The troops: I've had enough

Our civilization is imploding

And the reason is that as a collective organism, we have "gone soft."

Soldiers nowadays are FAR more removed from actual bloodshed than their ancestors. Most Americans who fought in the Civil War (America's bloodiest war, by far), stood within 3 yards of the enemy soldier they were shooting. After that single round was fired, the assailants usually beat each other to death with their empty rifles, or cut each other to pieces with swords or bayonets. None of them ever got any counseling, other than from a doctor or pastor who felt compassion and helped them find a way of thinking about what they'd had to do.

But 5 generations after it all, with psychology and psychiatry to help us, with mental hospitals and veteran's administration officials, our soldiers are "softer" than ever. The past decade has seen fewer deaths (10,000) than any real "war" in US history. And yet suicide rates are up, and the soldiers return home and are never the same.

Why is the job of soldiering suddenly "un-do-able"? Has war become grittier? Or have soldiers become weaker?

And what about civilians? When did we expect soldiers to have a career without doing any killing? Have we really so succumbed to MacNamara's vision of "police action" that we expect there to be no enemy casualties?

America is an Empire pure and simple. It may not be quite as cruel as the Spanish empire, or as prideful as that of the Romans, or as efficient as the Mughals or Mongols. But an empire is finished when its own people no longer view their soldiers' efforts as effective, or even relevant, to their own small lives.

There comes a point at which the civilian population no longer empathizes with its own soldiers. No longer respects the toil and danger they undergo, the years of privation and isolation of a professional soldier. And that is the point when the troops will readily turn on "their own" people---when they feel they no longer belong to anyone but themselves. So they aren't "defending" anyone, just doing business.

While you may think it is your prerogative to withhold your love from the troops, they may eventually take the hint, and withhold their love from you.

reply to post by tovenar


Well said!! I am new to this ATS and not sure how i even found this site. After a few hours of reading post on this site i felt 90% of the people here needed to get back on their meds and so I figured this would be a great site to troll since most of them believe anything even the most outlandish stories.

Then i read your reply and that changed my thinking of the site. I guess you can find good intelligent people in the weirdest of places. thanks for that reply, i read it to some of the guys in my unit and couldnt agree more.

I dislike war full stop! I dislike those who instigate/incite it, I dislike those who support it, I dislike those who condone it, I dislike those who turn a blind eye to it - and I dislike those who are ignorant to the real motives behind it.

War is nothing more than control, greed, anger and legalised murder/slaughter.

I also don't care that very few people I have known in my life do not agree with me, and dislike me for it - I would not want people who support all of the above in my life anyway.

War is one of the many many reasons why I will not vote! I have also been berated, hung drawn and quartered in the past for "wasting my vote" - and "disrespecting what women went through in order for me to have the right to vote" - I have been looked upon as if I am Satan himself for not wanting to vote

reply to post by Nyree


I dont know anyone that likes war or innocent people getting killed but war is necessary sometimes, like WW2. I am not a warmonger nor do I agree with alot of the things the country I serve does and I sometimes call my country a terrorist country because of some of the things we have done. like when we dropped 2 nuclear weapons on civilian cities. We are the only nation that used nuclear weapons against another country so we should be last ones to have nuclear weapons.

As for the troops, yes theres a few bad eggs. dont judge all of us on the misdeeds of a few. Most of us enlist not to kill. Some do it to for the perks like free education, some do it cause they look at their children, wives or any loved ones and want them to be safe and try to preserve what freedoms we have for the next generations. Yes we know its our choice to enlist knowing we will go to war and kill, but if there wasnt people willing to do that and the time came there would be a draft, meaning teachers, doctors, ect. and your sons and daughters will be the ones fighting.

Oh btw i dont vote either anymore, last time i voted was about 9 yrs ago when i was like 18 or 19. Its my right to vote or not. If someone gets butt hurt cause I or anyone doesnt vote then oh well I will still sleep fine at night

Originally posted by ussoldier
reply to post by Nyree

 

I sometimes call my country a terrorist country because of some of the things we have done. like when we dropped 2 nuclear weapons on civilian cities. We are the only nation that used nuclear weapons against another country so we should be last ones to have nuclear weapons.

I encourage you to read up on that decision to drop the bombs. You will find that Japan intended to fight on their mainland, and calculated it would kill A MILLION American servicemen to take and occupy Japan. They didn't think Americans would have the guts for that. So even after August 7, 1945, when Truman dropped the bomb on them, they still didn't surrender. Let that sink in for a second. They calculated that the United States could not possibly have a second bomb of such incredibly expensive manufacture, so they refused to even negotiate with the Americans, even while Hiroshima was still smoldering.

They still thought they could beat the US, after the first bomb.

It was only after the second was dropped, on Nagasaki on August 9, and when the Soviet Union commenced its own invasion of Japanese territory, that the High Command began to question further hostilities. Even at that, the Emperor Hirohito didn't officially announce his willingness to surrender until August 15---more than a week after Americans began nuking his people.

