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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
 Posted - 09/16/2009 : 01:45:00 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
Originally posted by Gorgo
Certainly they can send pictures and movies around of specific crimes, but most people see that kind of thing as unfortunate and isolated mistakes. I would assume that most people that even know about such things think the justice system of the military takes care of those kinds of things. |
This avoids addressing the target audience for my suggestion, and the fact that what would be presented to them would be nothing less than anti-war propaganda designed to combat the pro-war propaganda techniques being used by the military higher-ups. I mean, I would assume that anyone who set out to do something like I suggested would want to do something that might actually work at changing soldiers' minds, and not something lame and ineffectual as you assume.| But that doesn't address the issue of the whole war being an immoral and illegal thing. What do you do if you're a soldier, and you see that you're supporting a thug, that the only mission in Iraq and Afghanistan is to enslave the people, and if enslavement isn't possible, then the goal is impoverish and kill those that resist? We don't need to argue again what is legal and what isn't. Just assume for a moment that they're right. What do you do? Do you keep fighting because you don't want to be disloyal to your comrades and an oath spoken when you were misinformed? Do you join the resistance? What if their agenda sucks? |
This wasn't the issue. The issue wasn't disloyalty to one's comrades, but disrupting the supply lines that help keep one's comrades alive.
If you don't approve of the wars, you lay down your arms and accept the consequences. You try to get your fellow soldiers to do the same. You try to get people back home to tell their representatives to stop the wars.
You don't do anything that increases the risk to other soldiers' lives without their full, informed consent. And you certainly don't do anything that increases their risk while being completely ineffectual at delivering your message, like the two in the OP.
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Very persuasive arguments. |
I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears
But it's alright-
Jerry Garcia
Robert Hunter
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
Posted - 09/16/2009 : 01:55:59 [Permalink]
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If you want out, go UA, take the dishonorable discharge and become an objector, but don't throw someone else under the bus because you volunteered for something that you don't want to be party to.
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I think they didn't know what they were getting into. They thought they were going to help the people of Iraq and America and instead they found (again, rightly or wrongly) that what was happening was a campaign to impoverish and murder. The purpose isn't to throw someone under the bus but to stop the impoverishment and murder.
Those people who are thrown under the bus knew what they were getting into. They are soldiers. You can't have it both ways. If one group of soldiers knew what they were getting into, then both groups knew. I'm not saying I agree with either group, I'm just saying that this might be the argument.
I also think that slowing down one train isn't going to hurt anyone. It's not like the troops are dying for lack of ammunition. |
I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears
But it's alright-
Jerry Garcia
Robert Hunter
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 09/16/2009 : 03:46:11 [Permalink]
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What I think is needed is an orderly, working path that those in the military whose minds have changed can opt out in the era of the volunteer military.
In the Cold War era when most young men were subject to being drafted for two years of active duty, I volunteered to become a Naval Reservist at age 17 in 1962, even before I was required to register for the draft. I chose to go on active duty starting 5 January 1965. As my ship was crossing the Pacific for my first cruise, the first regular US bombings of North Vietnam began. (These bombings followed the Tonkin Gulf incident and the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of a few months earlier.)
As a little background, President Kennedy had tried to use the Special Forces to set up "strategic hamlets" in South Vietnam, based upon a successful strategy used earlier by the British to suppress a Communist insurgency in post WWII Malaya. The strategic hamlets were a key portion of Kennedy's attempt to cut off the Viet Cong from the people -- one that ultimately did not work.
When I was making cruises to the Vietnam war zone, Kennedy was already dead for a couple of years. President Johnson was making misguided and misguiding speeches about "winning the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people." At first, I was an ardent believer that the US was doing the right thing. I even volunteered to serve on a Swift Boat in the Navy's "green water" riverine fleet in South Vietnam. (I was denied a transfer.)
Then, one day in Subic Bay, Philippines, as I was going out to drink and wench in the local town of Olongapo, I walked past acres of long, wooden crates, stacked about twelve feet high. "FIRE BOMBS" was stenciled upon each crate.
That was my personal Road to Damascus moment. I simply could not reconcile "winning hearts and minds" with that vast stockpile of napalm. I knew we were all being lied to.
When my ship returned to the States, I participated in a 50-mile march of pacifists to Port Chicago, California, then a Navy base where napalm was transshipped to Asia. Some of the participants in the march stood in front of semi trucks loaded with napalm, which were entering Port Chicago. They were arrested. (I did not personally stand in front of the trucks.)
To this day, I do not think that what we were doing endangered US servicemen, so much as it was a pin-prick action to stop the wholesale destruction of entire villages in Viet Cong dominated areas of Vietnam. Napalm is a crude defensive weapon, if one at all!
So I think there can be times and places where (trying to) stop the movement of military matériel may (at least in potential) do more good than bad.
After I completed my active duty in January of 1967, I drifted into increasingly radical politics. I think now that much of the reason for this was my embitterment with the Navy for not even trying to follow its own rules for processing Conscientious Objector applications. (They are supposed to process these, just as were the draft boards.) Part of my radicalization was due to my rejection of pacifism, which I felt was next to useless.
