Originally posted by Elucidator
Do you always talk like that? Or were you just channelling Heinlein?
d’s & r’s
I am breaking my silence for only this post, based on that last line. I’m taking you at your word (in spite of much evidence to the contrary, but anyway…). Let’s see you live up to it.
It is apparent to me, if not to you, that if even ** * pldennison * ** , who can hardly be counted among my fans, sees you as gunning for me, then there’s a problem.
So I am asking you to be a standup guy and do one little thing for me:** * Leave me alone * ** . Ignore me. Cross me off your list. At all times, in every forum, on any subject. Don’t give me rotisserie advice, don’t joke with me, don’t congratulate me for behaving in ways you approve of, and above all, don’t take it upon yourself to show me the error of my ways, by direct or indirect reference. Please, I am begging you, * do not acknowledge my existence in any circumstance at all. *
I assure you, that if you leave me alone, my arguments and ideas will not go unchallenged. We are not suffering from a lack of people ready and willing to take me to task for my words and opinions. It doesn’t need to be you. And I think that if you really believe yourself to have no problem with me personally, then you will take what I’m saying as the truth, and as a man who considers himself a good person, you will honor it: I find debating things with you* ** extremely unpleasant in a very personal way ** *. So I have stopped, as you might have noticed. All I’m asking is for you to return the favor. Because I don’t come here to endure extreme unpleasantness, funnily enough.
I’m ** not ** going to list everything I think is wrong with you, because I don’t do that. Just take my word for it, do the ** decent ** thing, and * pretend I don’t exist * . Since you know going in that I will not respond to anything you say, if you do less you can only be seen to be taking unfair advantage and being * deliberately unkind * to boot. . It might be a little difficult; I occasionally get a little frustrated when someone I don’t interact with says something I find outrageous, but I just wait for someone else to come along and say what I wanted to say. Someone almost always does. I’m sure you can learn to use it as an exercise in patience, as I have done.
It’s only a message board, you aren’t saving the world by taking me on. So just don’t.
Stoid
PS: I’m not going to say anything more than this in public. If you really want to discuss this, you’ll have to email me. I don’t do this shit publicly, and I wouldn’t even have said THIS publicly, but after your response to the last time I emailed you, I assumed your email was off limits to me. Mine is not offlimits to you or anyone else.
pld: *But I know that a lot of former Vietnam protestors like to imagine that they spoke for the majority of the American people, that they changed the course of history, and that they stopped the war. Well, they didn’t. When the architects of the war realized that they couldn’t win if they kept playing the same way, and realized that they no longer had the political capital to try playing differently, they pulled out. […]
I do, however, take issue with [elucidator’s] failing to realize that his protesting the war did absolutely nothing to help my cousin, or my father, or anyone else over there. I bet he thinks it did, but it didn’t.*
While I agree with you that war protestors did not themselves “stop” the war, and that they were never in the numerical majority, I can’t agree with you that they made no difference at all. Every discussion of the Vietnam War I’ve ever seen has mentioned the impact of anti-war protests in increasing the impetus for the Paris talks, in spurring the withdrawal of US troops during the “Vietnamization” phase, and in impelling a change of strategy in the aftermath of the “Christmas bombings”.
You yourself just said that the real reason the war was stopped was because its architects realized they “no longer had the political capital” to pursue it. Well, one of the reasons they no longer had that political capital—and I agree it was far from being the only reason—was that antiwar protests focused and encouraged the expression of public discontent with the war in the US. I agree that the protests probably didn’t do anything much for the soldiers who were already caught up in the war, but the sources I’ve seen seem to concur that they probably did help hasten the end of the war and thereby prevent more potential casualties (at least, American casualties).
*“But I don’t agree that that person is therefore directly responsible for whatever happens to another person who subsequently gets called up and doesn’t dodge the draft.”
I didn’t say they were directly responsible for whatever happens to them; I said they were directly responsible for getting them called up at all.*
By that token, there’s a lot of responsibility to go around. Military leaders who make poor strategy decisions that result in high casualties, and the consequent need for fresh troops, are also “directly responsible for getting them called up.” Political leaders who make the decision to send in more troops are also “directly responsible for getting them called up.” Voters who elect those political leaders also share the responsibility. And as you point out,
Again, if the Army needs N soldiers, and X% decide to dodge, the Army is not going to simply take N - (X%)N. They’ll call up enough extra guys to make up the difference.
