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Where Are the Brave Military Voices Against the Forever War?

theamericanconservative.com

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Re: Where Are the Brave Military Voices Against the Forever War?

#51

Post by wfo »

bryananderson wrote: post #39
MrZongle2 wrote: post #21

I was in Iraq in 1991. My friends and I were astounded when we heard of the cease-fire; we could easily push towards Baghdad and take care of Saddam Hussein, who was clearly the Hitler of our time. "We'll be back in a decade" I thought, as it seemed as if we were leaving with our work unfinished. I was off by a couple of years, but in 2003 when we went back into Iraq to finally take care of Hussein, I was pleased. Of…

I agree with most of what you're saying, but I'm not buying that these things (peace, environmental action, science investment, etc) aren't happening because the masses are being stymied by the powers that be. On the contrary, I don't see the masses caring about these things at all. Do you? I don't see the majority of the people demanding action against (or even acknowledging the existence of) climate change. Nor do…

Well, poll people about universal healthcare. It's, what, 70% support? Poll people about legalization of marijuana. Poll people about private prisons. Poll people about police buying military weapons, tanks on streets. Poll people about asset forfeiture. Poll people about a living wage. Poll people about gerrymandering. Poll people about money in politics. Poll people about the revolving door. Poll people about student loans. Poll people about net neutrality. Poll people about the TPP. Support for the Iraq war was created by lies and propagandists, explicitly and intentionally -- public opinion was manufactured through deceit, not genuine. And there were still huge antiwar protests and massive antiwar sentiment.

You will get massive support on a wide variety of issues completely invisible to modern political discourse if you ask people. But the people asking the questions have enormous power. If you rate congresspeople by their collective votes in congress, if you let mainstream pundits who are paid explicitly to maintain the status quo ask questions, the answers will not be inspiring and most will look similar.

I don't blame people for not demanding action, for not demanding things at all, since they've been taught it doesn't work and it's a waste of time. They are resigned to being ignored, they do not consent. Most American's don't vote. The keywords here are apathy and a disconnect with the system, not agreement.

Re: Where Are the Brave Military Voices Against the Forever War?

#52

Post by squegles »

lexwraith wrote: post #32

I don't protest because I don't have time, nor would I think it's effective. People are just too busy for a war that is completely separated from them to care about it. I did care, at one point, but I too have been grinded down by both my experiences overseas and the people I served with. I enlisted in the USMC in 2005. 0311. Felt like I had been ready since I was 11 or 12. I went to Boot Camp, and then SOI. First ta…

Very well written. Thank you for posting this.

Re: Where Are the Brave Military Voices Against the Forever War?

#53

Post by cat199 »

MrZongle2 wrote: post #21

I was in Iraq in 1991. My friends and I were astounded when we heard of the cease-fire; we could easily push towards Baghdad and take care of Saddam Hussein, who was clearly the Hitler of our time. "We'll be back in a decade" I thought, as it seemed as if we were leaving with our work unfinished. I was off by a couple of years, but in 2003 when we went back into Iraq to finally take care of Hussein, I was pleased. Of…

> As much as I love my country, at this point were there even a hint of a draft I would be the first to drive my teenage boys to the Canadian border -- a concept that would have astounded and enraged a younger me.

Easier said than done for someone like me who never enlisted, but my take is having a draft would actually reduce the ability to wage war on a whim, since war would actually have the potential to impact more well off and politically connected people...

Re: Where Are the Brave Military Voices Against the Forever War?

#54

Post by ashark »

maxxxxx wrote: post #47
jMyles wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were up-front about having Bin Laden, but not about harboring "Al Qaeda" - a phrase which Bin Laden didn't use in any public media appearance until a month later. They wanted evidence that Bin Laden had anything to do with the attacks (which of course he denied). Why not deliberatively and carefully provide this evidence to the world instead of rushing into a war? What's the strategic value there?

"They wanted evidence that Bin Laden had anything to do with the attacks (which of course he denied)." What are you talking about? Bin Laden took credit for 9/11 immediately and it was pretty clear that they had their training camps in Afghanistan. Nobody denied that. Iraq was a different situation. to go there the US had to make up things.

