If we replace the California Assembly with the national Congress, and police shootings with war, I think you would have to switch “support the law” with “oppose the law” since the law purports to raise the standard. Then it could be relevant to the thread.
My personal opinion (notwithstanding my opposition to the public shaming in general) is that legislators are exempt, but not their children. Otherwise we would be left with the awkward situation where a non-veteran legislator represents a population with hawkish veterans, but when he tries to voice the opinion of his constituency he is derided as a “gutless coward” by the rest of the country.
iiandyiiii, would you make this exception for legislators?
I don’t know, it would depend on the circumstances. Right now I’m happy calling many of those in Congress gutless cowards – those that advocate for war with Iran, NK, or Venezuela (or elsewhere) and chose not to serve during wars they supported in the past and were of the right age/health/non-Congressional-status to contribute. But it depends on the individual circumstances, I suppose.
So your position is that some military actions are okay, but if someone disagrees with you, they should attempt to shame you by calling you cowardly and disgusting. And if enough people call you cowardly and disgusting, you’ll change your position. Not because your convictions have been changed through reasoning, but because you’ve been stifled by enough people calling you cowardly and disgusting. Meanwhile you’ll be calling the people who support military actions you disagree with cowardly and disgusting, hoping to stifle them from declaring their support. And all these people calling other people names and trying to shut them up are supporting free speech. Also, while everyone is going around calling the people who support a military action that they disagree with cowardly and disgusting, if the people they disagree with are in the military or are willing to join the military, they’re only disgusting, not cowardly and disgusting. Got it.
I realise you’re certainly going to disagree with my characterisation of your position, but that’s how it comes across. It’s immature, dysfunctional, and akin to mob rule. In a democracy, people should be able to have different viewpoints, express and discuss those viewpoints, and then have a consensus of the people or the government decide what action to take based on the viewpoints with the most support. I think the idea of achieving your political goals via name-calling and intimidation through attempted mass humiliation of those you disagree with is undemocratic. Frankly, it sounds like something Donald Trump would come up with.
Thank you for your contribution. Yes, this is an inaccurate characterization of what I’m pushing for.
But even if it were accurate, what you describe sounds much, much less awful (and less damaging to the country) than a continuing endless stream of stupid, unnecessary wars that get thousands upon thousands killed for nothing.
War is different, like Scotsman I suppose. This seems simply a way to engage in unreasonable ad hominem rather than any kind of effective ends justify the means tool.
It’s like Starship Troopers never quite grasped the concept of comparative advantage.
So you don’t think war is fundamentally different than the other endeavors mentioned?
I supported the Iraq war as a young Navy Ensign in 2003. Foolishly – extremely foolishly. And that’s largely where I learned the lesson (not in Iraq – I did spend some time in the Middle East, but never in Iraq, and never in combat) that wars of choice are almost certain to be utterly catastrophic, especially when the goal, end-state, and/or exit strategy are poorly defined from the start. I’m not sure if it’s possible to overstate the incredible harm that long war did to the US military and the country in general, and of course there have been pages of pages of how wrong it was on this board.
It appears to me that some Dopers didn’t seem to learn this lesson, and aren’t utterly horrified by the possibility of a war of choice with Iran, North Korea, or Venezuela. Many (maybe most?) of you seem to be, but some of you do not. A few of you even seem more horrified by my suggestion of a rhetorical strategy that’s meant to help avoid stupid wars than by the possibility that we may get into another one of these stupid wars.
But I appreciate all the discussion that my suggestion has sparked. Thanks to everyone who has taken part in this thread!
War is different, like all things are different from each other. The problem is you haven’t demonstrated why any differences are meaningful. Just announcing that one thing is different than another isn’t particularly informative. I think you would be on stronger ground, yet still fundamentally flawed, if we didn’t have an all volunteer military.
Plus, you’ve been cagey on what you mean by contribute. Overall I think the idea is of poor quality.
I consider people who blithely cheer on the idea of carnage and tragedy in those countries, especially when so little is to be gained by such wars, to be reprehensible in their own rights. Further, I worry that if such people did volunteer for military service, they are more likely tend to be the sort of people that I do not wish to carry arms on behalf of this country.
That’s because those who see a war of choice as being a reasonable thing to advocate for probably tend to dehumanize the enemy in ways that go beyond the simple psychological necessity to do so in order to make killing a reasonable thing to do. I’d say they are more likely to dehumanize the enemy because they really do believe that they are humans who are not worthy of life. We had a thread going the other day about accused war criminals who fall into that sickening pit of racism and hate.
I suppose my main issue is that for these people we are talking about, goading them into joining the military is probably not a good thing for any party involved. I also have a problem with societal shaming, but I don’t think I can explain my concerns here very well. But that does not mean that I think casual warmongers should be given any respect; I just don’t think they are worthy of respect whether or not they risk their own lives.
I think you have posted an interesting question and I continue to think about it.
You don’t think voluntarily choosing to kill humans en masse and purposefully destroy infrastructure other humans rely on is meaningfully different than gathering resources or providing health care? I’m not sure how exactly to explain that to you, but it seems about as obvious as such complicated things can be to me.
I think this sounds like the very common attitude that because we have an all-volunteer military, it’s not that big of a deal to order them to kill and put themselves at risk. After all, they signed up for it – and it’s a powerful tool in our foreign policy arsenal.
I think that’s a fundamentally flawed, and extremely harmful, attitude, and is responsible for most of the non-climate related human suffering of the last several decades.
