With apologies to
EMH for posting before he's had a chance to reply, but since the conversation has gone on anyway...
Trent, you're going to hurt that knee if you let it keep jerking like that.
Some guy in a white coat kept whacking it with a rubber hammer.
If you can't understand that people can be pro-military and anti-war, then you aren't thinking, you're reacting on an ideological basis.
No, I'm identifying a problem endemic to the system. If the military fights wars with no respect as to their justness, then they are just as much to blame for it as the assholes giving the orders, as is any freethinking individual who collaborates.
Many of the people you're arguing with agree with you about the war in Iraq. You get that, right?
Quite obviously. I also see a noticeable difference in accountability. A lot of people seem interested in only going after the capos, if anyone; I say scour the organization from top to bottom.
They're fighting a war. But in the mean time, lets do what we can to a) make sure they don't die and b) make the conditions a little less miserable.
They chose to do so. I'm not concerned with
their living conditions; it's not four walls and a window with bars, which is all they deserve. I'm more concerned with those who don't have living conditions because they're no longer living, and what justice we get get for them.
Yet you support the World Food Program. It's a band aid. It's there to ease the very worst of the suffering but doesn't fix the underlying problem. That doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile.
Absolutely true in all respects, but the situations aren't comparable. The World Food Program isn't killing people.
So lets ignore the fact that some people signing up for the army might really not have much of a choice economically, lets ignore the fact that some did so with faith in their government not to ask them to fight unless it was absolutely necessary.
Are those supposed to be excuses? Being poor doesn't mean it's okay to sacrifice your ethics for a paycheck, far less to participate in criminal endeavours. As to the second, I'm shocked to find that there's anybody that gullible. Hey, once they've been paid off for collaborating, I should go around with this amazing asteroid mining investment opportunity I have...
Maybe not. What it won't do is any harm, so I really don't see how you can be opposed to this. (...) But books? To be against giving troops books? Why?
Aid and comfort. I don't provide it to those I consider to be criminals. Look at the website (emphasis mine): "Every week we receive thanks from troops who are
glad to be appreciated and remembered. Our service members make sacrifices every day for our country. It takes so little to
let them know that we appreciate what they are doing for us. When you join in Operation Paperback, you will let our troops know that
you support them, and you have not forgotten them." None of those things are true, for me; to participate in this program would be funding a lie. I don't think the troops who have collaborated with Bush deserve recreation or comfort. I think they deserve a tribunal and prison cell. Once they're in jail, I'll gladly support a prison library towards their rehabilitation.
Dozens of Star Trek tales to the contrary, military personnel don't have the luxury of disobeying orders without consequence.
There are always consequences. I listed some upthread. The question is: do you take your licks for what is right, or do you go along with injustice?
All this fixation with orders... Fela Kuti got it right, singing about the Nigerian military in the late seventies:
"Zombie no go go, unless you tell am to go /
Zombie no go stop, unless you tell am to stop /
Zombie no go turn, unless you tell am to turn /
Zombie no go think, unless you tell am to think."
Nothing's really changed. Kim Jong Il, Robert Mugabe, the Burmese junta, etc. - how do all these assholes maintain power against a population that often would like to see them dead? They do so because they control the armed forces. Because those organizations are being paid, and following orders. Likewise, Bush didn't invade Iraq; the military invaded Iraq, acting on his commands. If they had just refused to collaborate and stayed in their barracks, there would have been no war. Too many lives have been lost to people 'just following orders' to continue to treat to an outmoded point of procedure like a broad-spectrum pardon. Nuremberg established that individuals given a moral choice are responsible for that choice, orders or no.
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