> What are you talking about? Bin Laden took credit for 9/11 immediately

Both my recollection and Wikipedia (admittedly neither being authoritative) agree that Bin Laden denied involvement for some time after the attacks (Wiki says he didn't claim responsibility until 2004). The Taliban denounced the attacks the day of and, separately, stated Bin Laden wasn't involved (which might seem weird, but there's some background there that makes it less suspicious than it seems, though of course it could have all been deception). They also volunteered that they'd turn him over if we turned up evidence that he'd been involved, on Sept. 13th (again, of course they could have been lying or stalling, just getting the events/statements straight)

The US demand (Sept. 14th) wasn't that they hand over Bin Laden, it was that they hand over all of Al Qaeda in their territory, all their intelligence on them, and Bin Laden. Given that there were a lot of fighters on their side of the civil war who'd been through Al Qaeda camps, this was probably impossible to do without losing the civil war, between the loss of manpower, the risk (I'd hazard it was a near-certainty) of opening a new and dangerously ill-defined front in the civil war, and the loss of said training resources/facilities. It was never going to happen, and we'd been considering covertly or overtly pitching in with the other side of their civil war for a few months prior (that part I didn't know until just a few minutes ago) anyway.

[EDIT] reading over the sequence of events and the public statements of both sides the Taliban comes off as even more reasonable than I remember them seeming at the time, which was already "fairly reasonable". Could have all been lies, of course, but if you just look at the public statements and the timeline of events—how quickly it escalated—just, wow. At the very least it was terrible PR management on the US' part that we came off looking like unhinged lunatics compared with such genuine shitbags as the Taliban.

Re: Where Are the Brave Military Voices Against the Forever War?

#55

Post by nsjdjdjri88 »

RUG3Y wrote: post #2

After returning from Iraq, I was jaded. Young when I started, I thought we were doing a good thing. My idealism was stripped away pretty quickly. After being stateside for a while, there were rumors that our unit would be deploying to Afghanistan. A Lt. Colonel came and gave a presentation to the company about conditions there. During the Q.A., I stood up and asked, "Sir, what are we really doing there? For the life…

> After returning from Iraq, I was jaded. Young when I started, I thought we were doing a good thing. My idealism was stripped away pretty quickly.

My grandfather said the same about Korea.

My step father said the same about Vietnam.

My dad’s youngest brother said the same after Iraq 1.

My brother said the same after Iraq 2.

My nephew said the same after Afghanistan.

Voices around world have been saying this forever.

But too many feel it’s their only real option.

The real fight is taking on this notion and making the social changes needed to make it so it’s the worst option

Hint, it’s not neoliberalism and startup phone app companies going to get us there. Their “change/save the world! in tech!” rhetoric is just as hollow. It’s the same cult think and “only option” scenario

Smart people need to stop towing the line and start making their neighbors lives better

Re: Where Are the Brave Military Voices Against the Forever War?

#56

Post by jMyles »

maxxxxx wrote: post #47
jMyles wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were up-front about having Bin Laden, but not about harboring "Al Qaeda" - a phrase which Bin Laden didn't use in any public media appearance until a month later. They wanted evidence that Bin Laden had anything to do with the attacks (which of course he denied). Why not deliberatively and carefully provide this evidence to the world instead of rushing into a war? What's the strategic value there?

"They wanted evidence that Bin Laden had anything to do with the attacks (which of course he denied)." What are you talking about? Bin Laden took credit for 9/11 immediately and it was pretty clear that they had their training camps in Afghanistan. Nobody denied that. Iraq was a different situation. to go there the US had to make up things.

> Bin Laden took credit for 9/11 immediately

Do you actually believe this? If so, you are misinformed.

If you do continue to believe this: which misquoted video are you going to trot out for this claim? The 9/16 video? The 9/28 video? Can you tell me which credible Arabic translator regards either (or any) of these as "[taking] credit"?

Nobody seriously continues to maintain that Bin Laden "took credit for 9/11 immediately."

Perhaps you are talking about the November video (although obviously that's not "immediate")? Even if this video does show Bin Laden (which of course is very much disputed), the person in the video doesn't "take credit" in the typical sense of the phrase.

Re: Where Are the Brave Military Voices Against the Forever War?

#57

Post by nsjdjdjri88 »

RUG3Y wrote: post #44
0xbear wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Afghanistan I do sorta get why the US got involved. I think it’s impossible to “win” there, but I get the involvement. But Iraq was a completely retarded situation. Funding goddamn terrorists in Syria was retarded too. Regime change is retarded in general, aside from the dramatic events like WW2. It never works. Land war on the other end of the world serves only one purpose: just to show that the US government is a d…

It's also highly immoral. Destabilization and war in foreign lands results in devastating consequences for the civilian population. The US Government has a lot to answer for, and likely never will.

