Sevastopol, Der Trihs, round 2 motherfuckers!

The BBQ Pit
61

Was basically the point I was trying to make, but wasn’t wording it quite right.

I certainly do not think the military is above condemnation in all cases, or that military action is without condemnation. The problem I have is when (mostly) left-wing types try to extrapolate disagreement with a particular military action to basically condemnation of not only the entirety of the military but of the concept of the military and the soldiers who join said military.

There’s even a legitimate stance that could hold that any soldier who fights in an unjust war is condemnable. I don’t ascribe to that stance because I believe once you join up, it’s your responsibility to fight the war that your democratic government tells you to no matter your personal feelings on the matter.

And there’s the legitimate stance that someone who joins the military specifically to fight in a given war would be condemnable.

But I fail to see how anyone could have the stance that all members of the military are criminals. First, that’s factually just a complete idiotic statement because many members of the military never even go into a combat zone and to say they’re a criminal because of something going on 8,000 miles away from them is insane. “Criminal” is a factual claim and not a philosophical one, in my opinion.

62

I believe that - I think having a military does rather imply you’ll be killing some folks, whether in offense or defense, and i’m against killing full stop. However, while I think all nations should not have a military, I know that it would be foolish to actually implement such a thing. For most countries, a military is utterly necessary. Nevertheless, yes, I believe my nation (and other nations) should not have a military, because I view killing as bad.

63

Who doesn’t?

64

Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply everyone else doesn’t. Most people would agree all killing is bad, and equally bad. Some would disagree, sadly.

65

The difference is, though, that if you hold the view that joining an army and being willing to kill is immoral, then it is logically consistent to argue that anyone who does this pretty much gets what they deserve if they get killed.

That is, in this viewpoint, if you put yourself in a position where you are killing other people, or involved in an operation that has the killing of other people as one of its duties, then you are deserving of a similar fate.

I don’t necessarily subscribe to this view, but it is not a logically inconsistent or morally hypocritical one.

No it’s not, because the statement that all soldiers are immoral rests on an evaluation of what a soldier’s actual responsibilities are, what a soldier’s actions are. It’s not the same as a generalization about all blacks or all men or all gays, or whatever. Being a soldier implies a certain set of assumptions about what your responsibilities are, what actions you might have to take, and the fact that you may have to kill people.

Take these two statements:

a)any willingness to kill, except in direct self-defense, is immoral.

b) joining the armed forces in a position that could be used in combat implies a willingness to kill when given orders to do so.

If statement (b) is true, then any person who holds moral position (a) is perfectly justified in believing that all soldiers are immoral. It’s not an unwarranted generalization; it’s a belief based on a moral position and on a knowledge of the purpose of the armed forces.

Now, there are different levels or types of belief regarding this sort of thing. For example, some complete pacifists belive that all killing is wrong, and that the armed forces themselves are an immoral institution, in all cases.

Others believe that the armed forces are necessary for self-defense, but should never be used offensively, in a war of aggression. Those people could argue that, based on the US military’s history of engaging in aggressive wars, anyone who joins the US military is immoral because any US serviceperson knows that they might have to kill in an agressive or offensive conflict.

This gets to Sam Stone’s assertion:

This assertion relies on an assumption that all military forces are used the same way.

Some military forces are, in fact, not used in wars of aggression, and are reserved purely for defensive purposes. Others are used much more frequently in what many people believe to be aggressive and immoral conflicts.

It is possible, then, to believe that joining a purely defensive military is not immoral, but that joining an aggressive military is immoral.

Again, i’m not saying i hold any of these particular positions. I’m only pointing out that this belief in the soldier as immoral is not the illogical or hypocritical position that some people believe it to be.

66

First, yes, there are folks who hold that position.

Second, that’s not the only way to believe that joining the military is immoral.

Imagine, for a moment, that you live in Kickpuppistan. Part of the country’s military requirement is that every day, at dawn, you kick a puppy to death.

