If you're poor as fuck in a dead-end town, a job that offers not only respect but decent pay and education money seems like a pretty fucking good idea in peacetime.

Antero wrote:If you're poor as fuck in a dead-end town,

hello

Antero wrote:a job that offers not only respect

Getting respect only matters if you respect the people you want the respect from. The respect of tabloid newspaper readers I can do without.

Antero wrote:but decent pay

Like the wages of sin?

Antero wrote:and education

Like how to kill people and feel okay about it?

Antero wrote: seems like a pretty fucking good idea in peacetime.

Not to me.
I can think of practically no period of time over the last 60 years when the military forces of western nations haven't been used somewhere in the world to fuck some poor unfortunate over.

There is no peacetime.

wow...unbelievably vile crap. truly the most pathetic and disgusting thread on this board....bar none.

Earwicker wrote:

Antero wrote:a job that offers not only respect

Getting respect only matters if you respect the people you want the respect from. The respect of tabloid newspaper readers I can do without.

Amazing! Someone with a lower opinion of the masses than myself!

Antero wrote:but decent pay

Like the wages of sin?

You really wanted to just cover ever comma in my post, ey? What, are you a televangelist?

Antero wrote:and education

Like how to kill people and feel okay about it?

"I feel so clever because I cut out words!" You know about the GI Bill just as well as I do.

I must point out, also, that judging from the amount of psychological trauma seen in vets, your judgement is rather lacking in both compassion and connection to the real world.

Antero wrote: seems like a pretty fucking good idea in peacetime.

Not to me.

Congrats?

I can think of practically no period of time over the last 60 years when the military forces of western nations haven't been used somewhere in the world to fuck some poor unfortunate over.

Tautology. It's a large scale military force - if it's active at all, someone is getting fucked over.

And maybe there's no peacetime in the Grand Struggle Against Dictatorship, Corporate Hegemony, And General Unpleasantness, but be realistic for a second: for a soldier, there sure as fuck is peacetime. It's when you shine your boots, run some drills, chill on a base, and collect your paycheck.

Antero wrote:"I feel so clever because I cut out words!" You know about the GI Bill just as well as I do.

Not sure whether those quotes are meant to highlight imaginary words of mine or actual words of yours but no, I don't know about the GI bill.

Antero wrote:I must point out, also, that judging from the amount of psychological trauma seen in vets, your judgement is rather lacking in both compassion and connection to the real world.

I don't know what you mean. I think all animals deserve love and care and vets deserve the respect of us all as they provide a useful and important service to the rest of society.

Antero wrote: seems like a pretty fucking good idea in peacetime.

Not to me.

Antero wrote:Congrats?

Don't understand this question.

And maybe there's no peacetime in the Grand Struggle Against Dictatorship, Corporate Hegemony, And General Unpleasantness, but be realistic for a second: for a soldier, there sure as fuck is peacetime. It's when you shine your boots, run some drills, chill on a base, and collect your paycheck.

And when the smoke settles after discharging a full clip into an A-rab family and the sunlight sends striking shafts through the windows smashed by the still ringing explosion from a frag grenade.

Ah, peace.

If the definition of peacetime for a soldier is when they are not killing or being killed then of course, from time to time, there is peacetime.

But this is semantic tomfoolery if you ask me.

Which of course you're not...but anyhow.

I think Antero's point is that soldiers should not be the first people held accountable for our perpetual war-based economies. Their personal economic circumstances and the relentless propaganda that pounds away at promoting the virtues of military life make the choices of those who aren't the most intelligent and rational members of society to begin with 'understandable' and at least partially 'excusable', in the sense that people who aren't prepared to 'get it' often don't. Not saying there aren't bloodthirsty maniacs signing up who look at war life as a playground, but most of them wish they could serve without killing.

Soldiering by choice would quickly become soldiering by draft if soldiering by choice failed to staff the armed services, so it's really pick your poison- somebody will be sent to kill those arabs. The blame falls on all of us for keeping governments run by sociopathic death merchants.

Another drunk rant I may soon regret.

clocker bob wrote:Soldiering by choice would quickly become soldiering by draft if soldiering by choice failed to staff the armed services, so it's really pick your poison- somebody will be sent to kill those arabs. The blame falls on all of us for keeping governments run by sociopathic death merchants.