There’s not a single way to contribute, and I’d take it on a case by case basis. But the overall thrust of my argument is to use social shaming as a tool to help avoid stupid wars.
Do you think stupid wars are a colossal problem, or not that big of a problem? If you think they’re catastrophically damaging to humanity and to America, then at least we’re on the same page in the importance of preventing these stupid wars. If you don’t think they’re that big of a problem, then our world view is probably so far apart that there’s no chance of understanding between us on this.
Thank you for this thoughtful post. I understand that social shaming has been used for a lot of awful things, and with that in mind I’d be very hesitant to use it as a tool for preventing anything that wasn’t likely to cause severe, catastrophic harm to the country (and the world!), and that didn’t look reasonably likely to occur. But stupid wars, especially with this president, meet that bar, IMO.
OK, what is different about being shot by enemies in war vs. being shot by criminals in peace? Probably the risk is greater in war - what is the threshold at which the principle kicks in? If only one police officer dies as a result of the CA Assembly’s action, does that excuse them for not putting themselves at risk? How about ten? A hundred? What’s the cut off, and why is it morally relevant?
So far it seems to be mostly special pleading, where putting soldiers at risk is bad but putting police at risk is something you don’t feel to be subject to the same principle.
Based on his posts elsewhere, to which I believe it would not legitimate to link, that is a good part of the idea behind this thread.
I believe the military is a profession, and it should be filled by people who want to have that profession as a job, and feel they can succeed within that profession. It’s a profession filled with severe risks, and nobody should discount those risks or the lives of the people who join the military. However, the military has a purpose. It’s a tool of national policy that enables a nation to prevent other nations from causing harm through the use of force. Some military actions I’ll agree with, some I won’t. If I advocate support for a military action, and don’t consider the fact that it could go wrong, or that lives of military personnel will be lost, then I am most certainly in the wrong and deserve condemnation. However, someone making that consideration, and deciding that achievement of the policy is worth the risk has the right to their opinion. Off the top of my head, I can think of several past military actions I agree with. If I took the time to research it, I’m sure I could find dozens.
I disagree with the US invading Iran in a repeat of Gulf War 2. I think that would be horribly costly and have no realistic prospects of achieving anything other than a lot of dead bodies. However, I’m in favour of the US and allied navies defending the Strait of Hormuz. That may mean responding to Iranian aggression, and it may involve military deaths for both Iran and the US. But I disagree with ceding control of international waters to Iran, and the accompanying harm to US allies, on the basis that Iran is willing to act as an aggressor.
I’m sure there are people in their 20’s in the US who agree with my opinions, but have chosen other careers besides the military. I don’t believe anyone should be able to tell them that they’re not entitled to those opinions because they’ve chosen a different career they wish to stay in. And I certainly disagree with trying to shame somebody who doesn’t have the desire or aptitude to be in the military into shutting up because they’re not joining up.
The cutoff is “war” (which includes the little wars that usually aren’t called wars, but rather “military action” or “operation” or something like that) vs “not war”. Not a risk, or a body count, but whether we’re talking about war or something else. War really is different, for a myriad of reasons already explained in this thread.
If you don’t believe war is different, then fine, but that means our world views are so incredibly far apart that there’s no possibility of understanding.
That doesn’t answer my question. Here it is again: Do you think it’s cowardly, or not cowardly, to advocate for a war that one is capable of but unwilling to participate in?
I simply do not believe that conflicts and war are the same thing. What I wish for is that when war becomes a thing to do, we actually go to WAR. To WIN the war, not in some humane way but to see your enemies crushed before you and to hear the lamentations of their women .
We don’t war like we used to war. Probably since the lukewarm support of Vietnam.
If you don’t believe they’re different, then our understanding of the world is so far apart that there’s no hope of any understanding on this particular issue.
Thankfully, most folks in this thread agree with me that war is different, and many reasons have been provided as to why. You are free to disagree.
Even though this wasn’t directed at me, I think this is the crux of the disconnect. I don’t believe, personally, that a judgement of whether someone is ‘cowardly’ can be arrived at except by making all sorts of assumptions and having an obvious heavy bias one way or the other based on this level of information. I get that YOU think you can make such a sweeping judgement about someone based solely on this, but, again, I disagree. One does not have to participate in war to be able to advocate for their country to go to war, IMHO, and it’s silly to try and make a value judgement such as yours based on that. It’s basically the equivalent of others saying that someone opposed to war is obviously cowardly because of their stance, and because they aren’t willing to risk themselves. Both are equally stupid and pointless attempts to label the other side with something harmful for no other sake than to tack on a label.
A label of ‘coward’ is, itself, fairly meaningless except to do harm and lash out. People aren’t uniformly heroic OR cowardly in all things, being afraid of or not afraid of myriad things that shift and change due to circumstances. I don’t think that people who want gun control because they are afraid of guns as cowards or cowardly, and I’d be saying the same things with the same level of heat if someone tried to do what you are doing and paint with such a broad brush and for no other reason than you want a license, even if just for your own self justification, to tack such a label on someone. I get that you don’t see it this way, just like you don’t see the natural progression of where such a thing is actually headed…you think that this will limit the discussion (in your own mind I suppose) on who can or can’t advocate for military action, and allow you to dismiss anyone who doesn’t meet your arbitrary criteria as a coward. My WAG is that you only want to see this in the narrowest terms because you are aware that if YOU do this, then others will do the same on other subjects. Those don’t count because you’ve set arbitrary limits because war is different, but it’s all a continuum of human action.