But I do remember the Reagan speech you cited; most people didn’t give a second thought to the Grenada mention because that was the same speech where he first trotted out the Strategic Defense Initiative. But before mentioning Grenada, he discusses at some length how Cuba was crawling with Soviets. Cuba is vastly closer to the USA than Grenada, but Reagan never did jack squat about Castro. Why were thousands of Soviets 90 miles from our coasts not a threat, but a few hundred Cuban lackeys 1000 miles away were? www.townhall.com/hall_of_fame/reagan/speech/sdi.html
And so long as we’re talking about dodging the draft with dubious medical excuses, and how everyone who did so are supposedly such rotten ingrates: www.snopes.com/military/limbaugh.htm
Oh I’m hip to all that stuff, believe me. Note in my OP how I include WW2 among the conflicts where I concur that our freedoms were threatened.
---------Scylla says, “Lest you forget, we were fighting alongside Vietnamese soldiers who were fighting for a Democratic State. Not only did our Vietnamese allies want us there, they were depending on us to help them secure their freedom, against the Communists.”
Uh no, that’s not my understanding. Diem was not a democrat. His American-backed replacement General Nguyen Khanh was not a democrat. Thieu was not a democrat (“In 1965, when the first American troops went into action in support of the South, Mr Thieu was the head of the military government. Two years later he became president in a fixed election.”)
Actually, there are more than 3 options. You can go about your life and see what happens. Here’s a thought experiment. Say the US Govt desperately needs a near-sighted underwater statistician with poor situational awareness for a hush-hush operation in Iraq. Flowbark is just the man for the job. But flowbark has dyshydrotic eczema. In remission. What does he do?
He (frickin) tells the USGov of his medical condition and let’s them do what they want. Draft me or don’t draft me. (Details: When my eczema is bad, my hands cause cashiers to turn they eyes away from my hands; they grimace and I itch and ooze. At other times, it is a complete nonissue.)
Frankly, I think I could serve with my eczema. But I also don’t think that it’s my call to make.
There are variants of this approach. You can go to college. You can go to grad school. It’s not like you’re wasting your time and its not like you wouldn’t do it anyway. If Big Gov offers deferments, I don’t see why you shouldn’t take advantage of them. Especially for such dubious enterprises as fighting in Vietnam.
I suppose the tax analogy is appropriate. There is something called “tax evasion” which is immoral and something called “tax planning” which is acceptable, expected and even encouraged by Congressional statute.
:smack: Try again flowbark.
Frankly, I think I could serve with my eczema. But I also don’t think that it’s not my call to make. [The army knows or should know what it’s manpower requirements are. Better than I.]
If you’re suggesting that the invasion of Grenada was in response to the bombing on October 23 then you’re giving Reagan a lot more credit than he probably deserves, seeing as how the orders for the invasion were issued on October 22:
It is unfortunate that you are probably correct, most people didn’t pay any attention. But my point still stands; President Reagan was paying attention, he was concerned about Grenada and it’s airport and he expressed these concerns, on national television no less, before any bombings in Beirut.
I don’t believe Reagan ever said that that the Cubans were not a threat. But you may recall the Cuban Missile Crisis?
At the end of which the Soviets agreed to remove their missiles and bombers and the US gave assurances that we would not invade Cuba. Are you suggesting that Reagan should have violated that agreement?
Referring to the original topic of the thread, the thing that gets me is that the very people who swell up and say, “I fought for your freedoms!” are almost always the ones who are pissed off at you for exercising those freedoms. I should think they’d be proud to hear radical speech challenging the Congress, the Supreme Court and the President, because it means the freedoms they fought for are still around. But this is almost never the case – the ones who brag about their defense of liberty are almost always complaining because someone is exercising those liberties.
The only freedom the soldier has fought for is the freedom of the capitalist to rob and exploit. Try read “War is a Racket” by Smedley Butler (or is it Butler Smedley…or worse yet Bedley Smutler?–it’s getting late…)
I made the same observation as Evil Captor did above, in another discussion board in a galaxy far far away:
“I thought soldiers took an oath to defend the constitution. So how come they get so bent whenever someone actually exercises their constitutional rights? I guess we have to destroy the constitution in order to save it, eh?”
