletes, and actors (who greatly help define and shape our culture)
-Etc
This is hyperbolic drivel, and it is disgusting you are using it to try and make a point. Keep appeals to emotion to yourself, argue the facts or the ideas, but blatant attempts to make people think with emotion and not reason should have no place in this discussion.
War is never the best of what humanity has to offer. Sometimes it must be undertaken for simple survival, sometimes it must be undertaken to prevent great wrongs from being perpetrated or to reverse great wrongs that have already been done, examples being liberated conquered states.
Responding to the bolded section: Bullshit. No war, no matter who great, can be said to universally “require your service.” What if you are a doctor who is one of the few specialists in the country who can perform a very new and complicated type of heart surgery? What if your leaving the country to fight in a war instantly dooms dozens, hundreds, even thousands of people to death because you were not there to do what you spent your life training to do.
What if every male, able-bodied doctor/surgeon in the country also indeed recognized the necessity of a given war and decided to up and leave? Well, the military needs trained medical personnel, no doubt. But so does the home front, it cannot take up all the doctors, all the nurses, all the medical technicians and etc.
In fighting to defend that which is most dear, our homeland and our way of life, we cannot destroy our homeland by removing the pillars of society that keep it running. A society needs people to run the trains, keep the lights running, educate the children, police the streets, fight fires, drive ambulances, maintain the roads, and et al. Just because a great, necessary, and universally accepted and approved war must be fought doesn’t mean it is even remotely reasonable to say that everyone who is able to fight it must immediately drop all their responsibilities and start marching.
There can be no war so necessary that we completely annihilate ourselves to win it.
If you’ll pardon my saying so, I enjoyed reading your post, but further than that, I am glad (and saddened at the same time) that the naiveté-bubble you were living under, burst. Cynicism is not bad at all – it all depends on how good a cynic you are.
Reallly sorry you had to go through what you did – mostly neeless pain, although very real to the person feeling it – in order to question even a tiny bit, if its worth giving your life, physically, emotionally, and/or both, to keep the Oligarchy in their Golden Cages.
I think not.
BTW, and pardon my French, but a woman “belongs” any fuckin’ place a man does. And don’t you ever let anyone tell you different.
No. Actually it is the opposite of “military government” in that civilians will still have the same role in electing officials, but the standards for going to war would be much higher. And no, I am not advocating who can or cannot support a war. I am calling on people who do support others being placed in harm’s way to set their own personal threshhold for war at a level that if any cause was dire enough to require someone else to fight and die, they would feel compelled to do the same. If the cause is not of sufficient gravity to have me enlist in the war effort to the best of my ability, it is not important enough for me to ask the ultimate sacrafice of others.
Right. I am saying that war should be reserved for crises and threats that make these jobs seem moot. Thise unfit for military duty can help with domestic civic duties.
These very pillars were in Europe and the South Pacific in the 1940s and Rosie the Riveter took care of the home front nicely. And by my standard, for me to ask someone else to lay their life on the line for a cause I support, but not be willing to risk my neck too, is chickenhawk-ism.
Reread my post, champ. I never said war was the best humanity had to offer. Quite the opposite.
Don’t reach for your barf bag just yet. Which of the nausea-inducing statements are not facts? Why do you object to my description of the realities of war, but not to war itself? It is the real dying and maiming that you should find offensive, not my post.
The “you must sign up to be a soldier to support the war,” argument is just embarassingly and basically dumb.
The social contract of civilization implies as a basic tenet that we do not all need to do everything to participate.
You can morally eat meat without having to butcher it. You don’t have to be a policeman to enjoy civil protection, nor do you have to be a policeman to have a say in what laws there should be. In fact, another group of people write the laws that the police enforce.
By being a member of a society you have a say in that society. By being the guy that butchers the meat you have a say in what the laws should be and what the policeman should be doing.
Similarly, whether you are an accountant, a policeman, or a dishwasher you have a say in what the soldiers should be doing.
OK not really. I see the logic in what you say, but I posit that we must hold war at a higher level than any other situation.
I say that war is sufficiently evil and destructive that we should reserve it only for crises that by there very nature would compel military age men to enlist in the war effort.
I can see why it looks illogical, and it’s probably because I’m not being clear enough in what I’m trying to say. I’m not determining the worth of the force, I’m determining the worth of the cause. For example, a fire department, in my view, is set up to put out fires in my neighbourhood. The benefits and rationale behind the existence of such a department are so overwhelmingly obvious that the vast majority gladly support it. However, if Mugabe’s mansion caught fire and my neighbourhood’s fire department was seconded by politicians to help put the fire out, I’d be saying, fuck that shit. The fire department’s function is to put out fires in my neighbourhood, not my neighbour’s hood.