I believe that there should be a realistic way for those like myself, whose conventional beliefs were shattered by experience (and not simply due to religion!), to separate themselves from military service, or at least from the sharp edge of it. Until the military allows such a safety valve to operate, it is in a position of helping create some of its own problems.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 09/16/2009 04:04:30 |
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
Posted - 09/16/2009 : 05:13:55 [Permalink]
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| It isn't just about separating one's self. It is also about working to eliminate the crime. |
I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears
But it's alright-
Jerry Garcia
Robert Hunter
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 09/16/2009 : 05:37:56 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Gorgo
It isn't just about separating one's self. It is also about working to eliminate the crime.
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And there's also the little matter of proving those crimes.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
Posted - 09/16/2009 : 06:21:48 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by HalfMooner
And there's also the little matter of proving those crimes.
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Sure. There has to be a mechanism for dealing with all of that, and there isn't. The U.S. resists such a mechanism. The U.S. violates the UN Charter and resists U.N. resolutions against its friends, like Israel, who violate all manner of international agreements.
It's time to end this party of the WWII victors. Nothing will be utopian, but we just seem to ignore what the victors of WWII do.
Saddam Hussein's invasion (with U.S. permission) of Kuwait was no different than George Bush's invasion of Panama in any legal sense, yet somehow the U.S. had to bribe and coerce other nations into driving Iraq out of Kuwait by brutally carpet bombing just about every city and village in Iraq(while refusing any negotiations at all) shutting them off from the outside world for years after that (while continuing the bombing), not to mention the current escalation of the war against the people of Iraq begun in 2003. You don't have to read Naomi Klein to understand that the purpose of the U.S. led war is to impoverish and murder.
I have no love for the Cold War institutions that make up international law. I just know that the U.S. has a double standard. They create kangaroo courts for people like Milosevic but reject even the slightest oversight for themselves. |
I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears
But it's alright-
Jerry Garcia
Robert Hunter
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 09/16/2009 : 07:47:07 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Gorgo
Saddam Hussein's invasion (with U.S. permission) of Kuwait... |
WTF?
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
Posted - 09/16/2009 : 09:08:56 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by HalfMooner
Originally posted by Gorgo
Saddam Hussein's invasion (with U.S. permission) of Kuwait... |
WTF?
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Yeah, I'm not sure what that means. Does it mean, "Hey guy, the April Glaspie thing has been debunked pretty successfully?"
If so, I guess the answer to that is eh, I don't know. Maybe it would have been better if I hadn't made such a declarative statement. I think the whole thing is questionable, but maybe that's just because I don't have the whole story, and that I don't understand diplomacy. Maybe my sources are too biased. Even Chomsky disagrees with the statement that Glaspie gave any sort of green light.
Maybe I'll just retract the statement and leave it at that.
Or, maybe "WTF?" meant something else, in which case I hope you'll elaborate. |
I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears
But it's alright-
Jerry Garcia
Robert Hunter
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
Posted - 09/16/2009 : 09:27:14 [Permalink]
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| Here's Daniel Schorr on the matter in September 1990. |
I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears
But it's alright-
Jerry Garcia
Robert Hunter
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 09/16/2009 : 19:24:01 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Gorgo
Originally posted by HalfMooner
Originally posted by Gorgo
Saddam Hussein's invasion (with U.S. permission) of Kuwait... |
WTF?
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Yeah, I'm not sure what that means. Does it mean, "Hey guy, the April Glaspie thing has been debunked pretty successfully?"
If so, I guess the answer to that is eh, I don't know. Maybe it would have been better if I hadn't made such a declarative statement. I think the whole thing is questionable, but maybe that's just because I don't have the whole story, and that I don't understand diplomacy. Maybe my sources are too biased. Even Chomsky disagrees with the statement that Glaspie gave any sort of green light.
Maybe I'll just retract the statement and leave it at that.
Or, maybe "WTF?" meant something else, in which case I hope you'll elaborate.
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No, you read me right. But I simply hadn't heard that charge. It was really a WTF moment to me.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 09/16/2009 : 20:46:37 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Gorgo
Here's Daniel Schorr on the matter in September 1990.
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My reading of that is Bush the (Only Relatively) Smarter had screwed up royally, in not making it plain that the US would not countenance an Iraqi seizure of Kuwait. I think this was a case of the stupids on a grand scale, rather than a wink and a nod to Saddam to allow his invasion. (After all, the Bush Administration's reaction afterward was a demand for withdrawal, and then war!) G.H.W. Bush, Baker, & Co. probably could have prevented the first Gulf War.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 09/16/2009 20:47:26 |
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
Posted - 09/17/2009 : 02:18:38 [Permalink]
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| Could be. I think there may be more to it than that, but there's enough controversy about it that I probably should have said that they seemed to give tacit approval rather than outright permission. |
I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears
But it's alright-
Jerry Garcia
Robert Hunter
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
Posted - 09/18/2009 : 09:47:08 [Permalink]
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As these things go, I think this is probably as good an account of the first Gulf war you're going to find.
He doesn't mention Hill & Knowlton and the PR war, including the babies in incubator story.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/Iraq_KH.html |
I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears
But it's alright-
Jerry Garcia
Robert Hunter
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Interview with Iraq veterans against the wars
