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Originally Posted by Mustang
It sounds like Nam all over again, but this time those kids Opted for it. they wanted to join the military whereas in there we were forced into it. So its the same hell brought on by politics, only our kids chose this one so in a way it is worse then Nam. (...)
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Really? Is really every young and green soldier aware of what is ahead of him when as a young boy he joins the military, having seen those tasty TV spots, having lived his teenage years by an impression that war is as clean an affair like those TV pics seem to express? Could those kids really have known in advance? Could they really form independent opinions when beeing raised in an excessively patriotic climate that sometimes almost forbids to ask critical questions to the president? And news medias only report heavily streamlined infos? Ducimus called it the "disgust of overpatriotic flagwavers wraping themselves in the flag, and watching CNN like its a football game." Well, that could have been from me
Back in 2003 I was under heavy fire here on this board when I attacked the wisdom to go to war and questioned Bush's motives and understanding again and again. But most of the time I left the regular military, the single individual soldier out of it. My anger never was with them, or the principles on which America had been founded. My anger was with the widening gap between these prionciples on paper, and today'S reality and real motives of politics. Veterans usually do not easily vote for war - they know it better. And it is not the young boy's fault that they have been born and raised in this and no other social, over-patriotic climate that teaches them misleading perceptions of what war is. Recruiters visit school classes with pupils of age 15, 16 - kids they are, and often they get talked into something that they cannot know better at that age. I never was angry on those young ones beeing sent over there. I assume most of them really believed that they were participating in something good and that they could trust the motives of their supreme commander in the WH. Naive maybe, but not evil. In a way they had my sympathy, or compassion. Having worked in the field of traumatization myself for a short while, and having red about the late conseqeunces of the war 1991 (Gulf war syndrom, post-stress-syndrom, destruction of chemical weapons sites by open explosions, oil in the atmosphere, Uranium ammunition) I must assume that the real casualties of the foreign armies in Iraq already are in the range of high tens of thousands, if not beyond the 100.000-barrier. And most people will carry their wounds invisible, inside themselves, for the rest of their lifes.
This is what recruiters in schools usually do not tell you, and what the TV commercials hide from you. From my German perspective I find this habit of recruiters poatrolling schools and streets - shameful.
So, maybe you want to be a bit more forgiving or direct your criticism into another direction instead of saying "the kids opted for it"? Or did I understand your attitude wrong here? The politcial and economical decision makers, the think tanks - this is where to look for the guilty ones. Your troops in Iraq - somehow they are joining the rows of the many civilian victims (and the latter are the one who pay the real toll for this mess).
Nichts für ungut!
