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One of the first lessons I learned in boot camp was very simple:

The primary mission of a military is deterrence. Once the first shot is fired, the military has failed in its primary mission.

Ultimately I disagree with your premise that the military only exists to use force. A country with a strong military is rarely attacked for a reason. While I agree with your "wouldn't it be nice" sentiment -- I also believe such sentiment is unrealistic in the world today. World peace is a great dream, but unfortunately it's only a dream.

Splunge: I agree, the Iraq war was started because of pride. It was Bush's personal vendetta. The reason for the start of the war was unjust in my opinion. The reason to stay is just -- fix what we broke and ensure the Iraqi people can face the challenges of a new country. We may not be doing this second part entirely right (and Bush is remaining a big obstacle in doing the right thing), but it needs to be done.

 

Joacqin, thank you for explaining your point more clearly. In one sense, I have come to agree with your reasoning completely, but in another, much deeper and more important sense, I have come to disagree with you all the more strongly.

You seem to start with the perception that there is no good or evil, or at least that such things are purely matters of perspective. From that position, I can follow your logic easily and see no fault after that starting assumption. That starting assumption, however, is one of the most fundamental points in human life. With only a few minor assuptions on top of that, we can plainly see that there is no point to life at all, that mass murderers like Hitler and Hussein are no different in reality than Ghandi, except that they may have more children. There is no reason not to end all life on earth at any point.

If, on the other hand, you accept a fairly common and readily agreed upon definition of good and evil, one that I think most people here and throughout the world would agree to, that to love your neighbor as you love yourself, and to treat them so, is good, while such commonly accepted crimes/sins as murder (killing without due cause), rape, theft, and assault (again without due cause) are evil, then one can plainly see that killing a mass murderer in order to save an innocent is very, very different than killing an innocent in order to attain more power for yourself. In this perspective, risking one's own life to protect others, even if it means killing those who are 'evil', is indeed one of the noblest of pursuits. There are potential paths of logic that would then demand the life of the soldier, but that would only make him more noble still, in that he willingly became 'corrupt' in order to keep that 'corruption' from others. I don't agree with this final leap, but it is understandable.

 

I do not think you are narrow enough, how do they defend? By killing those that threathen, is that not killing? You still do not see my point, first how do you know who is trying to tear down the wall and who is defending it? Who decides what cause is just and which is not? If I had this discussion with an Iraqi insurgent he would be saying the same things you do, would he be correct? Should we honour the young men who sacrifice themselves in Iraq to defend themselves from their foreign occupiers, despite being outnumbered, outgunned, outeverything, who are fighting overwhelming force? You are blinded by your partisanship so to say, what is your opinion of the Russians and Georgians who killed each other this summer? Who was on the wall and who was trying to knock it down? Whose cause was just and whose wasn't? All I saw was a bunch of loonies killing each other but apparently I am missing something. I see no difference between those people no matter their uniform, their cause or their nationality if they didn't reason like they do, if people did not support and honor them they would not be needed. I am going in circles here, I of course am of hte opinion that I have stumbled upon a profound truth and the rest of you are too stupid or blind to see it but seeing as I am quite alone, have yet to find anyone to agree with me or even actually understand what I am trying to get acoss so maybe I am the nutter. I just don't understand how people can't see that their way of tihnking is completely circular, I need to be willing to kill to defend myself and my interest because that guy is willing to kill to defend himself and his interests.

Woa, lots of replies while I was replying to DR. I am off for some beer and LKD, do not get the me started on the viscious leaders. I am just going to say this, how far do you think Hitler would have gone if he didn't have people willing to believe his cause was just and worthy to fight for? Hussein? Not all of them could be murderous lunatics, I am sure most of the Wehrmacht were quite honorable soldiers who fought for their country in what they perceived as a just cause probably not any different from the kid in the video or our T2, did that make their cause right?

 

Joacqin, you now show a gross folly. Just because not everyone can agree on a single system of measurement does not mean you should throw out the entire idea of measurement. On top of that, not all killing is equal. A man that just walks down the street and starts shooting people just for fun is vastly different from the cop that then takes cover and returns fire, killing the man. Both have killed, yes, but one did so for personal entertainment while the other did so for self-defense and the defense of others.

Let me put it to you this way: from your apparent ethical standpoint, what is wrong with killing in the first place? Why do you object to it?

 

Guy thinks he's in the right, and Obama in the wrong.
Guy agrees with McCain about what matters to him the most.
Guy says he'll vote for McCain.

The basics are obvious enough. Ok, his vote, his choice. I disagree with it, and I've said some of the reasons why often enough.

