I’m pretty open about my dislike of America’s meddling in foreign affairs - not out of some love or shrine I built to Michael Moore, rather cause I get what the forefather’s were saying…entangling alliances and all that.
If you can’t grasp what they were onto, then well the Constitution isn’t for you.
There’s not one war since the Civil one that I can justify - in the sense that America was needed, nay duty bound to be involved.
Though, regardless, to claim a soldier’s willingness to be just that, a soldier, as immoral smacks of so open to argument through analogy-example alone, I believe it’s been covered.
I would only add that I call this a legislation and leadership issue…and as possibly pointed out…not all military go to war or even leave the country. See reference … : Canada
Well, if you extend that to include any nation that uses its military for aggression, I will agree.
I would like to recast what the OP said, since I believe there’s a large grain of truth in it. It’s not the US military. It’s every military. I think what the OP is getting at is that sublimating your own moral judgment to someone else or to an institution is morally questionable at best.
The American military and I presume most other militaries teach their soldiers something about ethics and illegal orders. But we all know that it’s extremely difficult to disobey orders, legal or not, in military culture, and especially so for kids that age. I think many of us would agree that the invasion of Iraq was the start of an immoral war, and a significant part of the population knew it at the time. If all of us were truly exercising independent moral judgment, we would’ve seen a lot more soldiers refusing to participate, deserting, or resigning. It just didn’t happen. Not with the kids who were recently enlisted, and not with the generals and top civilians in the Pentagon who had a much better picture of what was going on.
That’s not an American thing, it’s not even especially a military thing. It’s really a human thing. For some reason we want to be led, we want to put our trust in someone, we want someone else to make the hard decisions for all of us. Once we allow that, it becomes many times harder to step back and say “no”. To say “no” is a betrayal of those who we put our faith in, and of our own judgment because we chose to put our faith in them.
But the other side of this trait has allowed humanity to achieve so many great things. We build roads across continents, we build huge projects to benefit society and our communities, we invest in and develop new technologies and new businesses, all because we put our trust in someone else’s vision.
It is perhaps both the greatest strength and the greatest weakness of our species. With it we may end up in 1984. Without it, we might be a world of anarchists constantly at war with our neighbors.
Hmmm. Canada was at war with Germany two years before the US was, and I don’t know how many thousands of Canadians left the country to fight, but… every single one of them that fought did so abroad.
And you can’t justify one single war the US fought since the civil war, including WWII?
Perhaps you didn’t understand what was written. The answers you have given don’t bear any relation to what I asked. I did not say anything at all about illegal orders or misconduct. I’m talking about ordinary soldiers following their legal orders.
Maybe you can try answering the questions.
You’re confusing me with someone else. I did not have any such conversation with you.
Any of you military folk or apologists care to give an answer to this one?
Just to be clear, I’m talking about soldiers obeying legal orders. I said nothing at all about illegal acts of others, or wrongdoing on the front lines. Dunno where Trinopus got that bit from, but he completely misunderstood the question.
I cannot comment on any real person’s morality (as I believe morality is too subjective to be a useful measurement of benefit to society) , but the young lady as you created her is clearly immoral for joining the military against her personal beliefs and then lying about her motivation.
That was more of a poke at fence sitting countries. We are all very grateful for Canada’s involvement in all theaters of World War II - and they did not get a lot of respect for it sadly.
No I do not justify America’s involvement in World War II. Pearl Harbor is an issue that could have been exclusive and separate from the war front in Europe. War in Europe wasn’t our problem - we made it our problem. After our bombing run in Japan, that should have been the end of our involvement or more importantly should have been our ONLY involvement in any foreign war.
Let’s circle this around from another angle.
Hitler made three irrevocable mistakes
A) Not taking more military advisement from his generals
B) Invading Poland, as opposed to just passing through and working an agreement for the use of the Polish ‘corridor’ It’s most likely Poland would have been plenty happy for the Germans to waltz by en route to Russia (which should have been his first and only real hard target)
C) Invading France. Despite France declaring war on Germany for invading Poland, Hitler should have just laughed it off and let them declare all they wanted. It wasn’t as if France was a real threat. By actually going into France, Britain started mobilizing.
The point of this is that had Hitler not done these things, war would have primarily been between Russia and Germany.
America would not have needed to be indirectly involved by supplying England with additional rations because England would have most likely stayed out of it all.
It was clear Americans were reluctant to get involved, and despite wanting vengeance for Pearl Harbor, they certainly were not in favor of the fight in Europe.
It’s even speculated that had Americans known the truth about the government supplying armaments and rations to the English, that there may have been riots and serious blow-back .. this is of course does not apply to World War I(that was something that civilians did want. They pushed for it and got it sadly).
I will always believe that had things transpired differently, England and more importantly America would not have been involved in the war in Europe and Hitler would have left well alone. Trade routes would have been only temporarily slowed and we wouldn’t hear from them for many years.
America’s involvement in the war may have stopped the Nazi dominance, but WWI and II opened the doors for so many other negative things…
-Geneva convention
-The turning point of America’s policing of the world politically, morally and financially.
-Increased ties to foreign nation’s government policies, dictations and economies.
-Dependency and expectancy by other nations.
-Increased immigration without check.
Despite their dislike of England, the forefathers might have literally scoffed at the idea of helping countries across the ocean in matters of war and economy. Why should it been our concern?
And despite my dislike of what the original author was suggesting with his question about service in the military being immoral, I would highly question one’s personal morality and furthering personality, if they joined voluntarily into the U.S. military knowing that each war America involves themselves in, just digs us a bigger hole.
As far as I’m concerned, the only wars America had a right to was the Revolutionary and Civil wars.
Are you not aware that Germany declared war on the US, not the other way around? Or should Roosevelt have “laughed off” the declaration?
It is laughable that the Poles would simply let the Germans “pass through” on their way to attack Russia. Germany and Russia made a deal to split Poland up between them.
It is laughable that Hitler could afford to “laugh off” a declaration of war from France. France had more tanks than Germany and hundreds of thousands of soldiers right on the German border. All those German generals that you think Hitler should have listened to feared a war with France greatly.
The American public knew quite well that the US was supporting the UK over Germany. Show me a cite about what was being kept secret?
How exactly were the Geneva Conventions bad? Also, two of the four were signed before WWI, so the wars didn’t exactly start up the process.
Er, actually, Hitler made it your problem. He declared war on America, not the other way round.
Ah, right. So what, after Hitler’s declaration of war America should have just come to a deal with one of the most evil dictators in history?
And after Hitler’s eventual defeat at the hands of the British and Soviets, and the unveiling of the Holocaust, America is really going to be lauded as a moral country for doing a deal with such people.
So your argument is that America’s involvement in World War 2 is immoral because Hitler didn’t fight the war logically?
Again: you realise America was dragged into the European war - it didn’t volunteer to go in?