Look, if you point a gun at me, and I duck, and you shoot the person who was standing behind me instead, it’s silly to place the blame on me because I ducked. Had you not been shooting that gun around, nobody would be dead.
It’s the draft board, the military, that’s to blame for the draftee who dies, not the person who recognizes that they’ve got no obligation to kill or be killed in an unjust war.
Just because a government says something should be done doesn’t mean it should be done. Libraries are a good thing, I believe, and so I’ll support them. Unjust wars are a bad thing, I believe, and so I won’t support them.
As for an obligation to conscientious objectors: I think you’ll find that most COs would much rather people dodge the draft than fight the war. Indeed, most antiwar folks I’ve heard speak, give instructions for avoiding conscription along with instructions for actively protesting an unjust war. I’ve never heard an pacifist activist condemn people who find a way out of an unjust war. I’m not saying that such pacifists don’t exist – just that they’re a tiny minority, and the vast majority of pacifists (including ones who’ve done prison time) don’t see their cause undermined by draft dodgers. It’s nice and everything for a hawk to tell pacifists what helps and what doesn’t help their cause, but it’s not terribly relevant.
I don’t think the end justifies the means – on the contrary, I think the idea is meaningless. What is an end? What is a means? We are responsible for what we do, and telling a lie to a draft board is a tiny ethical lapse compared to fighting in an unjust war. If it’s an ethical lapse at all – just as it’s a priori unethical to beat the hell out of someone, but ethical to do it if they’re trying to kill you, it’s a priori unethical to lie to someone, but ethical to do so if they’re trying to force you into a much greater evil act (i.e., killing people unjustly). Neither one represents the ends justifying the means; both represent evaluating outcomes of your decisions and choosing the course of action that results in the least harm.
Absolutely!!! I just sent Evil Captor an email saying as much. I had not yet scrolled down to Mystic’s comment which is as succinct and incisive as Captor’s.
As I said in an earlier comment:
How utterly inane to believe that just because the “government of the day”'s policy is such and such, that the populace should blindy follow that policy and go to war (or whatever) like unthinking sheep.
Scylla would have made a good German back in the 1930’s and 40’s. According to his interpretation of the social contract between the people and their country…he would of “just followed orders”
Yeah, I think that a lot of people who rave about loving America and proudly serving it’s interests would’ve been Tories at the time of the Revolution…
While we’re on the subject of draft dodging during Vietnam, it’s worth pointing out that the President of the United States (Carter) issued an amnesty for all drafter dodgers in 1978, IIRC, which affects the responsibility to society angle somewhat. That plus the fact that the US government wasted no time in rescinding the draft after the cease-fire in 1973 comes very close to an admission of wrongdoing on the part of the government, IMO.
I forget: when Godwin’s Law is invoked in a debate, is it the entire side that invoked Godwin’s Law that loses by default, or just the poster that invokes it who loses?
FTR, while Scylla may or may not have made a good German back in the 1930s and '40s, he certainly makes a typical nationalistic American today, and would have made a perfectly fine American back in the 1930s and '40s as well.
I think his ethical priorities (it’s better to kill an innocent person because your government tells you to than to use dishonesty to duck out of such a killing) are absurd. But it’s unfair to pretend like that makes him a Nazi.
I kind of characterized the Nazi comment as being beneath contempt as well. It’s so vile that it does not merit response.
I also object to being typified as a nationalistic American. You don’t know me. I am speaking of ethics which should apply universally regardless of Nationality.
Show me the courtesy of asking me rather than telling me what I am.
Your mischaracterization of my argument is an outright lie. I have not said or implied any such thing.
Do not make things up and pretend that they are my arguments.
Yes, Scylla, you’re helping my understanding of the term admirably. But you also said that this was conjecture, that you’d never talked with him about it. Why don’tcha?
I wonder if maybe he’s wiser than you’re giving him credit for.