Let’s use your Iraq as an example. Your country’s decision to wage war on Iraq is without a doubt highly controversial, and against the wishes of the UN and, I dare say, contrary to the wishes of the majority of the world community. Therefore, in my opinion, the cause is questionable. The cause is ignoble.
My country’s decision to embark upon a philosophy of apartheid and enter into a complex war to protect this idealology was confusing, confounding and ignoble. It’s decision to conscript and force under threat of imprisonment all 18 year old white males to fight for this ideology was fucked up. The cause was ignoble.
And therefore, in my opinion, it’s all about the cause. If you want to fight for an ignoble cause, then you do it yourself.
Yes, Scylla, it might be basic civics 101, and embarassing, and dumb. But you know, that’s the thing about academics. Academics deals with theories, and often the theory is completely out of touch with the realities of human feelings and emotions.
What I’m trying to convey here is that there are people who see things differently. There are people who experience things differently. There are people whose lives do not fall within the neat confines of the hypotheses and philosophies of academics.
And yes, everyone has a say, including the soldiers.
And for the record, I don’t advocate only certain people having a say. I just say anyone who feels a cause is worth another’s life, but not their own, is a pussy.
And for the record my OP was about “fervent” supporters of the Iraqi war who are of miltary age, but draw the boundaries of necessity to include the sacrafice of others, but to exclude any sacrafice by themselves.
In that circumstance I suggest the hawks reevaluate their commitment to the war, lest they be labled “chicken hawk”.
My point, and not very eloquently made I will grant you, is more towards setting the standards for war higher, rather than requiring everyone to support a war we start without just cause. If the benchmark people used in the fevered runup to this war, where the vast majority of Americans supported the invasion, was “am I willing to kill and die for this cause”, or “am I willing to send my son or daughter to fight or die for this cause”, then I think much of the red white and blue mindless following of a corrupt administration would not have happened. And maybe, just maybe, cooler heads would have decided not to invade a sovereign nation. I would call that a Very Good Thing.
As a practicer of the fine art of civics, a civicizer if you will, I would hope you would carefully read the OP and understand it. You have twisted the message. I know everyone of age has a say, and I would never change that. But IMO, if you advocate using the deaths of many and the suffering of more as a political tool, you should be willing to share in the misery, or realize maybe the situation does not call for the death and suffering of others either. And if you don’t meet these standards, there is a man in a small suburb of Richmond, VA who will call you a chicken hawk. Don’t let that get your panties in a bunch.
We can disagree on this. Whenever there is war there are people willing to have empassioned debates about the merits of that war. That, my friend, is basic civics.
I say just send the politicians to the front line and be done with it. They can come back when everyone else has.
But seriously. I don’t support this war, but if I did, one of the factors influencing my support would be our ability to fight it with existing resources. The army has some number of people in it who have already volunteered to serve. In all reasonableness, the war should be won by them, since they’re the soldiers around here. If they’re not enough then it’s time to assess wether it’s worth the additional costs of draining more men from our country and training them. That cost is necessarily higher.
If one only supports the war on the condition that it does not use soldiers other than the current army, would that person be a chickenhawk for not enlisting?
I absolutely agree.
I was of draft age during the Vietnam War. I was in college from 1969-1973. The Vietnam War and the draft ended in 1973 and I’ll admit I consider myself lucky that I did not have to go to Vietnam.
It bothered me that some of the students at college were rabidly in favor of the Vietnam War (oh but they still made damned sure they got their deferments). :mad:
Didn’t Thomas Payne (1737-1809) state in Dec 1776 that
Regrettably, what Thomas Paine could not foresee was that those summer soldiers and sunshine patriots are now getting elected to very prominent positions.
That chickenhawk website (and the many others) are fantastic at exposing the chickenshit tactics the “glorious” leaders of our country took during the Vietnam War to “sleaze” their way out of the draft.
I’d say the 3 that really bother me are Jack Kemp, John Ashcroft and John Engler.