It would be possible in Kickpuppistan to believe that joining the military was an inherently immoral act, even if you believe that Kickpuppistan needs a military . You simply believe that the country’s current military force behaves in such an unethical fashion that it cannot satisfy the country’s need for a military.

Many folks (myself included) believe that our own country’s military requires far worse of its soldiers than kicking puppies to death. Were our country’s military not used almost routinely for horrific foreign ventures, then joining it would not be unethical; but it is.

Martin, your defense of murderers, cheaters, and the like remains idiotic, in my opinion.

Daniel

67

Well Revenant since we’re talking in such a fanciful manner, I agree with you. I’ve seen war with my own eyes and I wish it was something that never happened. I wish no country had a military and I wish that there was a way that all human affairs could be settled without one.

I too, and I think all men, wish for utopia on earth. But occupying more than a few moments of our time with such a thing is folly, because it is not possible.

In the context of this world, the real world, saying you don’t want your country to have a military is akin to saying that not only do you not want your country to exist, but you wish to surrender your life and all your freedoms to the whim of the first and strongest man or group of men to decide they’re going to take over your country.

68

Who is to say what people are deserve? That is not something that is the place of any individual over any other individual. Obviously if one is in a war, be it defensive, offensive you can’t cry foul when you get shot by the enemy. They are indeed doing unto you as you are attempting to do unto them.

For any bystander to take glee, or to try to say that it was deserved on either side is indefensible morally. Individuals shouldn’t have the right to make such condemnations over other individuals.

Soldiers do not kill as individuals, they are killing on the behalf of the society they represent. Anyone who lives in that society has that blood on their hands. And unles they advocate the complete dissolution of that society then their continuing to both live in and take the benefits that society gives out makes them hypocrites to condemn the military. The military is simply an extension of the society in which they live, and they are just as much a part of that society as any of the soldiers they are condeming. And the soldiers are only there because of the society that created the military in question.

The only type of pacifists who could be true to their beliefs are also anarchists. Anyone who accepts the existence of a society, even if it is in the form of being a member of the opposition to the ruling group, is tacitly accepting the authority of the government that represents said society and the military that operates at its behest.

How many wars of aggression has the US military gotten involved in? In the 20th century I cannot think of a single one.

There is no such thing a purely defensive military. While several countries have taken specific actions to maintain the idea that they only have militaries for the purpose of self-defense, as sovereign states any of these countries could change that fairly quickly if they were to do so. Theoretically any country with a military, be it Japan, Sweden, or Switzerland could start offensive operations tomorrow if the right set of circumstances arose.

If you believe that a military reserved purely for defensive purposes is the only one that is acceptable to your moral palate, then you should not join any military because no military can give you 100% certainty that it will not become involved in an aggressive war.

69

Really? You feel no right, for example, to make condemnations of terrorists or murderers?

We all make moral condemnations of certain things. It’s just that we disagree over what those things should be.

Well, on one level i agree with you. In a democratic society, everyone bears some burden of responsibility for what the government and its agencies do in our name. If they do something immoral, we all have to take a bit of the blame. But i also believe that more of the blame rests on those who support the immoral actions and those who carry them out than on those who oppose them. I guess i’m just biased that way.

That’s ridiculous.

You imply that the only valid way to oppose what a society does is to remove yourself from it altogether, and you completely ignore the possibility of reform instigated by members of the society. As i suggested above, and as LHoD stated, it is possible to implicitly accept the need for a military while also believing that the military’s current policies and actions are wrong and immoral.

You’re not thinking very hard. But that doesn’t surprise me too much.

But my argument is based not on what they could do, but on what they do do. That’s all we have to go on in our evaluations.

Again, you can, at the very least, look at the record of the military in question, and the policies and international actions of the government that controls it. These things can give you a pretty good idea of what a more likely outcome will be.

Just out of interest, do you base every moral and practical decision you make on the hypothetical worst case scenario, or do you rely on a common sense understanding based on history and your observation of what happens in the real world?

70

Can we be a bit more accurate in our statements, please? It wasn’t all of the guards at Abu Ghraib breaking the law. And, wasn’t it another guard who brought the situation to light?