So the Army, of course, is directly responsible for getting those guys called up too. My point is just that the whole society shares in some measure the burden of the responsibility for risking the lives of soldiers. I don’t see how we can legitimately single out individuals who didn’t get drafted to bear the direct responsibility for the fact that others got drafted in their place, any more than we should single out the Army draft board secretaries who sent out the draft letters or the sergeants who did the actual conscripting. Yes, those who evaded the draft illegally were criminals, as I said, and they bear the responsibility for that, but I think that’s a separate issue.
And even among those who did, I’m sure that they also had other things they would have preferred to do at the time (like our esteemed VP, Dick Cheney, who “had other priorities”). Too bad for them, I guess.
This is a bit puzzling; do you think that the only reason most people who tried (legally or illegally) to avoid the draft was because they had “other things they preferred to do at the time”? Or does it make a difference whether you are simply saying “Aaah, let somebody else do it” or saying “This is not the right thing to do, and nobody should have to do it”? My father thought so; he was a (Jewish) WWII vet who had finally got the Merchant Marines to take him after trying for months to enlist in the Army and being turned down repeatedly due to medical disqualifications, so he certainly didn’t believe that “having other things to do” excused you from your duty. Yet he was sympathetic to the Vietnam-era protestors and draft opponents because, like many of them, he didn’t agree that it was our citizens’ duty to go kill Vietnamese.
So while I would never diss the patriotism or the principles of the soldiers who did feel it was their duty to fight in Vietnam when drafted, or even to volunteer for it, I also respect the principles of those who felt it was their duty instead to oppose the war. (I have more respect for those who didn’t break the law in doing so, or who accepted the consequences if they did break the law, but even some of the actual draft evaders I would probably have to describe as “acting on principle”). I agree with you, though, that it’s hard to summon up a lot of admiration for the people who said they supported the war but were still determined not to serve in it if they could possibly help it.
[[The problem is, the North Vietnamese regime was less free, more oppressive, and more cruel. Should we have just sat there and done nothing while N. Vietnam tried to take S. Vietnam over?]]
Since when is opposition of oppression a motivator for the U.S. to go to war? Yeah, sure. We’re appalled at the treatment of women by the Taliban. That’s why we’re buds with Saudi Arabia.
Stoid:
I do take issue with some of your political posts. Yet, if conversing with me or having me debate one of your ideas causes you suffering I’ll gladly ignore your existance in all the forums.
I’ll make two caveats:
-
Don’t post in any thread I start, as I don’t expect to have to censor myself for your benefit within my own discussion.
-
Don’t post on politics or political issues, hunting, or guns.
This way you won’t have to bother with the pain and suffering caused by me responding to you at all, and I won’t have to bother with the pain and suffering that your politics causes me.
Such is the nature of compromise.
Since you sound sincere, I’ll make that offer to censor myself, but you’ll have to do your part. Normally, I think it’s kind of a strange and inappropriate request as the very nature of GD is open debate, but nonetheless I’ll be glad to comply if you’ll do your part as well.
Does that like a reasonable compromise on both our parts?
Let me know.
And I am. Too bad for me that you are not.
See ya.
(note to everyone else: When Scylla elects to come after me in his usual fashion, and I elect to ignore him in mine, I may also simply post a link to this thread and these posts, so it’s understood what’s going on)
stoid
done with you forever and always
Stoid:
Sorry, I missed this.
I appreciate your honoring my request to not email me. That request was not founded with anything against you personally in mind, but rather because of the perceived threat and profanity contained within it.
I’d like to think that if you had known my wife uses that email, you would never have done anything of the kind. In fact, I’m sure of it.
I understand your request for privacy, and if you wish to email me, I’ll be happy to take it there. I will insist on civility respect and politeness, and will offer you the same.
I would appreciate a public answer to my offer of a compromise though.
Actually, in view of your hostile response (should have previewed,) please don’t email me.
Sheesh.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by gobear *
**
Neither of these were customary practices among antiwar demonstrators. In particular, the “spitting” legend has been repeatedly debunked. If you can cite a reliable source indicating otherwise, please do so.