Jack Kemp had a medical deferment from being drafted yet had the courage to “triumph” over his medical adversity so that he could struggle to play quarterback for the Buffalo Bills. :mad:
Former Senator and Former Attornry General John Ashcroft had an “essential” civilian job which “earned” him an occupational deferment from the draft. What was this “vital” job? Teaching law at Southwest Missouri State University. :mad:
Former Governor of Michigan, John Engler failed his draft physical twice. One time he was eight pounds overweight another time two pounds overweight. (Recently, he has had medical problems due to obesity. Poetic justice in action?)
These “leaders” were not made from the same stuff as Nathan Hale or Patrick Tilman.
The protests against the term “chickenhawk” we see even on this board come primarily from those who fit the description themselves (and they know who they are; they’ve been told bluntly many times) - individuals eligible to join the US military and go fight themselves but refuse to do it (or even to explain why, when asked), while nevertheless urging that *others * go sacrifice their *own * lives instead.
A cause is either worth your life or it isn’t. Somebody else’s more is not more expendable than your own, not in any workable moral code humanity has come up with. If you decide the cause isn’t worth your own life, you need to think a whole lot harder before supporting it.
I was speaking generally without intending to speak specifically of any present conflicts, Iraq or otherwise. The issue about the Iraq war being justified/not being justified is something I think we’ve debated enough, and there are more than enough threads with that as the topic already.
What war would be so great that it would eliminate the need for police men, construction workers, etc? You realize that during World War II we sent about 12,000,000 men to fight, and that left a great many men home. There were even large numbers of men of fighting age who were left at home. Yes, women took up jobs that up until that point were tradtionally the jobs of men. But a simple look at the statistics will show you there were still millions of men on the home front (even men of fighting age) who were continuing with their civilians lives.
Without police officers we would have no way to enforce any laws in our country. Even as its cities were being shelled and bombed on a daily basis the United Kingdom still kept police officers in employ. Just because a society is involved in a great struggle does not mean you ignore all other societal tasks that must be done.
Furthermore, under your logic you are saying you did not support the 1991 Gulf War? That, in your ideal world, since not 100% of the country’s fighting age males would be needed to throw Saddam out of Kuwait, it was an unjustified war, and therefor the ideal outcome for you is we allow Kuwait to be invaded and occupied and just accept it as a fait accompli. Since liberating Kuwait was not a war so great that it required 100% of all fighting age males, it was not a justified war, and Kuwait should have been left to its own devices?
For that matter, World War II also did not require 100% of fighting age males. Should we have left the countries of Europe to suffer under the Nazi jackboot? The countries of Asia to the advances of the Japanese?
I know this is the pit…but why the incivility? Blithering idiot? Because I espouse a view contrary to yours? To each his own I guess.
And, if you will read my posts again, carefully this time, you still misunderstand my point. And that may very well be my fault.
My point is that to believe a cause is of sufficient merit to warrant the deaths of others, but is not sufficient to cause you to risk your own personal security, then I question how serious you really think the original threat is.
George: “We gotta get these evildoers because if we don’t they will kill us because they hate our freedoms! If we don’t fight them in Baghdad, then we will have to fight them in New York!”
Donald: "No doubt about it. And there has been too much patriot’s blood spilled already to leave the job unfinished. Even if we have to sacrafice 1,000 more soldiers and kill 10,000 more of the enemy, the cause of freedom and security demands it.
George: “Some units are returning for the 4th time! That is service! I really honor their sacrafice. When I go to the Nascar race, I will prolly cry when the jets fly over perfectly timed with the end of the “Star Spangled Banner” just thinking of those poor dead soldiers who died for our freedom. But the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots from time to time.”
Donald: “I know what you mean. I am thinking of replacing the flag magnet on my car. It is kinda faded. Do you know where I can get one with a yellow ribbon on it? Maybe one that says ‘remember our troops’?”
Grampa Johnny: “I know how you boys feel. Back in World War 2, I was plum pissed when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. I was watching a movie at the Barksdale Theater when I heard. I went straight to the recruiting station and enlisted. Boy was my mama mad! But like you said, when duty calls, you have to answer. Say, you boys thought about enlisting? Sounds like you take this war pretty seriously.”
George: “Me? Uh, no, not really. I have a wife and kids. Too much to lose. And I would probably have to give up my job. No, I would like to, I just can’t.”
Grampa Johnny: “Pussy.”
Hey Martin Hyde , just out of curiosity, how old are you? Do you support the war?
But on another not, I hope you manage not to be so bellicose in real life. I can imagine people wouldn’t want to be around you much. But if you need to blow off a little stream in here, ya know, calling people names and stuff, no harm.
