There were of course tons of propaganda.
Do we hold all theGermans responsible for WWII and the holocaust?
Who do we excuse as just plain dumb & gullible, those blinded by the lies, those going with the flow, those sitting it out.
Really responsible are the ones in charge.
But I guess there indeed was a strong base among the American people that cheered Cheney & Rumsfeld’s gang along. Just as a lot of Germans cheered Hitler.
What shall we call them? Evil?
And what do we call their army?
I wouldn’t serve in any military at any time because I find it unethical. The overriding purpose of a military is to kill people and destroy property. There’s no getting away from that. A soldier who has been shooting human-shaped targets for years is not a general-purpose tool. Whatever the ultimate aim is of the political overlords, I don’t care. I want no part in it. Killing never makes things any better.
Also, I have no desire to die early. I don’t think I’m more cowardly than anyone else. I’m just not an idiot or a nationalist. I take no pride in my ethnic stock. I don’t believe in any of the supposed threats that have been offered up as justifications for war in my country in my lifetime (the Falklands, the Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan). They would not threaten my family or anyone I care about.
And WWII? I would have gone to Rick’s Cafe in Casablanca. Wait for it to blow over. Not my scene. And I would encourage anyone else to do the same.
Of course there is. The purpose of a military is not to kill as many people as possible and destroy as much as possible.
The overriding purpose is to win the war!
Your aim, as a militairy, is to achieve that with a minimum of civilian casualties.
You should AVOID civilian casualties.
This is something the American military is not very good at. It would rather avoid suffering any casualties themselves at the expense of innocent civilians.
Comparing it to Nazi Germany is just hyperbole. Americans still enjoy freedom of speech, and freedom to criticise the government (the fact that this forum exists is testament to that), and elections, as imperfect as they are, continue to be free and fair. You can cite examples of corruption but they continue to be exceptions rather than the rule, and condemned by everyone here.
You start with a legitimate gripe against the US - that it’s corrupt and shady things do occur that ought to be in the public eye - but to go completely the other way and say it’s akin to Nazi Germany simply destroys all your credibility.
People have the right to free speech, and that includes the right to cheer and approve of something you disapprove of.
It strikes me that you claim ‘propaganda’ whenever it is something you disapprove of, but conveniently it never is when it is something you approve of.
I’m confused. Are you saying that it’s the government’s fault that people freely approved of the government doing something you consider awful, or that these people should be punished for exercising their free speech?
I can see you’re confused.
Which just means I wasn’t clear enough:)
Who said anything about punishing people?
We are talking morality.
Starting with the question if soldiers are (partly) responsible for what they do in an unjust war.
Which was answered with a question whether people who have elected the decision makers are (partly) responsible too.
My point then was if this responsibility is reduced if you are misled, by propaganda.
How far does that excuse go?
There are also those that can’t be excused by their intelligence level for cheering along. They are cheering along with something they know is wrong.
So there is three people.
Those misled and cheering.
Those not misled and not cheering.
Those not misled but still cheering.
Pure sophistry. You win a war by killing people and destroying property. If you are not prepared to do those things, you will not win a war. In fact, if there is no killing or destruction, it is not a war.
Someone up thread made the military to a knife comparison and I think it’s an apt one. A knife is designed to cut and to stab. It can stab a person or stab an animal. It can cut a person or cut a tree branch, it’s just a tool.
Hell you can turn a knife on its side and hit it with a rock, using as a hammer. It’s not as good as a hammer but it can be used as one.
So too is the military, it’s just a tool of the government and rightfully so. A military that says yes and no to the missions its assigned is a very different animal than the military that serves the United States today.
I’ve served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I’ve seen your Iraqi business owner situation play out before my eyes. The fact remains that I would never have been there to witness it had the government not told me to be there.
The knife doesn’t decide to stab a person it’s used to stab a person. Are there extreme situations in which I could see the U.S. Military refusing to act upon orders it’s given, sure but they’re just that, extreme situations.
And that is precisely where the comparison fails.
The knife cannot make decisions, whereas a soldier can.
As you say, a soldier can (and should) say ‘No’ to an order that is immoral.
Of course the pressure is high to obey, but there are plenty of instances where morals won over orders. On the small scale f.i. soldiers preventing other soldiers from shooting POW’s.
What the OP does is bringing to a bigger scale. What if, as a soldier, you know the total war to be unjust?
What if you realise you shouldn’t be in this war?
What if you are that grenadier invading Poland?
Do you bear any responsibility?
No, they are not. They are part of the ‘knife’, so to speak. To speak out means the army gets involved in politics.
You raise a good point that a soldier’s duty is to challenge and defy immoral orders. But that does not include the standard orders which are to attack A, defend B. If you say it is immoral for a soldier to do these things, then you’re undermining the very point of an army.
They do allow for conscientious objectors in the US, if that’s what you mean. If you have a problem with following orders, then you shouldn’t be in the army in the first place. If you go into the army with the intent of questioning your orders, you risk politicising the army.
Latro, I cannot add much more than what Malden Capell just did. Yes an order to shoot POW’s can and should be disobeyed. An order to secure the high ground outside of an objective should not be.
When the military collectively is given a mission the nation is best served if the military simply do it. Only in VERY extreme circumstance would I see a rational reason for the military refusing to obey.
A service member is not the “military”. Are there immoral service members? Of course. Is the U.S. military immoral? Not at all.
I’ve worked for the Army for years and retired from the Army only recently. It’s generally advised that service members up and down the command refrain from commenting publically on policy decisions because we don’t set policy, we act upon the decisions given to us. Look at GEN McCrystal for proof.
Ok people I’m going to try this again. I am saying:
My point is that it is immoral to join a military force that you know before hand has had a long history of being used to invade smaller weaker nations. I do not accept “extenuating circumstances” or “it’s complicated” as valid reasons to do so.
I’m not saying it’s not complicated. I’m saying that it is complicated is beside the point. It does not change the end result.
Before we can determine if any particular explanation is valid, we need to determine that the deathly consequences of invading another country, destroying it and killing it’s citizens, that such drastic consequences are subject to moral exemptions and not simply: wrong.