Now I think I can understand a bit of what riled joacqin in the first place. Maybe I'm wrong, and I would just be projecting my thoughts instead, but it's my opinion anyway.

The guy is a soldier, which presumes he's a man of honor, courage and principles; I don't know how true it is of him in particular - every group has its paragons and its bad apples. The point is, just because he's a soldier doesn't mean he is necessarily right about any of those things he is saying. And I have noticed that people from the US, here and elsewhere, tend to be a bit hesitant to dispute something that comes from a man or woman in army uniform, which is most likely due to respect for the military as an institution and for what soldiers are made to do. Yet if something is wrong, it is wrong whether coming from a soldier or a beggar, a general or a convict, a priest or a rapist. In this particular case, his experience has given him much insight - but he may still be wrong, and the same experience may cloud his judgement. When you have risked your life fighting for a cause, when your friends have lost their health or life for it, when you have sacrificed so much - how could you like being told it all didn't really matter, or actually made things worse? That you were being misled and all you, all those sacrifices, has no value? Even if this were to be the true, it would be very hard to accept. I can accept how some people speak of "honoring the troops" - but still, truth is more important than honor.

I personally do think the army seems to be put on something of a pedestal in the US, which is imo somewhat wrong. Not that it should not be a respected occupation - it should be. But I disagree that a soldier should inherently be awarded higher status than other people, or his opinions (on issues not related to his profession) held to inherently be of higher value than theirs.

 

joacqin: You are wrong. First, you compare a soldier to a terrorist. A Soldier targets enemy soldiers. Terrorists target innocent civilians. Huge difference there. Also, it is not that they kill that makes them a hero, but that they put their ass on the line, walking into some God forsaken hell hole where even the local civilians are hostile towards them and risk getting killed in their efforts to do as their nation asks of them.

Canada still has troops in Afghanistan. A soldier that kills an enemy combatant is not a hero. What makes them a hero is that they are the ones being shot at instead of a fat slob like me.

Further, you seem to forget that some conflicting ideologies cannot be resolved, and in extreme cases, such violence will, inevitably, be forced on those of the other side. That's what 9/11 was about. And from some links Ragusa sent me a while back, it sounds like these differences CANNOT be peacefully resolved without the US reverting to a strict isolationist policy. So the war on Iraq was not entered for the right reasons and was poorly executed. Toppling Saddam was still a good thing fo the people of Iraq...

I truly resent the grave insult that you have slapped our soldiers with--even the ones who gave their lives in defence of their country.

 

Joacqin, as has been stated by others here, your ideal world of everyone getting along would be wonderful HOWEVER it goes against base human nature.
There will always be those who for one reason or another find it easier to use force to get what they want, be it a tangible item like money or an intangible object like power or enforcing a religious belief on others.

Now, as far as to why you dislike the military so much, you have completely thrown out(as others have pointed out) there being good & evil reasons for doing things.
Flying a plane full of innocent civilians into a building is enherently evil(or wrong if you don't like the use of the term evil)
Shooting(& killing) someone that is trying to kill innocents is good(or right if you don't like the term good)

You, personally, seem to have some type of hatred for the military as you can't ascribe any but evil reasons to anything they do or the people that do them.
As T2Bruno pointed out, the primary mission of the military is deterrence.
75% of the military would be happy if they never had to fire a shot during their entire military service.
I say 75% because there is a solid chunk of the military that feel it is their duty to put their lives on the line at the sharp end of the spear in defending their country & it's way of life. these are typicaly the ones that join the special forces, fighter pilots or the marines(not trying to say the marines are any better than the other branches just that they are going to be the first used in any major assault).

You seem to ascribe stupidity, or lack of willpower, or brainwashing to anyone willing to believe that their country is something worth fighting to protect.
I don't think you are a nutter for this but i don't in anyway admit to being able to understand it.

You see,my family tree is made up of mainly immigrant families that have always seen serving in the military to protect & defend the country as the highest calling one can have(in fact we(mine & the next generation) see it as an obligation, to repay the country that allowed our families to live in peace & to prosper).
I'm not just talking in the distant past but as recently as 1939 when my fathers parents immigrated here from poland. If they had stayed, it is probable that they would have been killed. So being able to repay the country that allowed our family line to continue is a small price to pay.

You are entitled to believe anything you want but i don't think many will agree with you on this.

 

Hmm, the last few posts are not bringing up anything not already adressed. T2 as for deterrance is there much difference between "I kill you!" or "Do as I say or I kill you!"? You guys take it up too much, you say that the purpose of the military is not to kill and then you bring up other stuff it does thats like saying the purpose of a hospital is to do laundry and change bedclothes as that is the biggest single work in the place. I do not know if I should continue though we are obviously not going anywhere and most of my points are not being adressed (yet) we are stuck rehashing our positions. Going on for a while longer though.