Well, there are anti-war protestors, and their are anti-war protestors. There was the intellectual/academic anti-war movement, and there were the protestors with a strong tradition of civil rights activism, and there were the hippies. (There was, of course, some overlap, but I’m not inclined to try making an ASCII Venn diagram.) Among the hippies, there were all too many with a strong saving-their-own-ass motivation, IMO. Not only that, there was often a strong degree of anti-Americanism. They were the ones who made the least amount of difference. If elucidator would like to clear up to which group it is he belonged, maybe we can make some headway.
To some degree, perhaps. A more important reason was the ten of thousands of parents who had dead children and nothing to show for it in terms of the U.S. having achieved its (nebulous) goals.
And mine is that the draft dodgers too often appear unwilling or unable to recognize and admit to their complicity. They are so convinced of the utter righteousness of their cause that they often can’t seem to recognize that what they did may have contributed to hurting someone, probably because doing so would undermine that conviction.
Most? No. A plurality . . . maybe. And so we are clear on our terms, I am not talking about those who registered as legitimate C.O.s, or who had legitimate deferments (and didn’t abuse the deferment system–I’m talking to you, Phil Gramm). I’m talking about honest-to-goodness dodgers.
You bet it makes a difference. A big difference. Take, for example, my wife’s father. He’s around the same age as my father, but when the reality of possibly getting drafted arose, he got married and got his wife pregnant posthaste, and admits he did so in order to avoid going to Vietnam. That’s pretty scummy, IMO. That’s a lot different from having a serious moral objection, refusing to be drafted, taking your lumos for that refusal, and trying to stop the draft altogether.
This is, for better or worse, an issue that I feel very strongly and often irrational about. Vietnam has colored my father’s, and by extension my, entire life. It broke up my family. It caused him untold grief, even 30 years after the fact. And I simply cannot let glib comments like elucidator’s go unresponded to. If he has suffered emotional turmoil over his role in the war, well, good. He should. But as I said, he has the luxury of distance to examine his feelings, the luxury of not having had to go. Others don’t have that luxury, either becuase they did go, or because they’re dead.
If his “declining the invitation” comment was a self-deprecating whatever (which is really an elaborate way of saying “a lie” or, to be generous, “an exaggeration”) then perhaps he needs to recognize that it was a little too cavalier for some of us. He doesn’t owe me an apology for it, though–he owes my father, and my cousin, and all the people like them.
Aww, I bet elucidator is just jealous. Scylla is trés cool. I like the way he writes. Even if I don’t agree with his politics all the time, he has my respect.
pld: Among the hippies, there were all too many with a strong saving-their-own-ass motivation, IMO. Not only that, there was often a strong degree of anti-Americanism. They were the ones who made the least amount of difference.
I agree that it’s hard to muster up any more admiration for the war opponents who merely wanted to save their own asses than for the war supporters who merely wanted to save their own asses.
And mine is that the draft dodgers too often appear unwilling or unable to recognize and admit to their complicity. They are so convinced of the utter righteousness of their cause that they often can’t seem to recognize that what they did may have contributed to hurting someone, probably because doing so would undermine that conviction.
Fair enough. That’s what I hate most about war in general, the fact that there’s almost no choice you can make without contributing to hurting someone, and proclaiming the righteousness of your cause won’t make that go away.
*This is, for better or worse, an issue that I feel very strongly and often irrational about. *
Well, you’ve got reason.
If his “declining the invitation” comment was a self-deprecating whatever (which is really an elaborate way of saying “a lie” or, to be generous, “an exaggeration”) then perhaps he needs to recognize that it was a little too cavalier for some of us.
Not knowing exactly what he meant by “declining the invitation” (in particular, I wouldn’t have interpreted it at first blush as an assertion of draft evasion, so it seems a bit strong to call it as “lying”—IMHO), I don’t know exactly how he meant it to come across. I agree, though, that this is another of those extremely touchy subjects that it’s unwise to jest about too lightheartedly, so a retraction of that expression would be a graceful act on his part.
