Not necessarily. It just means that the standing army must be made up of bad people.
In my view, a person who gives the decision of who or whether to kill to others (eg a fallible government or a gang leader) in times other than when it is unambiguously for group defence (eg your country is being invaded) is a bad person.
I don’t follow.
I’m having difficulty with this as well. Are you saying that the one who gives the orders is a bad person, or the one who lets another give him orders is a bad person?
:rolleyes: Surely you know the arguments by now. Surely you’ve heard of WMDs. You know the ones that weren’t there but the CIA and the world intelligence community believed to be. Surely you know that a vast, stateless Islamic terrorist organization killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11. Now, you might be of thae mind that Saddam would never give/sell/trade any of those WMDs to any members of a terrorist organization because, well, that would just be the wrong thing to do. Or that the terrorists didn’t wish us any further harm. If so, I won’t be voting for you to hold an office in which you would be expected to protect this country.
No. I’m arguing that each and every human being bears some personal moral responsibility for making decisions that affect other human beings. We all occasionally take actions that have the potential to do harm to others. I try to be very sure of my reasons for taking those actions. It’s a pretty reasonable standard, and I don’t see anything wrong with holding other people to it in my own personal judgements.
Really, can anybody give me a good reason to sign up for Iraq?
As has been noted, no one signs up for Iraq.
Once in the armed services, you agree to let others make decisions for you. Without such agreement, a standing army would be impossible. No one is required to obey an unlawful order.
Your personal standard have nothing to do with what is required of a soldier.
:rolleyes: yourself.
The fact that you couldn’t smell the bullshit doesn’t mean it didn’t stink.
You still didn’t answer my question.
I can type slower if it’d help your reading comprehension.
Actually, you can certainly try to sign up for duty in Iraq.
You’re wrong. I know at least one person who has.
Perhaps. I submit that number who do so is statistically insignificant. AFAIK, promises as to deployment are extremely rare.
Do you have any idea how many do so. Are these the only ones you have an issue with?
The one who lets another give orders. It would take a great deal of confidence in a person or institution to convince me to delegate to them my decision to try to kill somebody.
Then you would never enlist in an army. Unless you are arguing that we should not have a standing army, then you must concede that orders must be obeyed for it to function.
And if you stopped there I’d be agreeing with you.
Caught you before your edit.
This one’s for dahfisheroo too (deliberate thickness is rather unbecoming):
Anybody who enlisted after Bush started beating the drum in mid/late 2002 had to know that there was at least the possibility that the US military would be going to Iraq.
If I, a person of average intelligence, could see that Bush was bound and determined to go, that his reasoning was based on lies, ignorance, and stupidity, and that he was going to do it without the support of the world at large or any plan for winning the peace, then so could every other person of average intelligence, if they were paying attention.
I (mostly) knew the difference between a Sunni and a Shia. I knew that the Baathists and the Wahabis hate each other’s guts. I knew that the UN inspectors were finding zero evidence of Bush’s WMD claims. I knew that Iraq was an agglomeration of mutually hostile ethnic groups shoved together by a clueless colonial power.
A lot of people knew those things - there’s ample evidence of it on this board. It’s not like any of it was a secret.
To sign up for the military knowing that it’s entirely likely that you’d have to wade in to that shitstorm is, at best, nothing to be proud of. And if you didn’t realize that you’d probably have to go… well… what the fuck were you thinking? Read a newspaper, dumbass.
Just so I can be clear, are you saying that as far as you are concerned, signing up for the military equals signing up to serve in Iraq?
Not that you asked me, but yes…I think that the chances of going to Iraq are much higher than a soldier’s chances of deploying elsewhere in the world. I think I would ASSUME I would be deployed to Iraq. The reason I think this is because of how many return trips the guys are making. That’s where we need the bodies.
I don’t know. First, I would have to know what per cent of enlistees are combat troops or combat support.
Still, we are talking, on the one hand, of some unknown chance, and on the other hand, of a certainty. Until someone comes along and clarifies it, I will assume that one does not equal the other, which was my question.
Not “equals,” precisely, but pretty much. Especially if you’re a grunt.
Hell, artillery guys are going on patrol. They were even training airmen and sailors for infantry duties, at least for awhile.
As far as I’m aware, there’s nobody in the Coast Guard over there, so there’s always that option.
At the moment it pretty much means that if you just sign up for the National Guard so it seems a pretty fair assumption that you are likely to find yourself there at some point. Speaking mainly of the army.
To satisfy my curiosity, does everyone who enlists join an active duty combat brigade?