Dying for your country

[cynik]

"What we claim and what we know to be true only we know."

Not so. Indeed, quite a number of legal procedures and principles rest on the opposite premis.

That is, for example, we have heard you tender evidence that:

1. You gobble cock. (literally)
2. You lived in an English house.
3. You saved the world from itself eight times by dying for america.

And yet, it has been accepted by the majority of forum members that the objective truth is that:

1. You gobble cock.
2. You never lived in an English house. The street address you claimed to have lived in ten years previously was identical to a contemporary real estate ad found by mattus via google search.
3. The world was, somehow, not made perfect, and you still live.

What you know and what you think you know may indeed be the same thing, and privy only to your demented self. But the truth is out there, frogen.

And the truth is you are a worthless lying shitbag who grooves on the pain and suffering of others, because that is the best trip you can find for yourself.

[JW Frogen]

Fuck, and to think I bought expensive tickets to Cirus Sole when I could just read Cynik for free!

[boxy]

is an old fashioned, out of date notion. In the world we live in increasingly people will die for their corporation - or maybe someone else's.

Bullshit ele. No one willingly dies for a corporation. They'll take risks, if the pay is good... and also the insurance.

But they wont give their heart and soul to a corporation like they would their homeland... the place their children sleep.

Dying for your nation is just less necessary these days, at least in the 1st world. Our "defense forces" are so overwhelmingly powerful to anyone who would dare to attack us, that there hasn't been a direct attack upon us in this generation.

These days you don't get to choose to put your life on the line defending your country, you either have to sign up to be sent out to attack someone else... or you just have plain bad luck, and be one of the infinitesimally small minority that are directly affected by a terrorist attack on home soil.

[Rainbow Moonlight]

So who are the soldiers in Iraq dying for Boxy? Aren't they dying for US corporations profits? Or do you buy into the idea that they are actually stopping terrorist attacks in the US by fighting in Iraq?

[JW Frogen]

One of the reasons PA has really died is because we have ALL heard each other before, and we either agreed or disagreed and decided many years ago.

I suspect we have all found more mentally stimulating conversations, and that is what these are, not essays that will be published in Foreign Affairs, on other forums.

But one last time for old times sake.

What do democratic militaries do?

You would be sent to provide food and humanitarian aid like Bosnia, a peace keeping force to keep warring parties apart like Australia in East Timor, NATO and Russia in Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, or as a peace keeping force to prevent Totalitarian invasion, as NATO did during most of the Cold War, as the US is doing now in South Korea.

You could be sent to stop piracy at sea, or sea rescue, or to provide humanitarian aid during natural disasters, as during the Tsunami, Hurricane Hugo ect.

Yes, some times you will be sent to war. For instance to liberate a nation brutally conquered, such as in Kuwait.

What are US solders doing in Iraq ele?

Well let’s ask one, Mark Daily who did give is life in war.

Now I know ele that you are some one like Cynik, people with no experience of military life and cynical about democracy, stuck in a simplistic ideology everything is being manipulated for corporate profits, political relativists who believe tyranny with electricity is really no different to democracy, will dismiss it out of hand.

Blind cynicism is a cancer not easily cured, perhaps for some it can only cured by direct experience with the alternatives to democracy. Live in North Korea, or as a Kurd under Saddam, or as a Kuwaiti under Iraqi occupation, and you will learn quick time the value of democracy.

But there is one difference between you and the late Mr. Daily, he believed enough in what he was doing to risk his life for it.

It is easy to sit on a forum and rant, as Cynik does about the all Iraqi babies dying because of this war while ignoring those that have or would die because of the tyranny that caused the war, to pretend it was a comic book choice between paradise, peace, and war, but that simply was not the choice.

At present the people killing most Iraqi civilians, including children, are not democratic soldiers fighting desperately to confirm the Iraqi people’s decision in three elections and their right to live peacefully under that descion, but rather the insurgents randomly bombing because they will not consent to will of most Iraqis.

You care so very desperately about the Iraqi child accidentally killed by a stray US bomb, but the tens of thousands killed by Saddam or the insurgents, that would have died had if his tyranny had continued, well, they just don’t count in your mental arithmetic.

Sort of like the votes of Iraqis.


http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/feat ... rentPage=2

I quote him:

“Anyone who knew me before I joined knows that I am quite aware and at times sympathetic to the arguments against the war in Iraq. If you think the only way a person could bring themselves to volunteer for this war is through sheer desperation or blind obedience then consider me the exception (though there are countless like me).… Consider that there are 19 year old soldiers from the Midwest who have never touched a college campus or a protest who have done more to uphold the universal legitimacy of representative government and individual rights by placing themselves between Iraqi voting lines and homicidal religious fanatics”

And

“ I was having a conversation with a Kurdish man in the city of Dahok (by myself and completely safe) discussing whether or not the insurgents could be viewed as "freedom fighters" or "misguided anti-capitalists." Shaking his head as I attempted to articulate what can only be described as pathetic apologetics, he cut me off and said "the difference between insurgents and American soldiers is that they get paid to take life—to murder, and you get paid to save lives." He looked at me in such a way that made me feel like he was looking through me, into all the moral insecurity that living in a free nation will instill in you. He "oversimplified" the issue, or at least that is what college professors would accuse him of doing.”

What would you risk your life for?

[AiA in Atlanta]

is an old fashioned, out of date notion. In the world we live in increasingly people will die for their corporation - or maybe someone else's.

Bullshit ele. No one willingly dies for a corporation. They'll take risks, if the pay is good... and also the insurance.

But they wont give their heart and soul to a corporation like they would their homeland... the place their children sleep.

I am not so sure Boxy. I see people killing themselves everyday for their corporation -- heart attacks, cancer ... The death isn't as dramatic or sudden as in war but dead is dead.

[JW Frogen]

I am not so sure Boxy. I see people killing themselves everyday for their corporation -- heart attacks, cancer ... The death isn't as dramatic or sudden as in war but dead is dead.

In Japan at one time illness caused by the stress of overwork was considered one of the leading causes of death.

Whale consumption was promoted as a possible cure.

[AiA in Atlanta]

I am not so sure Boxy. I see people killing themselves everyday for their corporation -- heart attacks, cancer ... The death isn't as dramatic or sudden as in war but dead is dead.

In Japan at one time illness caused by the stress of overwork was considered one of the leading causes of death.

Whale consumption was promoted as a possible cure.

I ate whale in Japan one time. Felt guilty as hell about it but told myself the poor animal was already dead and somebody was going to eat it .... It had a salty flavour, much like a vagina.

[IQSRLOW]

It had a salty flavour, much like a vagina.

That's a business opportunity gone begging...

[Rainbow Moonlight]

Why people believe they are there Frogen si one thing. The function they serve there is another. And the reason they were sent is the why i was getting at in this case, not their own motivations. I truly believe there are many people who join the military with a good motive in their head and or heart, and many more who do not join in order to kill but for reasons such as the training and work opportunity. But why did Bush send them to Iraq? What function has the invasion primarily served?

I think it can be argued one of the functions that it has primarily served is to fill the pockets of American corporations, both with American tax payer's dollars and Iraqi reconstruction money. Given the recent argument between the Iraqi government and the US government about how long the troops can stay and under what conditions, (partly resolved by the UN agreeing to a 6 month extension), a middle east military base and control of Iraqi resources seem to register high on the why-o-meter too.