I wrote this on my phone on June 29th - can't seem to post t the blog yet from there.
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So, at some point Sprint will actually get their act together and get the data plan for this new phone together and I'll be able to use it more to it's full capacity. Ideally that will be a few more blog posts and some more writing in general.
For example, right now I'm waiting for the C train @ Canal St. after a fundraiser at The Tank, the new hot downtown theatre/performance art space..
The fundraiser was OK, nothing extra-ordinary. I'm thinking of last night at Drinking Liberally when a co-drinker asked the somewhat doomed question, "I wonder when someone is finally going to say, 'Fuck the troops?'.
As some of you can imagine, I kept my temper, but barely. It's conversations like this that make me despair. Sheer ignorance is the bedrock of too many opinions to hear it at a progressive liberal meetup. I know for a fact that this opinion doesn't prevail through the majority of the left, but it definitely set my teeth on edge.
So, let me break it down into small chunks, as I understand it (open to rebuttle).
a) America needs some sort of a Military. I'm not sure many would dispute this point but I would like to build this argument from the ground up.
b) Said Military will indubitably be created from officers and enlisted men.
c) Enlisted men cannot be given the option to question orders. This is where things get sticky for some.
People who have never, and may never, be put into any combat situation assume that a soldier has a conscious, that can trump this directive. Or, in a milder term, that a soldier 'should' have something higher to appeal to than their immediate superior officer; a built-in moral guide.
The premise is that if soldiers<í>would just exercise their own moral judgement at times when they are put into potentially questionable situations they could then stand up against the moral wrong doings of the current Military strategy.
In my not-so-humble opinion, these are the same people who think war is fought by pretty rules that both sides have approved before-hand.
temporarily moving on.....
d) Officers and Politicians need to be held accountable for the orders they give and the strategy they prescribe. Particularly the latter.
e) If the soldiers are willing to put their own lives & morality on the line for us, it is our job, as citizens, to go to bat for them. It's our job to stand up for the soldiers, who have given of themselves, so that they ARE NOT used by corrupt agencies.
So, my answer to, "When is someone going to say, Fuck the troops?"; hopefully never.
Better to ask when is someone going to say, 'Save the Troops'. When are we as a people going to stand up to the real people forcing this war, at the cost of the lives of the people sworn to protect us? The people who need us to look out for them stateside?
*** Sidenote: Why must a soldier give up personal responsibility for their actions? Well, first, this is more-than-a-little misnomer. Many soldiers will forever be haunted by what they did in the service, regardless of who forgives them.. Beyond that, a soldier, plain and simple, must be able (not willing) to kill on the faith of a superior officer's word. Period. Not based on his/her own personal knowledge. This is a factor of supreme trust. If some people were not capable of this, we would have no military (a).
So, how about we get OUR act together stateside and help our soldiers?
just some thoughts from an outside source
Hello,
I think given the intensely busy schedule you have, this person may have meant to ask if you ever thought there would be a moment, given the numerous military and chain of command scandals, that someone might turn from the slogans on the ribbons and furious flagwaving and say to themselves," hey, I think killing is bad. I think torture is bad. I think rape is bad and I think all of this in the name of 'national' (meaning corporate) interest is the most evil thing in the world right now. In fact, a lot of people feel the same way and since I enjoy social referencing as much as the next monkey, I wonder when the troops are going to catch on to sharing a shared perception. Wait," they may think," I think those kids are smart.. what if they already know the system is fucked and the purpose of this war is too. Why aren't they taking responsibilty for their own actions? Do they not know that taking responsibilty for their person is the only thing TO DO in this mysterious world. Or, do they not care? AND if so, well fuck that shit!!!"
