Time for US Refuseniks? by canttakesky

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Time for US Refuseniks?

POSTED BY: CANTTAKESKY
UPDATED: Tuesday, April 12, 2011 13:56
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VIEWED: 771
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Tuesday, April 12, 2011 2:48 AM

This man is accusing the US military of genocide in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I am less of a man for having served in the US military...I can never get back what the military took from me...I can never get back what I gave to the military."

Or try this link

http://tinyurl.com/3q26f6o

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Tuesday, April 12, 2011 11:36 AM

DREAMTROVE

There's a large space there that looks like it should hold a video

I was just helping my sister clean out her desk at the VA and one of the veterans said something very similar. He said what he had done, been told to do, could not be undone, and that he didn't know how to live his life with these images in his head. He also said he went to help defending people's freedom, but he didn't see anyone who saw it that way, they saw them living their lives, and then they saw him coming at them with a gun.

Other people I've known who've been in the war say that there's no choice, once your there, the other side is going to kill you. There are people there who are on your side, but the people who aren't aren't just political opponents and soldiers for the other side, they're just regular people, and it doesn't take a lot to get them to shoot at you, the way it wouldn't take a lot for us to start shooting at them if they were over here.

We go there to bring democracy and free trade (Or so Obama says, and pretty much what Bush said.) Some people there want that. Some want theocracy and sharia law. What if they had theocracy and sharia law and thought it was the greatest thing ever, and so they came here to give us what they thought was so wonderful? Would we thank them? Or shoot them?

What if it were something less ambiguous? There are some Americans here on the forum who think socialism is a great idea. There's some like me who think it so-o isn't. But what if some socialist state, like China, or the former USSR, or some hybrid out of the EU decided socialism was so awesome they had to share it with us. How would Americans react? Some would think it was great, just like some muslims think democracy and free trade is great. Some would think it was the end of the American way of life. I'm sure some muslims feel that way about us being there. Those guys are going to shoot at you, and there's nothing you can do about that. Except shoot back.

Once you're there, and you go on missions, you can end up like Lt. Calley much more easily. Calley said that he had been given a map to a VC camp and had traced it out to MyLai, and decided to take it out. The military said he fucked up, got lost, and wound up in the wrong place. Whoever made the error, once the error had occurred, Calley's crime was to carry through the mission.

If you're in that situation in the middle east, when you decide to back off, you know they are going to shoot at you anyway, but there's something else that makes it worse.

The shooting of the Reuters guy. A friend of mine said the boys on the front line are real unclear on what they're supposed to do, and so some of them take charge, and start shouting like the guys on the video, saying how sure they are that this is a terrorist with an RPG. Those guys shouting aren't sure, they're rallying up the troops, because they want the mission to go as planned, regardless of who they're shooting at. They don't want dissension in the ranks, and they don't want their authority questioned, and they don't want to believe, themselves, that they are doing the wrong thing. So they shout and rally and everyone gets excited, and goes out guns blazing.

The game runs til it's over, when there are no more players, or no more pieces, and then we all have a beer. My Lai is the new SOP.

ETA: You get fewer refuseniks in an all volunteer army, and they can send those guys home. You get even less with contract killers, and you get none at all with robots. Obama is the first person in the history of the world to use robots as a combatants. They never disobey orders, no matter how inhumane, no matter how wrong the information that sent them on the mission was. The other side can never harm you by killing them. We lost 3 in Iran, and never had to admit that we were there. If those had been regular planes, those pilots families would have to be told.

I'm clearly kicking around ranting, I'd better stop.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Tuesday, April 12, 2011 12:59 PM

CANTTAKESKY

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
There's a large space there that looks like it should hold a video

Weird. I just posted a new link to the same thing. You should see a 10 min video on Youtube.

Quote:

I'm clearly kicking around ranting, I'd better stop.
It was a good rant.

I support the people who are in the troops. For the large part, they are young, naive, and mean well.

But I do not support what the troops stand for.

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Tuesday, April 12, 2011 1:53 PM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Quote:
ETA: You get fewer refuseniks in an all volunteer army, and they can send those guys home. You get even less with contract killers, and you get none at all with robots. Obama is the first person in the history of the world to use robots as a combatants. They never disobey orders, no matter how inhumane, no matter how wrong the information that sent them on the mission was. The other side can never harm you by killing them. We lost 3 in Iran, and never had to admit that we were there. If those had been regular planes, those pilots families would have to be told.

Obama isn't the first, by a big margin. The Nazis used the V1 "Buzz-bomb" (the world's first "cruise missile") and V2 (the prototype for the ICBM), the Japanese had their own "robot" weapon systems, and so it blossomed. It's just gotten bigger and "better" ever since.

Heck, Obama wasn't even the first to use them in Iraq and the AfPak.

But other than that, yeah, it was a pretty good rant.

You want to see REAL refuseniks? How's about we get people to start refusing to join up in the first fucking place?

Wanna see these bullshit wars end quickly? Make 'em draft their cannon fodder for a while, and see how popular that is.

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

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Tuesday, April 12, 2011 1:56 PM

FREMDFIRMA

My initial confrontation with the Army was over the fact that I had begun to disagree with the notion of killing folk I didn't know who I had no grudge against for free, or at an hourly rate.

Mind you, at the time it wasn't so much objection to the NOTION, as the pay - and apparently by some bizarre ass connotation of military law, that made me a "Conscientious Objector" (WTF?!)

There wasn't anything seriously to that at the time since it was more a running joke than anything else, given that I was pissed off they had no war for me to fight and if I wanted to do domestic scutwork I woulda worked for a damn motel...

Then they failed to meet, and broke, the terms of my enlistment contract and all hell broke loose - theoretically I am on IRR *forever*, despite them knowing damn well where I stand on most of what they do, but it was recently re-affirmed to me that for all that the Army *does* seem to think I would respond in a useful way to natural disaster or preserving necessary infrastructure in case of civil unrest - they're prolly right, regarding that.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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