However at the moment it's soldiering by morons so all I'm saying is I'm not going to lose sleep over their being set fire to in tanks. Soldiers are at the very sharpest end of ‘those’ who keep ‘us’ in check.

The thrust of the argument on this thread (from some) seems to be if conscription was introduced the middle classes would be affected therefore less shit like Iraq would go on.
As it is there are enough cretins (poor people if you want to see it that way. I don't because I am from that class and have this view) to fuel the armies need for fodder.
I am not feeling sorry for those morons who join up. Here's why:

Either – everyone is fated, victims of their circumstance and there is no such thing as choice i.e moral agency = all of this debate, and all others, are redundant anyway
Or
We all have free will and are born equal and so deserve to be treated equally in terms of the judgment of others/God whatever floats your boat.
Or
Some people are aware enough to behave with moral agency - to use their free will to choose how they live their lives – and some others aren’t. They are pushed by circumstance and ‘fate’.

A,B or C

If A is the case then it doesn’t matter anyway it’s all just interesting to observe and then you shuffle off this mortal coil.

B. If some fucking idiot chooses to take on a job where they will go thousands and thousands of miles from where they live and kill someone else because ‘it’s a good career option’ then I will choose to feel no sympathy when they die.

C. This means some humans are, well, humans and others are animals. This seems to be the middle-classes-need-to-be-forced-into-it view point.
The poor working classes are being shepherded into the army without their little brains knowing it and isn’t it awful how exploited they are? Etc etc
In this scenario I can’t help but think the person with the ability to choose is in my view ‘better’ than the unconscious ‘animal’. Or, at least they are not equal to the animal and should have more votes than them in whatever is standing for a democracy these days.
It means one (those who choose) should rule over the others (those that don’t).
How comfortable are you with that?

I don’t know which of A,B or C is the case but it feels like either B or C (though intellectually I imagine it is A) but, regardless, I decide this:

You join the army - you die – I don’t care.
You join the army – you feel bad about killing and seeing death afterwards – boo hoo, you joined the army dick head, pass me the remote control.

The alternative view seems to be:

You join the army and feel bad and poor you, you weren’t advanced or sophisticated enough to know what you were doing so we forgive you and blame the baddies who knew what they were doing. Blah blah blah

I will temper this with a sentence I think all should make when indulging in debate/argument:

I might be wrong.

But if I am at least I’m not shooting a child in the head cause a bomb just scared me and killed my buddy, eh!

I follow you. Ignorance or denial of the gravity of what you may eventually be ordered to do is no excuse for winding up in a position where you are in fact ordered to do it, and then doing it. Soldiers are subjected to much brainwashing that dehumanizes their enemies precisely for this reason- to defuse random intrusions of conscience from mucking up the gears of war.

Essentially, to carry your philosophy to its most extreme destination is to confirm that we are, as a species, more trouble than we are worth, all us humans with our wars and crimes and environmental destruction- whether we participate by doing it or by not rising up to stop it, we suck. Even to transplant a new peaceful world would require a grand finale of slaughter to bring it about, and then what, the survivors impose extreme totalitarianism to suppress the 'free will' that keeps us doing all that irresistible crazy violence?

We are deluding ourselves with our claims of civilization and progress, because we are really not seeing the forest for the trees with that claim. Seen from a distant perspective, we must look like one ultra-dysfunctional ant farm. For every person doing good there are two doing bad and another five just doing nothing / trying to stay out of the way.

Am I wrong?

No, I'm afraid you're not wrong.

Rick Reuben wrote:Rangel reintroduced the National Service ( Draft ) bill again last week:

H.R. 393: Universal National Service Act of 2007
Bill Status
Introduced: Jan 10, 2007
Sponsor: Rep. Charles Rangel [D-NY]
Status: Introduced

Introduced in House: This is the original text of the bill as it was written by its sponsor and submitted to the House for consideration.

Text of Legislation

HR 393 IH

110th CONGRESS

1st Session

H. R. 393

To require all persons in the United States between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform national service, either as a member of the uniformed services or in civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, to authorize the induction of persons in the uniformed services during wartime to meet end-strength requirements of the uniformed services, to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to make permanent the favorable treatment afforded combat pay under the earned income tax credit, and for other purposes.

I hope they do this soon.