I don't think modern soldiers feel like they own their country.
Can you elaborate on what you mean here?
Read "War is a Racket" by Smedley Butler for the first person account, "Gangsters of Capitalism" for the third person.
Dulce et Decorum Est (1921)
41–50 of 116 posts
Re: Dulce et Decorum Est (1921)
#42The ceremony, pomp and reverence we pay to soldiers and the fallen are all aimed at making sure the young remain willing to do an ugly job at affordable prices. For every poem like this there is a parade, monument, wreath-laying ceremony, or the modern equivalent of young girls handing white feathers to young boys. It seems ungrateful to view it this way. We owe a real debt to the soldiers who died for the world we l…
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Re: Dulce et Decorum Est (1921)
#43Why did the title of the poem get translated?
Probably with hacker news requiring that titles be in only english
Re: Dulce et Decorum Est (1921)
#44[dead]
Re: Dulce et Decorum Est (1921)
#45About 150 Iranian sailors drowned this morning, far from home, not a clear and present danger to anyone, no war declared on them by Congress, nor sanctioned by the UN. We could have demanded a surrender but instead we blew them up.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/mar/04/iran-war-...
Re: Dulce et Decorum Est (1921)
#46"Wo alle Straßen enden" is an German marching song. The video has WWI footage showing the reality of the trenches. https://youtu.be/A_45_19b9Hg?si=auCx4B6wFFGrJ3Hb
there's more movie clips than actual WWI footage in there
Re: Dulce et Decorum Est (1921)
#47Re: Dulce et Decorum Est (1921)
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems a bit like an historically blinkered statement. There's a long history of countries militarily supporting their allies; there's nothing "modern" about this. Most of the countries in WWI - which this poem is about - entered the war because of existing alliances, not because they were personally affected by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. While the US was indeed attacked by the Japanese in WWII, th…
in those times everyone was conscripted , and people had a visceral feeling of fighting for their actual land and family out of necessity. Perhaps ukrainians have that feeling. US army is more like mercenaries on a misson. Besides, Us soldiers have not fought on US mainland for century
Ukraine is far from a monolith. It's an agglomeration of bits and pieces attached in the aftermath of WW2 to a Ukrainian core. But there are plenty of ethnic Poles, Hungarians and Russians whose lands got attached that don't identify with it.
Before you downvote (OK, you can downvote first, I don't particularly care) - go look up what folks in Hungarian parts of Ukraine do to army recruiters.
Re: Dulce et Decorum Est (1921)
#49The ceremony, pomp and reverence we pay to soldiers and the fallen are all aimed at making sure the young remain willing to do an ugly job at affordable prices. For every poem like this there is a parade, monument, wreath-laying ceremony, or the modern equivalent of young girls handing white feathers to young boys. It seems ungrateful to view it this way. We owe a real debt to the soldiers who died for the world we l…
>sometimes abused by politicians to field armies at affordable prices in the service of their own greed and vanity. After Khamenei death Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement that Russia is "against killing of the leaders of sovereign countries". Somehow they didn't mention nor regular citizens nor rank-and-file soldiers of sovereign countries. In the Spanish series "El Cid" there is a nice depiction of how a b…
> After Khamenei death Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement that Russia is "against killing of the leaders of sovereign countries". Somehow they didn't mention nor regular citizens nor rank-and-file soldiers of sovereign countries.
Rich, coming from the state that sponsored more than a dozen assassination attempts on Zelenskyy. But russians get over this hypocrisy by not recognizing a country as sovereign, so it's fair game.
Re: Dulce et Decorum Est (1921)
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine your country is a nice place with nice values might be hard to imagine for Americans. You fight so that it remains that way for future generations. Countries can cease to exist.
I get it but I don't buy this. You don't need to fight for this. You just need to live according to your values. My ancestors' country had (and still have) nice values. Used to be under the control of France, then switched to British control, then back to French control. This happened without any war or fighting. Nothing changed for the people. They even kept speaking French. Many got rich still; just had to decide w…
That recipe doesn’t work universally, there are wars of expulsion and extermination.