reply to post by jerico65
Way to dodge my point with the whole "your not a soldier" thus you don't know what your talking about trick.
As I recall neither are you? So where's your high ground?
You've given nothing to refute me apart from some lame military slang and insults.
Well bravo, Mission Accomplished Private Stooge!
When you wanna come back and talk like an adult let me know...
reply to post by RabbitChaser
There's your option out.
Right so every soldier who disagrees morally with what their ordered to do is going to forfeit all their hard-earned dough and entitlements and
livelihood essentially and face possible jail time; and just choose to say to "no" to their CO's?
Come off it,
put yourself in their shoes. Most of the men over in Iraq didn't even have jobs prior to deployment, it doesn't work that way.
They may well realise what their doing is wrong, but they don't have the motivation or freedom to stand up to it.
Of course every self-appointed PC watchdog on these forums comes up and says
"I wouldn't do that! I would say No!", yeah from our
perspective that seems real easy and likely.
6,000 miles away in a foreign country with no rights and your life on the line, it becomes a whole lot harder to put things in the right
perspective.
Like the SS Regiments in WW2, their commanders would have a put a bullet in their head if they didn't follow orders to the minute, and while it is
selfish and disrespectful, whose life are they going to value more, theirs or the Jews they're being ordered to kill?
Just think it through for a second.
You keep talking about blind faith.
THAT IS A NECESSARY PART OF THE MILITARY. That's what enables victories on the battlefield. That is what
the military is founded upon.
Discipline.
Would Hannibal have been such a renowned tactician if every man under his command kept questioning why he told them to burn this Roman village or burn
that one, or execute these prisoners?
The grunt is never given a choice essentially because if he was, every man and woman in the armed forces would want one and then it would cease to be
an "armed force" so to speak, but rather a bunch of individuals who want everyone to cater to their beliefs.
That's not what the army's about. It's about oneness, working together and cohesion.
I never said I agree with the how the Chain of Command works and how soldiers rights are trampled upon, but sadly is is the truth.
It's necessary for armies to be this way.
Sadly, with all your blind-faith actions, you've all most likely created REAL terror threats against the U.S.
Did I ever say I support the war, I support the Bush Admin, the erosion of civil liberties?
I'm pretty sure you've seen my posts before so I don't know where or why your pulling this from but seriously, you've gotten the wrong impression
mate.
It scares me greatly to think you all are so brainwashed that it seems, as you describe it, that you wouldn't question killing your own
people, if that is what you were ordered to do. VERY SCARY.
Again...
get to know a bit about people before playing the assumptions wild card.
I wouldn't kill a civilian if God told me to, let alone some bozo with stripes on his shoulders would you?
I "support the troops" -- I don't support morons who lost the ability to think for themselves. These soldiers coming forward are thinking for
themselves.
Me too, I have no respect for a man who willingly signs up to serve a corrupt government with the knowledge that he is going to be used as a vehicle
for them to further their own interests.
But you have to understand we're their coming from.
Like I said above, these men may committing reprehensible acts and
KNOWING their doing this, BUT...
why are they blindly oblivious to
it?
That is the question you have to ask.
Imagine your an ordinary private in the army, you have no job back home, you barely made it through high school, you got no credentials, you signed
because otherwise you'd be fighting for scraps on the street and your pregnant girlfriend wouldn't have a place to stay.
Your on deployment in Iraq, your sweeping a neighbourhood or a village or whatever, looking for insurgents.
Some guy starts firing at your Platoon from a second story window. You look at the house, you see women and kids holed up inside, your CO tells you to
put a few grenades in their until that threat is gone, otherwise your squad is pinned down and liable to die.
Now... here's the decisive part. You know if you chuck a grenade in there, there's a good chance
you could be killing innocent civilians.
You know this is wrong, even though you may be uneducated, your certainly not without a conscience.
But, on the other hand, you know if you refuse to; your buddies who you've served with for all these years could die. You could jeopardise the whole
mission.
You could be charged with dereliction of duty, refusal to obey orders, maybe desertion. You could be court-martialled, imprisoned, get a permanent
record and essentially ruin any chance you have to lead a normal life once you return home.
Your kid would go to foster care, you'd never see him, your girl leave you, etc...
You think to yourself... "What means more to me?". My life, the lives of my friends, the well-being of my family and my own future well-being, or
the well-being and lives of a ordinary, innocent Iraqi family?
Yes it's SELFISH, and it's insensitive and brutal, but hey your in a
WAR ZONE, and a man is trying to kill you.
What do you do?
Are you trying to tell me you would seriously hold somebody else's life higher than yours if yours was in grave danger?
Not blood likely...
Self-preservation comes before all else, let's just face it.
Even though that soldier knows he's gonna kill people who don't deserve to be killed, he kills them anyway, because in reality he doesn't have a
choice or reason to do otherwise, his life would suffer greatly from refusing to do that and while he maybe applauded for his courage and moral
standard, he would have little of a life to lead in the future.
There's really no choice left to many of them. In then end it boils down to kill or be killed (maybe not literally but close enough to it)
[edit on 24/5/08 by The Godfather of Conspira]