We went to war to keep the South Vietnamese from being overrun by the Communist North, because it was our understanding that communist states, under the leadership of the Soviet Union, had made it their goal to expand and increase their influence over non-communist states, and it was a goal of US foreign policy to contain and drive back Communism, because we understood Soviet style Communism to be oppressive and not to recognize certain human rights. Admittedly, sometimes our allies were oppressive also, and we weren’t always on the side of the angels, but fundimentally, the anti-communist movement was about protecting freedom from the communists who would take it away.
How is a society with a draft a free society? Forcing others to fight for a cause they do not believe in is not part of a free society. Even if it was it is not hyporcrisy. If a parent raises a child then decides that he wants to cut off one of the child’s hands and the child refuses it is not hypocrisy. Even though the child did recieve the benifits of the parent that does not allow the parent to do whatever he wants to the child.
By simply existing a person may contribute to hurting someone. Lets say the fact that you were born causes someone you have never met to go insane and kill 20 people. What would be your responsiblity to those 20 people?
How does that reconcile with your belief that for everyone who didn’t go, someone else had to?
The people who fought the draft did so also so that poor, disadvantaged young men wouldn’t be sent to die either in a pointless war. This war had nothing to do with conserving America’s freedom. I can’t believe we’re even talking about this right now.
No doubt about it. Penguins are one hell of a lot more interesting than re-stating thirty year old positions on Vietnam and the draft.
It doesn’t, but it doesn’t have to. A conscientious objector with religious grounds isn’t attempting to decide whether an action has merits or not, or whether he agrees with it.
And some like Muhammed Ali willingly faced the consequences of their civil disobediance. I may not agree, but I can at least find that respectable. Draft dodging I can’t.
Maybe. I’ve heard arguments on both sides. I really don’t know. I’m not sure that easily abandoning our commitment and letting the Communists have Vietnam without a fight would have been a good idea. We didn’t fight in Europe directly to conserve America’s freedom either.
Unfortunately, we fought a holding action. We were unwilling to step away, yet unwilling to do what it takes to win. Not a good solution.
I don’t know what would have happened if we simply stepped away, and I don’t know the world would be a better place.
And neither can our Glorious Leader, Unca Cecil, from here
Once again, Cecil shows us the way.
Fenris
So, I was thinking about closing up, sweep the floor, get the thread all neat and tidy for its Drift to the Bottom.
Then the son-of-a-bitch caught fire.
Well, godamn, I guess not.
Pldennison: as Goober has pointed out, I would have no humanity at all if I didn’t empathise with your pain. I don’t know if anybody deserves to be the focus of the anger you apparently carry around with you, but I’m pretty damned sure it ain’t me!
You imply that the truth will fix things. So be it.
When I turned 18 and one half (that was the age, in those days) I was 5’8"" tall, weighed about 113 pounds, walked like a duck, and by general standards in effect at the time I would likely have been judged to be not in possession of the standard issue of marbles. (I thought I was on to something. I’ll still do)
I sort of passed my physical. They had those, back in those days, physicals. I got slotted over into the group of those they would take if they really, really had to. It was '66, the draft lists were still slack.
Now, I grew up in Texas and on SAC bases (yep, a brat). I didn’t know at the time whether to be relieved or humiliated.
Because I still believed, you see. Still believed that all around the world, the poor, the fearful, the oppressed gave up a glad shout whenever they hear that the Americans were coming! Keep in mind, at this time, LBJ had been elected as the “peace” candidate. From the left. Whats that Bob Seeger line? “Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then?”
(I worked door to door for Goldwater. Read Ayn Rand. Figured the world should be run by us Smart Folks.)
Now, if I had banged on the door and demanded to be admitted, they might have sent me to basic. Which I would have failed miserably.
So that’s it, in a nutshell.
It has been suggested that a truly moral man should have flung himself into the gears, go to prison, etc. No doubt Ghandi would have done so.
I ain’t Ghandhi. Got five bucks says you ain’t either. Given the option of pointless martyrdom and the Summer of Love, I picked. I believe to this day I picked right.
You got a legitimate beef, but not with me. With the men who made the decisions, when they knew better. When they fucking knew! Take it up with them, pal.
Now if this all boils down to the way I express myself, all you gotta do is ignore me. You see “elucidator” at the top, just keep on truckin’. I’ll get by somehow, it’ll be hard at first…
I see you spell as well as you reason, or are you taking the “well, you’re a poopyhead” line of logical debate?
Putz.