It amazes me to see that there are so many here that can't understand what would happen if soldiers were allowed to make policy individually. I'm sure there are many soldiers who see Iran as a threat. Does this mean that they should take actions on their own? Screw what our leaders tell us to do, let's drive our division over the border into the real source of the problem. People see things as ok when it suits their needs. Pure fucking hypocritical.
That soldier didn't make policy, he refused to participate in something he saw as anti-ethical to being a good American, namely participating in an illegal war that was propogated by purely manufactured reasoning. There is a precedent for this, but only a few cases in the American military dating back to the Civil War. In the IDF, there has been many cases where highly trained and decorated pilots have refused unethical orders in the heat of battle. There have been MANY cases in history where a soldier would have easily been considered a hero for refusing an immoral order, why is it different when it is a US soldier?
Besides, not all of us can get ourselves assigned to glamour units like the Texas Air National Guard in order to avoid wartime service.
Oh wait, he just joined for the college money.
Believe it or not, some of us join out of a sense of public service. I had scholarships and parent's money coming out my wazoo when I signed up, I've never collected on my college benefits and don't plan to do so, and it wasn't even a distant consideration when I joined. I don't believe I was alone in this, nor do I believe it was a dumb choice. At no point in this man's testimony did this man state that he joined "for the college money." This particular talking point that keeps getting brought up is null and void.
As wrong as the war in Iraq was/is it has to be said: don't sign up for the military if you think you are going to get to exercise your own free will.
The only sure things in life are death and taxes. In an "all volunteer" army, you do have some free will. You are not a slave in a free society, military member or not. As an officer though, this man should have resigned his commission out of protest, which has been the classical way to handle this, not wait until deployment time...this is where he screwed up.
That being said, there are a few tricks that are being pulled right now that I became a victim of personally and I'm sure many others have. It's called "Stop Loss", aka, the "Back door draft". My voluntary contract ran out in 2002, but I was kept in for another 18 months against my will. If I had allowed them to promote me, I would have been involuntarily extended for life (to the 20 year mark). Now, after 3 years of being out, my parents back in the US have recieved notice that I am to report again. I did nearly 9 years already, but I only volunteered for 7 of them. I will happily go back though when Jenna Bush goes in uniform.
I still can't figure out what the hate is for. If you are in the military, are you jealous that he is doing what you didn't have the balls to do? Do you not realize that his actions have a minute chance of saving the life of a fellow soldier by underscoring and bringing to light the BS reasons why we are there and went there in the first place and putting on political pressure to end it? Of 150,000 troops or so, he certainly won't be missed by not being there, especially as a grunt LT. Of those without the balls to sign up yourselves, I can't even begin to imagine the problem...because you feel that he is defying an extension of your own power? That he won't be a good tool and go kill bad brown people? Do you feel so strongly about American Empire that this man is such an affront to what you hold dear about your superiority or manhood? Do you believe that by throwing enough American lives into the meat grinder that it will make everything better in a war against people that you only know by 15 second blurbs on FoxNews?
I digress, bottom line is this man is doing what he feels is right and may sacrifice up to 6 years of his life for it. There's all kinds of ways to game the system if you don't want to go to war out of cowardice, but he didn't choose any path like that. If you can't respect that, what can you respect?
PS
Um news flash, they kinda did have them. Oh wait thats right, the news didnt want you to know that so therefore you dont.
Just because a single neo-con Senate member (Santorum) wishes it were true and said so on Fox, doesn't make it true. His wonderful memo he wrote up himself was more or less total fantasy magically produced but failed to rally his electorate last election year (poor guy lost his seat). If it was, I'm sure Tony Snow would be singing it from the WH podium and rafters. From 97 to 99 I was personally on the large team that made the real assessments (one every two years) as a translator, and believe me, we were thorough. In 2002, Saddam gave inspectors carte blanche to go running around and served up a completely unedited 10,000 page doc of the disposition of everything he had weapons related. There were no suprises on that report, nor were there any omissions. We did find a small cache of rusty artillery shells, which could theoretically be chemically armed leftover from the early 80's Iran-Iraq War, as well as a single shell that had definitely buried from before '87 containing a trace of Sarin, but nearly all of the 8 shells never had been filled and no traces of chemical existed in any but the one. Nothing on the scale that would justify going to war over, and all evidence points to a simple hasty and failed disposal, not storage or intention to ever use them again.
And personally, Deeznuts, I'll let you in on a little secret...your chain of command will LIE to you. They have done so in the past, and they will again. For military expediency it happens for good or bad, whatever it takes to motivate you. When I was deployed I just finally gave up trying to explain reality to my soldiers, as what they believed from the unit rumor mill and what was put out in briefings and what I actually saw come through on the computers for intel assessments in the G/S-2 were nearly always two different things. I'm not saying it was right or wrong, but it does lead to some pretty fucked up mentalities and some dangerously silly judgment errors ("Noooo, don't shoot the sheep, they really aren't strapping bombs!")
Last edited by GorillaTicTacs (2007-01-05 03:47:35)