Speaking as someone who served (in the Navy), I disagree with the OP (surprise surprise!).
But I’ve always known there are people who think that what I did was immoral. I’ve even known a few who have challenged me on it face-to-face. It’s nothing new to me, and it doesn’t bother me. I’m pretty confident that, while I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my life, I committed no morally indefensible acts while I was in the Navy. How do you know if I did anything wrong? How could you know, unless you were a witness?
I joined the Navy because I thought it was the best career option at the time, because I like ships and traveling, and because I wanted to do something interesting and valuable. It was the right decision, though I’m glad that I completed my service and am now a civilian.
But seriously- what did I do that was morally wrong? What action did I take? Was it a form I signed? An oath I swore?
Or, more relevantly, between somebody who joined the military in 2001 and somebody who joined in 2003.
A person might have joined the military in 2001 because America had been attacked by a foreign enemy and that person felt it was morally justified to fight a war against that enemy. (The OP has said he feels the war in Afghanistan is justified.)
But two years later, that same person is being told he’s going to be deployed to Iraq, a war he feels is not justified. What’s his moral responsibility here? He joined to support what he felt was a moral cause. Is he responsible if he is then sent to fight for a different cause - one which didn’t exist at the time he joined?
I puy myself in the place of an American embassy that had their consulate destroyed and four people including the ambassador assassinated in an RPG attack. I don’t care about Arab or Muslim sensitivities…
From the AP:
A well-funded, well-equipped, well-manned, well-trained military enables this type foreign policy initiative. Too bad they didn’t get organized quickly enough to stop that Libya fiasco.
Or maybe people say “it’s complicated” not as a way to excuse their immoral behavior, but because…it’s complicated. Every war has innocent bystanders who get hurt, even the wars you said in the other thread were justified. If you were to explain to someone why those wars were justified and the other person could not get past the fact that innocent people were hurt and called any other discussion of the topic just a bunch of excuses for immoral behavior (“What about the Berlin businessman? Do you think he wants to hear your reasons why his shop was bombed?”)…you’d end up thinking that person was kind of silly, or unserious.
So by the OP’s reasoning, a military even repelling an enemy invasion of our own country is immoral because that would be bad for them.
If you accept that there are bad people in this world, and they may on occasion get together and confront other groups in violent ways, then war is inevitable. Military forces must necessarily prevail. And morality can be objectively applied by rational people, during the conflict. People not recognizing the complexities and distinctions involved might get confused.
How do you feel about people who join a police force? I can understand the frustration of a shop keeper who’s store was destroyed when a criminal, fleeing a drug bust, gets destroyed in an ensueing gunfight, but I don’t blame the police officers. And yet, the police are enforcing American policy about drugs.
Do you despise the Ambassador and embasssy staff who, while not using guns, uses words to promote US foreign policy, which may include actions like embargos which result in hardships. How about the private security that protects them (2 of the 3 dead in Libya were formar SEALs working as consultants).
I can understand your frustration and distaste for war and it’s effects, but I think that your understanding of who is responsible is overly simplistic.
Speaking for myself, I like to think that my tax money bought something like 5-10 500 lb bombs, or 1 JDAM or tens of thousands of rounds of small arms ammunition, rather than being donated to some third-world shithole.
If we don’t take action against bad things, we’re immoral because have the power to stop them.
If we do take action against bad things, we’re immoral because we shouldn’t interfere in other people’s business.
When you’re young, you think you know everything because you know a lot about the very small amount of the world that you know anything about. As you get older, you sometimes realize that the world is a very big, very complex place and you don’t know very much at all.
If Robert163 is a Christian, he might want to read Romans 2 before he spends the rest of his life trying to feel morally superior to everyone else. If he’s not a Christian, then he may want to consider that no one else is really required to give a fuck what he thinks about anything and trying to wave one’s moral superiority over others only ensures that you are neither moral nor superior.
Since 19% of our federal budget goes to Defense and only 1% to foreign aid, (the vast majority paid to US arms manufacturers who simply donate their wares to other countries) you can sleep easy tonight knowing only about a fifth of one cent on the dollar of your tax money goes to food and medical supplies for those third-world shitholes.
That would, then, make it moral since it’s necessary. So what, exactly, are you advocating here? Do you expect every nation to have a 100% unmanned military?
Hopefully a “passing mod” as someone suggested upthread will move this lame rant of yours to the BBQ Pit. There it should receive the treatment it’s due.
If (which I don’t personally believe!) the military is evil, then, yeah, simply by being a part of it, you’d be enabling the bad bits. You didn’t beat up prisoners in Abu Ghraib. You didn’t even replace the guy who replaced the guy who did get sent there to do that. But maybe, at some point, you repaired the plane that carried him there.
What I can’t see is how this ever stops? I voted for a guy who voted to fund the war. I pay taxes that help fund the war. I buy gasoline that’s a little bit cheaper because of the U.S. presence in the Gulf of Arabia. I live in a city that was stolen from Mexico by naked force of aggression (San Diego. And, well, kinda. A warship sailed in, and the flags were changed. There was a tiny little battle, some miles away, which was pretty much inconsequential.) Hell, we took the whole damn continent from people who had a much better legal claim to it than we did. We just shouldered 'em aside, and killed 'em when they tried to resist.
If the entire world followed laws of perfect morality…um… I think about 7 billion of us would never even have been born in the first place.
That’s kind of the whole problem. The idea of going to fight in a pointless war like Iraq, just for college money, or because they want thrills, is disgusting to me. What you have described there is a thug for hire. And they ARE immoral.
Now, if think the conflict is a necessary and justified one, and that is their major motivation for joining the fight, that’d be different. I could respect that.
Seems like the OP has made up his mind and is not actually looking for a discussion, merely (im)patiently expecting everyone to suddenly see the light and join his fold.
We can all agree militaries are highly vulnerable to doing immoral things - that’s all armies, ever. But they also prevent a lot of bad stuff as peacekeeping forces and civil protection. As much as I opposed the Iraq War, I would wager the Coalition forces saved the lives of more Iraqis than they ended up killing.
The OP seems to have zero appreciation of what modern warfare is like. It’s an incredibly stressful experience for a soldier on the ground, who, in the middle of a firefight, has to choose between shooting someone who may be on the brink of throwing a grenade at his fellow soldiers to kill them all, or may just be a panicking civilian caught in the firefight. It takes a lot of training and a cool head to make that call.
It’s also impossible that people will always get it right. People die. It’s the nature of things. It’s not an excuse, just an observation.
As that US soldier, what do you think he’d rather do? Save his friends who he has bonded with on the tour, or tell their greaving families ‘I chose not to shoot, because I didn’t know until it was too late that they were in danger’.
Given those circumstances, I can totally appreciate their predicament. The OP seems to assume every civilian casualty is down to steroided, Call of Duty fanatics playing Metallica in a Lockheed AC-130 not giving a damn about the lives of those they are firing at.
This question has already come up. Are all who voted for Bush responsible for the Iraq war?
I don’t think so. They voted for someone they thought wouldn’t do such things.
They didn’t vote to go to war specifically.
The American people is not as much in charge as they would like to think.
It’s not as if the US is a democracy. In the sense that the citizens make policy.
No, you are ruled by an elite. It is them that make the decisions and sell you their policies after they have been decided. Often through blatant propaganda.
So, no I don’t hold the average American responsible for the actions of it’s government.
Again, how much of this are you responsible for? Were you in on the planning of this. Did you take part in the conquest?
Yes, you profit from the evil deeds of your government and it’s militairy.
But at least you have a conscience and unless you actually condone these kind of actions you are morally OK.