71

The UN doesn’t have a military arm. Those “blue helmets” are members of the military of member states, with entire units assigned by said militaries to those UN peace-keeping missions.

72

Get back on your fucking semantic pony and take a hike, will ya.

It was quite clear that he was not saying that all guards at the prison were respnsible, and that he was, in fact, saying:

He was referring specifically to the guards who had carried out torture, and anyone with a modicum of understanding about the way that elision and references to prior subjects works would understand that without even a second thought.

73

Exactly wrong is what your posting here is. For the members of the US military, they are required–REQUIRED–to disobey unlawful orders. Orders to murder someone are unlawful.

It’s not logical to believe a load of malarkey such as that you’ve posted here. Joining a nation’s military is not an immoral act and your assertion that you’re not tarring everyone in a military with a rank generalization doesn’t pass the smell test.

74

I really don’t care what your fetish with ponies is, mhendo. And semantics isn’t bad. Actually, it seems to me that you could do with a bit more understanding of what words mean yourself.

75

I never said anything about unlawful orders, moron. I was talking about immoral orders. If you removed your head from your ass for a minute, you might have realized that.

Some people believe that certain orders which may very well be lawful are also immoral.

For example, any order to fire on Baghdad. That order was lawful, as far as the members of the US military were concerned, because it came from their CiC and the whole military structure above them

But many people felt the order was immoral, because the US had no place invading in the first place.

You may not believe that joining the military is an immoral act, and i don’t believe it either, but there are those who do, and your simple disagreement with them does not render their moral position untenable or irrational.

76

Thanks for the infor Finn, I rescind my request for a cite. It would have been nice if Der Trihs had deigned to provide one but what are ya gonna do?

77

That’s funny, considering that your posts are still there. They didn’t magically disappear. You clearly said that joining the military is an immoral act. Now you’re tapdancing around your own stupidities.

78

mhendo: I did miss the “from a pacifist point of view” comment you put in that post. But it does seem a bit strange that you put it in AFTER you posited that someone in the military must kill someone “for no other reason than a guy with stripes on his arms tells you to.” Especially when you admit you know that’s not the case.

I apologize for missing the “pacifist point of view” comment.

79

Yes, my posts are still there, and if you’d read them, you fucking lunatic, you would see that i very clearly stated that:

a) some people believe that joining the military is an immoral act

b) this position is not necessarily illogical or hypocritical.

I very clearly stated, in post #52:

And in post #65:

I never said that i held moral position (a), or that i subscribed to the view that anyone who joins the military is immoral.

I also said in that same post:

And then, in a post made directly to you, i stated about as clearly as possible:

I note on preview that you now claim to have miss the “from a pacifict point of view” comment. I guess you also missed those other occasions when i made very clear that i was arguing a hypothetical position.

80

Condemnation isn’t the same to me as deciding what someone deserves. That is up to society to decide what someone deserves. If a murderer deserves death or imprisonment it would be wrong for me to decide that, it isn’t my place, it is the place of society collectively.

Such apportionment of blame is what I call a coward’s “easy way out.” It is an attempt to shirk the responsibility which collectively is everyone’s.

There is a difference between policies in a society and the structure of a society.

You can oppose individual policies, but if part of the structural nature of your society is having a military, then unless you wish to destroy the structure itself and remake society you are tacitlyssupporting said structure by not opposing it. The reason societies are extremely resilient is because most people do not want to hit at the structure itself, even the worst of the extremists.

Policies aren’t what I was talking about. You don’t seem capable of hitting at the deeper levels of this discussion so I suggest you withdraw yourself from it ASAP.

Name one war of aggression in the 20th century and I’ll recant my statement.

If we’re talking about absolute moral positions, like the opposition to aggressive war, then I wouldn’t think you’d like to take the “odds” that more than likely you wouldn’t have to be involved in an aggressive war.

The second we introduce the idea that opposition to the existence of the military is a reasonable standpoint I thought we had vacated the world of common sense completely. If you want to enter common sense in the equation you need to find a way to remove all of LHoD and your posts from this thread.