Prove it.
:rolleyes: Yeah, and that’s real useful against the military. If I went and got a gun, I’m sure the guys in the bombers and tanks would be terrified of me.
No, that just makes them worse. “I was just following orders” excuses nothing.
Yes. I thought ‘insurgents’ made my bias clear. To me, the average American/British/Australian (whoever else was willing) soldier is there because he/she was sent there by their govt, not because they have some huge political/religous or even practical reason (I’m protecting my home/family).
The insurgents are the ones protecting their homes, families, way of life, country. I agree that the way they are doing it is bad (kidnapping ‘innocents’, suicide bombings) but they have a more real stake in the outcome of this ‘conflict’ then troops from any country stationed there.
That said the troops sent there deserve the respect of all those who are parked at home on their bottoms lamenting the death of the soldiers they “respect”.
*If the people accept, or fails to act against, action(s) of the government, they have acquiesced to it - They’ve consented.
I don’t buy the “I don’t like it, so I’m not consenting” POV - If you don’t act, all you’ve done is consent with a bad attitude.
So: Whining about how the government behaves,
but doing nothing about it is, in my books, consent.*
You are right.
So what is your excuse for being so vicious and cold-blooded?
I’m not defending torture and I’m definitely not going to defend the actions of the guards at Abu Ghraib. Combat and torture are not the same thing.
If you check out the Zimbardo study on prisons it’ll shed some interesting light on how quickly that kind of situation can escalate. Again, I’m not defending Abu Ghraib, but I don’t think people should be shocked that it happened. Those folks weren’t trained to handle that situation and it got way, way out of hand.
Iraqis were trained to handle invasion though, right?
Perhaps they are just as “way out of hand” in their dealings of the situation that they find themselves in.
But see Airman, you could reciprocate by saying, for instance, that “some people with extreme political views are less important than dirtied doormats, and their deaths would be a positive boon to global wellbeing” and you’d be covered by precedent.
Thankfully, you’re above that sort of thing.
Whoa, hang on. What does the insurgency have to do with how the guards in Abu Ghraib behaved? I can understand that some Iraqis are fighting because they perceive us as the enemy. I can also understand that in an isolated, hierarchical system like that of a prison people can take power and control to extremes. I fail to see how the two relate.
You claimed that the lack of training to cope with the situation at Abu Ghraib led to those guards acting inhumanely/inapproriately and stupidly (or impulsively), actually those are my words, you just said they did what they did because they were not trained to cope with the situation they found themselves in.
I claimed that Iraqis also were not trained for the situation they have found themselves in. I claim that in the situation of having your country invaded you might decide to fight back in inappropriate ways.
I’m not. Who have I killed ? I’m not the killer here. It’s Bush and his followers and every American who voted for him that are to blame.
Last I heard, the videotapes of children being raped were still being kept from the media.
Cite, motherfucker!
Ditto but you posted first.
[hijack] Sorry to say, but, no, they are not. [/hijack]
Really? How soon do people forget these things?
A bit on children and Iraqi prisons. (There’s much more info out there, and I can provide cites upon request.)
[
](http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/22/iraq/main619076.shtml)
Seymore Hirsch’s presentation to the ACLU.
[
](http://stream.realimpact.net/?file=clients/aclu/conf2004/20040707_aclu_AmericaAtACrossroads_300.rm)
[
](http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040517fa_fact2)
[
](http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/08/iraq/main616338.shtml)
[
](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/jan-june04/photos_5-3.html)
Again, there are more cites out there that I can dig up if people require.
I agree with the mods that wishing death on soldiers is too thorny to ban: any pro-war argument, in that case, becomes a banning offense.
That doesn’t mean it’s not an asshole position. I’m one of the most anti-military people on this board; I’m willing to hold individual soldiers personally responsible for their participation in an unjust war, and I’d do so without any sort of moral relativism. And I’m appalled at the idea that someone would be satisfied at the death of any soldier, that someone would take joy in it.