Because the people change. How do you hold the people of today responsible for actions of the dead? That’s another form of tyranny

Lift the oppressed but don’t oppress the rest for the past. Now, I don’t mean losing your cars and multiple homes as oppression. Not defending unfettered materialism

Thomas Jefferson advocated for resetting the Constitution and laws for the same reason. Why hold people on 2017 to the philosophy of 1776?

Stop thinking of it as hold government responsible and think about holding the individuals responsible

The former is used as a faceless abstraction to afford cover for doing the latter

They aren’t Gods and should be put in their place as such

Re: Where Are the Brave Military Voices Against the Forever War?

#58

Post by greedo »

the-dude wrote: post #19
RUG3Y wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that's what I was referring to. The whole Al Qaida thing is murky with CIA engineering and scapegoating. Maybe I sound like a conspiracy theorist, I don't know. They were a pretty convenient foil for us to invade a whole bunch of countries that we had no business invading.

Dude, I think it is great you have left the army. I offer you another anecdata : I have an American friend here in Groningen ( NL ) who has been living here for about 30 years now. In the eighties he was stationed in Germany. Due to the thawing relationship between the US and the USSR a meet and greet between Russian and American soldiers was organised. He discovered they were ordinary guys, not monsters. They talked…

This is a false equivalence. Yes, the individual soldiers shared commonality. But your implication that the Cold War was just a story line doesn't align with the facts. Read Solzhenitsyn. Look into Hungary 1956, Prague in 1968. To dismiss the Cold War as just a "story line" is the shallowest of arguments that flies in the face of history.

Re: Where Are the Brave Military Voices Against the Forever War?

#59

Post by guyromm »

The author implies that a citizen army would lessen the leadership's appetite for offensive overseas campaigns.

Interestingly enough, the bulk of Israel's army to this day is composed of drafted 18 year olds, and despite that, the only time there was a major public outcry about the necessity of a military campaign was during the first Lebanon war (1982). that war was perceived by the public as a reckless regime-changing adventure by a particular general (Ariel Sharon).

I assume that the IDF's decades long policing mission (=occupation) of the West Bank along with the periodical campaigns in Gaza & Lebanon do not generate an outcry of similar size, presumably due to the much stronger indoctrination level of the Israeli public, as opposed to that of the American. There is a general consensus around the absence of a less violent path to coexistence in the Middle East.

to this day, I've been a supporter of reforming the IDF into a smaller professional army with the express purpose of making it more difficult for the state to apply foreign policy using force, with the added benefit of keeping unwilling citizens outside of the cycle of violence.

The article, however, implies that the US has achieved the ability to increasingly "project power" by detaching its military apparatus from the society as a whole..

Re: Where Are the Brave Military Voices Against the Forever War?

#60

Post by MrZongle2 »

cat199 wrote: post #53
MrZongle2 wrote: post #21

I was in Iraq in 1991. My friends and I were astounded when we heard of the cease-fire; we could easily push towards Baghdad and take care of Saddam Hussein, who was clearly the Hitler of our time. "We'll be back in a decade" I thought, as it seemed as if we were leaving with our work unfinished. I was off by a couple of years, but in 2003 when we went back into Iraq to finally take care of Hussein, I was pleased. Of…

> As much as I love my country, at this point were there even a hint of a draft I would be the first to drive my teenage boys to the Canadian border -- a concept that would have astounded and enraged a younger me. Easier said than done for someone like me who never enlisted, but my take is having a draft would actually reduce the ability to wage war on a whim, since war would actually have the potential to impact mor…

Certainly, reinstating the draft would be a massive shift in how we've done things since the mid-70s. There's no guarantee that it will ever return, even if it was needed.

But at some point, if you really do have a military-industrial complex pushing for eternal war (I'm still not sold on how much weight this faction actually carries relative to the incompetence or malevolence of a handful of high-level advisers) and you're facing not only increasing public skepticism but a decreasing pool of qualified enlistment candidates, you've got to up the ante.

My kids will likely never be in danger of being drafted into the military. I've already advised them against joining it of their own free will, which I think is somewhat unfortunate. I regard most of the time I served to be well spent in terms of building self-confidence and marketable skills, in addition to the (older) G.I. Bill. But the country I served -- and the military I served in -- ain't the one around anymore.

Edit: oh, and a draft doesn't really endanger the children of the rich or connected. Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son" (1969) wasn't a revelation. Think Mark Zuckerberg's child will ever be drafted? The children of most of the people who have personal assistants in Washington DC? Hah.

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