For millenia people have been talking about a shift in consciousness as being the only thing that can, I dont know, save us from our present state of consciousness? It would be nice if the folks that are signing up to war for college education or martyrdom and everything in between would start to act according to their conscious beliefs. I can imagine that often they are faced with radically stressful situations requiring choices that are either a rock or a neutron star but, they still have to face the consequences of their choices and if they are choosing to murder, torture and rape because someone just, kinda, well, I guess told 'em to, then I cannot wave my flag and say I support the troops.
And can anyone tell me why I should mourn 4,000 American citizens more than a million Arabs?
Wow...
Not to devolve the discourse anymore than you just did, but your statements have no basis in reality, or, well, anything really. First off, the words you throw around so casually, murder, torture, and rape, show your complete and utter lack of understanding of them and their gravity. That, in and of itself, is enough to completely discard your thoughts. More so, you clearly have never met a person from the military. Many of them are against this war, but they do their job, so you can spout your illogical bullshit. Also, they do sign up so they can get money for college, or money for their kids, or just to live and learn some discipline, and they are afraid to lose that. How old are you, anyway? Because you're talking like an 18 year old, who's never dealt with the complexity that we call the real world, life. And these "smart kids" are acting on their concious beliefs; they are serving their country, honoring a code you'll never understand, and following discipline that you clearly don't have. While I am staunchly against this war, for many reasons, but one of them being that my brother has been there and may be there again, I cannot stand and listen to someone with this kind of reasoning bringing them to the same position as me. As for the rest of your post, it's handled in the original post and comments. Just be quiet, bask in your self-righteousness in quiet, and start speaking in 10 years when you've matured and begun to understand that the world has complexities, even in morality.
In addition
Your last statement is just inflammatory for the sake of being inflammatory. No one here is belittling the deaths of Iraqis(BTW, where did the figure one million come from). You should mourn them as well, if in fact you are mourning. But also, by you logic you should not mourn people that you do not know at all, but associate with personally like artists, politicians, etc, more than others. Taken to the extreme you should not mourn friends more than others. Think before you speak, and if you're going to make these kinds of remarks at least use your real name. To do otherwise is cowardly.
A couple things
First, I agree with your sentiment about this jackass' flippant remark. I would hope, maybe on some intellectual, pseudo-logical level, the person meant when is someone going to say "fuck the propaganda that makes supporting the troops synonomous with supporting the war that the media and the political right propagate and the left has horribly attempted to reverse". But, that's not nearly as catchy, and I'm pretty sure they didn't mean that as I've heard similar comments. Your reasoning for our need for a military is correct. I was pondering this the other day, prompted by the quote in SiCKO, if we have enough money to wage war, we have enough money to help people. So the wheels started turning about how we, as a nation, could divert effort and funds from the military machine to health and well-being. That got me thinking about abolishing the military in general, or considerable down-sizing, and I realized that's not the answer. I do think that we can move some of that to other interests though, but that's for another discussion.
Anyway, what I want to contradict is your notion that soldiers cannot have a concious and in our military should just follow orders. First off, I do think that to a certain degree it is good for enlisted personnel to conform to the military hierarchy on a day to day level. It makes things run smoother, and it makes for a safer more efficient fighting force in combat. That being said, you're wrong. Our entire military philosophy is actually built on the individual soldier having a conscience and knowing when it's appropriate to resist an order. How do you explain military law, otherwise, specifically in regards to combat offenses? While an officer will be beholden for issuing an illegal order, or one not befitting the situation or leading to unnecessary death and destruction, enlisted men will also be held accountable for following said order. This is what fundamentally changed after WWI, and arguably made our military and many like it in the western world more effective, and able to threaten much larger forces, i.e. the USSR and China, with less men. A smart, well-trained, thinking soldier is ten times more effective than one who just follows orders, hell that's written into the Marine handbook. They don't have to wait for orders all the time, and on the flip side, they are expected to know when their orders may be wrong. All combat soldiers are given at least an introductory course in US military combat rules and the Geneva Convention, not to mention the vigorously outlined rules of engagement for each mission. Why do that if they just wait for the officer to give orders? Basically, I think maybe your argument is over-simplified. When it comes to strategic decisions, and policy in general, it is good to have a fighting force that follows orders with blind faith. But when it comes to tactics, and in the moment decisions, it's actually great to have combat soldiers with intelligence and a conscience. And that's what the United States has and depends on, troops who follow orders but have the ability to make up their own mind, "An Army of One" What your oh so eloquent drinking friend doesn't understand is that the troops are in no position to make strategic decisions, or even changes, and thus are not responsible for the overall war. However, they are responsible for things like Haditha, Prison misconduct, and needless civilian deaths, despite what their officers may have ordered, implied, or coerced them to do. For reference, I point to A Few Good Men. That is the dramatization of a true story about how two enlisted men were tried and convicted, specifically for following an order they should not have in a combat zone(that's how the military treats Guantanimo).