As for my ethical view of killing is that I find it wrong, like most of you do. As for the policeman shooting a dangerous criminal has nothing to do with the current discussion on so many levels. First it is an emergency situation, second he is appointed by the society he lives in to keep hte peace and well, that is about it, any person is allowed to defend themselves and we as societies appoint people to keep the peace. We do not have a world police that is universally agreed and supported upon, they have tried to implement something like it but it does not world, the relation between nations is more akin to a kindergarten than a democratic society.

Again you bring up defensive, I have adressed this many times in the past and again you are firstly way too stuck with nationality and the fact that Americans are the good guys period and not equal to other people. However, when has the US (or Canada for that matter) fought a defensive war? When has it repelled a foreign invader since the canucks burnt Washington way back when? WW1? WW2? Guess the Japanese attack was an attack on the US but after that the US wen't purely on the offense and in Europe the main objective was more to keep Europe out of the hands of the Soviets than to beat the Nazis and that was nice of you but the US took an active part on that stage so late that all they did was mop up some leftovers and stop the Soviets from going further west. Was Korea a defensive war? Did the US defend the motherland there? That was actually almost a legitimate police action though so some kudos there even if half the world boycotted the UN at the time. Vietnam? Come on, you can't with a straight face say that US soldiers are used only for defence. They are used to enforce American policies all around the world and whether you agree with them or not they aren't exactly repelling invaders at the gates to Washington.

Oh, Gnarff, your distinction between terrorist and soldier is horrendously naive. The difference I see it is one of resources, a man fighting for a cause with a big economy and lots of resources is a soldier and a man fighting for a cause with nothing is called a terrorist. You do not think "soldiers" kill civilians and not only unintentionally. They do what they are told and they do what they have to reach their objectives. Some of the Western militaries might take not killing civilians into consideration as it is not good PR to kill them but that is no dividing point between a soldier and a terrorist.

My final point is a repetition, all of your arguments could easily be made by arabs defending the struggle against the US or anyone else opposing the US. It is your argumentation who enables people you view as "evil" to gather enough force to committ their atrocities. It is people who think like you who marsched into Poland -39, who bombed Pearl Harbour and who flew planes into the WTC. They were protecting themselves in their own minds, they were fighting for the good cause and were willing to die and kill for it, just like so many of you.

 

No joacqin what we said was deterrence, which is different than defense.
Ok onto your points, you have an ethical objection to killing, fine. I(& i think a lot of others) have an ethical objection to murder, which is different than killing. Killing someone that is murdering an innocent is not an evil(or wrong) act. How can you not understand this?

You may wish to read some history books before declaring that the US came in at the last just to stop the Soviets. I wont even try to debate this ludicrous point.

Now you are showing your naivity, by again trying to assert the ridiculous notion that there is no difference between a soldier & a terrorist.
A soldier is a person that intentionally engages in military actions against legitimite military targets. In th US we have to follow the UCMJ which prohibits us from following illegal orders, such as killing civilians would be(not that it doesn't occasionally happen, just rarely)
A terrorist is a person that intentionally engages in military actions against CIVILIAN targets & engages in activities designed to terrorize civilian populations.
Big Huge Difference.

No, germany was invading another country in '39 just as they had done in '38 with Austria & Sudetenland. Then Czechoslovakia earlier in '39. These were clear violations of the sovereignty of these nations, who had reciprocal aid & defense agreements with other countries.

Japan now, i don't know just what the hell they were thinking. Lets go find the biggest meanest dog NOT in this fight & launch a suprise attack that had no chance of putting us out of the fight totally.
Too much sake maybe

As for the terrorists of 9/11, again we are talking about intentionally harming CIVILIANS not legitimate military targets, even the pentagon doesn't count as you are harming civilians by the act of hijacking the plane.

 

And of course, the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq by the US/UN was not a clear violation of the sovereignty of these countries? Doesn't this only support joacqin's notion that it's purely a matter of perspective if what the military is doing is right or wrong?

I don't fully agree on joacqin equating soldiers and terrorists, as the latter have a tendency to go for civilian targets. I mean, timing a bomb to go off on a market exactly in the period it's most crowded can only be viewed as a measure to increase the body count. At least soldier's are on the leash until some political figure decides the leash can come off. (I'm not saying they won't go and kill civilians, because that depends on the order of the political figure. And oftentimes civilians end up as collateral damage, even when the target is purely military or strategical.)

 

No henkie as the US made a common cause with the northern alliance, which is still recognised by the UN as the afghan government. So we were actually invited in by the government. Kinda hard to violate the sovereignty when you are asked to help.