Any soldier. Those who are delighted at the deaths of Iraqi soldiers are also appalling to me.
Der Trihs and Sevastopol lack any moral authority to criticize anyone. Their behaviors are contemptible. Miller’s right: when y’all make me agree with duffer, you’ve really done something wrong.
Daniel
No, I’m not referring to any “I don’t care about the troops because I’m anti-war” arguments or the like, I’m talking about pointed comments that refer to military members in general (which includes me) or more pointed comments such as the ones we saw frommswas where I am referred to as a criminal (“equivalent to a terrorist” was the exact quote, I believe).
That’s quite acceptable to the powers that be around here, but as I said previously if I were to refer to a “protected class” in such generalities I would have been shown the door a long time ago.
The bottom line: since the rules here are being unfairly enforced to the point where I have been warned for reacting to such statements with no penalty to the other party I just decided that I didn’t care anymore. It’s a lie, of course- I still become furious. But I will not respond any longer. I’ll just let the hatred go unanswered, because it’s certainly not punished, rules about “hate speech” notwithstanding.
Thanks Finn. Consider ignorance fought. What can we expect when guard units are ripped from the streets with little or no training? These guys are not professional soldiers and are apparently getting no direction from the whitehouse. That said their is no excuse for their actions and the individuals and the officers who allow these horrible attrocities should spend many many many years in prison. But I do not think these individuals are representative of all ammerican troops.
I spent many years in the Army and served in Desert Storm. I knew some good people and some really bad people. I was sent to the Riots in LA and saw some horrible things, mostly commited by the LA county Sherrifs, and some really stupid things done by Marines.
But overall my experience as a soldier leads me to think that all these atrocities are evidence of a failure of leadership. These are kids that are sent to do an impossible task under horrible conditions. Many of them realize that there is no good reason for them being there.
We need to get the hell out of Iraq. If only to stop turning many of our young men and women into monsters.
-
People like Der Trihs have been abused throughout childhood to the point that they can no longer function as proper members of society. I know that I would cheer on if some unnamed malignant force was to brutally murder him and everyone like him, so I guess I can’t blame him for feeling the same way about people like me.
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I definitely agree about the respect. I have infinitely more respect for someone that is willing to fight either for their ideals or out of their duty as a soldier than someone who sits back home and snipes at me while enjoying the comfort of the protection I provide him. I’ll take the enemy that stands against me on the field of battle over the enemy that stands behind me and uses their idiot’s tongue to spread hate and disinformation.
Personally I wish this was like Heinlein’s society and you had to engage in military service before you were considered a civilian, then people like Der Trihs would have no influence on our government.
[nitpick]90% or more of the veterans in Starship Troopers never saw combat, nor did they perform military service as you are using the term.[/nitpick]
I didn’t say that they did. To gain citizenship via military service you did have to be a member of the military though. Something that Der Trihs could never be even if he wanted to, once he took the ASVAB and the result came back, “Dumb as Shit” they’d happily send him on his way or perhaps call social services and tell them that he needed a case worker.
And actually I also failed to mention that in Starship Troopers military service wasn’t required for citizenship. There were other methods to attaining it as well, other types of service and other types of things you could do, according to Heinlein.
The idea that one has to earn citizenship is one I have always liked. People shouldn’t get to vote just out of the fact that they were born here, voting is about choosing representatives who best represent society’s interests. And to allow people who have never shown they have any true pro-societal interest to vote probably isn’t the best idea.
The founding father’s had it right. A property requirement would be great because in one fell-swoop it would fix most of the problems with our electorate.
It would guarantee people voted from a position of someone that has a stake in society, versus people like Der Trihs who lives with his mom and eats a dinner of Cheez-Its and Reddi whip every night. It would also immediately raise the intelligence of the electorate as the poor are almost universally less intelligent than the wealthy.