So, let me know what you think, even if you think I'm full of it.
You're not full of it.
You are adding a semantics discussion I thought was outside the scope of this originally, but eh, it always goes there.
I would say, the scenario you are describing isn't a choice of disobeying orders. At no point will the soldier lay down his gun and say that's it I'm not doing this military thing any more.
What you are describing is a case of conflicting orders. And the soldier should choose to obey the order he got in boot that says 'Follow the Geneva Convention', not the one he just got that says "Go torture that guy". The soldier definitely DOES NOT have the option to disobey both orders. And that is more my point.
In general, the military does its best to not put soldiers in that situation. I think the conversation that is more interesting to me is the one where people, perhaps the one I reference, I'm not certain, think the troops should start questioning weather we should be in Iraq - that they 'must know how bad it is', and should have a moral voice saying that we should just stop. In some idealistic hope that the citizenry and the troops could somehow join forces to force the CiC into being a better person. Kum bai ya.
I stand by my point that troops have no choce but to trust their superiors that they are doing the right thing. Calling in recon to bomb a village that they have intel on. Every sniper to ever exist. These are situations when you are relying on a go-between to be assured that some other human should die.
There is a reason things like the Geneva Convention exist beyond the overt. If a soldier is ever going to make a moral judgment call - it needs to be codified. The modern military does push command down, and any good soldier is a thinking soldier - one that can make judgments independent of command, but again, its not the soldiers choice to take a moral decision into their own hands. And I stand by the point that it applies in cases of torture and wrongdoing as well.
Let me clarify, The soldiers at Abu Ghraib weren't convicted, IMO, for toturing those prisoners. War is ugly and that happens. They were convicted for disobeying a higher order - the one they received when they were inducted.
Again, removing this moral culpability (and again I stress, nothing can stop people from blaming themselves) allows a soldier to function. Otherwise they become a useless soldier.
Touche, and it's all semantics
I see your point about my argument being semantics, and I do thinks we're on the same side here. You can't have troops questioning policy, beyond stagnating the efficiency of the military, it could get many people killed. I guess why I harp on the semantics a bit is that not long ago, i.e. WWI a soldier was supposed to do anything a superior told him to do, period. But, that was before Geneva, so we're back to that. However, one chooses to look at it, the person you were speaking with is a douche who clearly didn't learn from Vietnam as much as he thinks Bush and Co. probably didn't learn from it. His statement shows an utter lack of historical reference to what the "Fuck the troops" attitude did to a whole generation of soldiers mentally and emotionally with sometimes physical repercussions. My mom spends every day treating vets who have mental health issues, drug dependencies, and the like directly and indirectly attributed to their time in Vietnam and their homecomings. I think if you see this person again, you should call them out for the knee-jerk liberal poseur that they are, instead of the analyzing, thoughtful wonk that they think they are. I mean, if you were at a drinking conservatively function, that same type of person would have said, why don't we just nuke the whole place. It's those comments that prevent thoughtful political debate in this country(that's not all obviously). Anyway, rant over. I think we agree, we're just looking through different prisms.
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