As far as Iraq goes, we could go round & round as to whether hussien did or did not comply with the conditions put on him by the UN after his invasion of kuwait. So the issue is a very difficult one to determine.

 

Just wanted to clarify my point about there no being no difference between soldiers and terrorists. First, terrorists are not really a group, they are soldier who use the weapon of terror, attacking what they can attack with the means they have. Most often they are only able to attack civilians. The US organised the biggest terrorist attack in the history of the world when they nuked Japan, the goal was pure terror and the targets were civilians same with the firebombings in Germany and the luftwaffes attacks on London. All thosewere terrorist attacks launched with the intention of terrorizing and demoralize the opponent. Terror is a weapon used by pretty much all armed forces so either you call all armed forces terrorists or you call them soldiers, doesn't really matter much.

 

Joacqin, again you have some confusions. First, the vast majority of terrorists can target military instillations, remember, 9-11 also successfully hit the Pentagon, and it was only the passengers that stopped them from hitting the White House. Likewise, the vast majority of the attacks in Iraq aren't hitting police stations or the like (though many have), nor even the supporters of them, but rather crouded market places and the funeral processions and mosques of their ideological opponents. A lack of valid military targets has nothing to do with it.

I can easily see the nuking of Nagisaka as a terrorist strike, but Hiroshima was a legitimate military target surrounded by civilians (I think that was the order, the first was a military target, but in a valley, so it didn't really show the power of the bomb, while the second was civillian, but in an open plain). Firebombing in Germany (and I think in GB) was not terrorism so much as saturation bombing. Since there was no real precision bombing, saturation bombing was the best chance to make sure you got everything, and saturation fire-bombing (creating a powerful firestorm) got rid of pritty much everything, everything. This was used to take out factories, landing strips, munitions dumps, etc.

As for the use of military terror, you again forget that the target usually isn't civillians, but troops. It's the troops you want to demoralize, not the farmers.

 

Screw it, I am out. Deleted a lot of stuff, sick and tired of this barbaric tribalistic attitude gripping the world. We will just have to continue to kill each other. Enjoy your continued fights with your foreign counterparts.

 

I'm late to the party so I missed all the fireworks. Joacqin, I'm hoping you will stay around for one more question. I'm curious if the difference in your attitude towards soldiers may be based on the differences between the Swedish military and the U.S. military. If I remember correctly in Sweden everyone used to have to serve whereas in the US you have to enlist. One of the reasons we hold soldiers in such high regard is that they have volunteered to serve and protect us, they aren't being forced to do it.

Thoughts?

 

This military veteran agrees with you whole-heartedly. Well said.

NOG, the military bases were on the outskirts of the city. The bomb was dropped in the center of the city, miles from either the army or navy base. Given that the destructive capability of the bomb was not yet fully understood, it is unlikely that the air force would have targeted the center of town when the bases were the intended targets. Also, few historians have ever argued that the bombing of Hiroshima was intended as a strategic, tactical strike on a particular target.

Put simply, we did not have to drop the bomb. On either target.

 

Snook, I am going to chip in as the answer is simple. I do not think it matters as for all practical purposes the military service in Sweden has been voluntarily for the last 15 years or so. If anything I find it quite a lot less admirable to volunteer for soldiering than to be forced to it.

 

Drew is right, the bombings were not a tactical strike however they were a strategic strike. The horrendous bombings allowed the japanese emperor & the high command to surrender without the lose of face that would have resulted otherwise. If this had not happened there would have been millions of deaths as the US & its allies fought to take the japanese islands.
The nukings were a terrible thing yet were actual less costly in human life than an invasion would have been.

 

Not according to Dwight Eisenhower:

It wasn't the opinion of ADMIRAL LEAHY, chief of Staff to both Roosevelt and Truman, either:

Herbert Hoover didn't agree, either. On May 28, 1945, Hoover visited President Truman and suggested a way to end the Pacific war quickly:

In May of 1946 Hoover met with General Douglas MacArthur. Hoover recorded in his diary:

General MacArthur didn't agree, either. MacArthur biographer William Manchester has described MacArthur's reaction to the issuance by the Allies of the Potsdam Proclamation to Japan:

Paul Nitze, Vice Chairman of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, certainly wouldn't have agreed:

Joseph Grew (Under Sec. of State), John McCloy (Assistant Sec. of War), Ralph Bard (Under Sec. of the Navy), Lewis Strauss (Special Assistant to the Sec. of the Navy), and at least another 10 prominent government and military officials that I'm too lazy to list wouldn't agree with that assessment, either.

 

So they were designed to terrorize the Japanese into surrendering is that what you are saying?