President Truman wasn't "merely" killing 250,000 Japanese lives---He was saving a million American soldiers!

As for the troops, yes theres a few bad eggs. dont judge all of us on the misdeeds of a few. Most of us enlist not to kill.

The Service personnel I know joined from a mix of patriotism and a realization that the military was the best opportunity to earn a living and provide for their families. It's the same reason why someone agrees to be a mortician or a proctologist: the money makes it worthwhile.

Originally posted by ussoldier
reply to post by Nyree

 

I dont know anyone that likes war or innocent people getting killed but war is necessary sometimes, like WW2. I am not a warmonger nor do I agree with alot of the things the country I serve does and I sometimes call my country a terrorist country because of some of the things we have done. like when we dropped 2 nuclear weapons on civilian cities. We are the only nation that used nuclear weapons against another country so we should be last ones to have nuclear weapons.

As for the troops, yes theres a few bad eggs. dont judge all of us on the misdeeds of a few. Most of us enlist not to kill. Some do it to for the perks like free education, some do it cause they look at their children, wives or any loved ones and want them to be safe and try to preserve what freedoms we have for the next generations. Yes we know its our choice to enlist knowing we will go to war and kill, but if there wasnt people willing to do that and the time came there would be a draft, meaning teachers, doctors, ect. and your sons and daughters will be the ones fighting.

Oh btw i dont vote either anymore, last time i voted was about 9 yrs ago when i was like 18 or 19. Its my right to vote or not. If someone gets butt hurt cause I or anyone doesnt vote then oh well I will still sleep fine at night

edit on 11-6-2012 by ussoldier because: (no reason given)

I would never generalise or judge - my own Father was in the Royal Navy, and joined when it was "the done thing", yet he couldn't abide war.

I'd certainly say the UK were becoming a terrorist country for sure! I always believed that the "forces" were for the purpose of "protecting" our country should it come under attack - but it seems the actual purpose is to attack other countries.

I don't for one moment swallow the rubbish that we're fed about the reasons for this either - it has nothing to do with protecting our citizens, or even protecting the citizens of other countries, it's about oil, money, power and control!

I've always been impressed with the Finnish military. Living next to the SU, and now Russia, they could not afford to take an aggressive stance. So they poured all their money into a military that is purely defensive. It is actually cheaper and MORE threatening to an invader if your army is 100 percent defense.

For instance, they had some tanks in the 80s that had no turret. If the Soviets had invaded, they would only need to shoot one direction (East!). Because they didn't need rotating turrets, their tanks cost less than half as much. And since they didn't need a turret, they could be lower profile, and easier to hide along the forested roads leading into Finland.

They did it on such a massive scale that offenders really had to think about the high price for such a small reward.

Even so, if it had not been for the Cold War balance of power, Russia would have invaded Finland. It wasn't their defensive stance that saved them. It was the existence of NATO.

reply to post by theconspirator


Puppet Regimes with fixed candidates and politicians, who are controlled by corporate interests and control the elections results and politicians and these insane policies from infiltrators who are criminals who are running the show...it is our job to stop the madness and remove the conspirators and infiltrators...they got you all runnning on wild goose chases and stealing oil and destruction abroad, when the real enemy is the one given the orders and running the show....starting to make sense yet?

Originally posted by tovenar
President Truman wasn't "merely" killing 250,000 Japanese lives---He was saving a million American soldiers!

Today’s evidence shows that the United States government acted about as Machiavellian as any government ever has. While American boys were fighting and dying on the islands surrounding Japan, the American government was playing chess with world, especially Eastern Asia. The United States government, including Roosevelt and Truman, knew the trajectory of Japanese surrender sentiments as they unfolded. The Japanese only wanted to preserve their emperor, and would fight to the last man to do that, which all U.S. diplomats knew it quite well. The United States, throughout the period of Japanese exploration of surrendering, continually stressed that surrender had to be "unconditional." The only condition that the Japanese wanted by May of 1945 was to retain their Emperor, and our government knew it.[232] The underlying reasons for stalling Japanese attempts to surrender appear to be several:

1. The revenge for Pearl Harbor theme;

2. The United States government was playing chess with the Soviet Union, and its eye was firmly on what the post-war world would look like, with the defeat of Japan an inevitability that the policymakers were already looking far beyond; the United States government wanted to limit the Soviet Union's influence in Eastern Asia after the war, especially in China;

3. The atom bomb was the "ace in the hole" that the United States was eagerly waiting to play; it would be a demonstration of power to the Soviet Union that they could not ignore; the desire to demonstrate the bomb before the world was calculated to have maximum impact on the Soviet Union.

4. Using such a horrific weapon on the Japanese was logical, given the hatred that Americans held for the Japanese, a hatred that far exceeded American animosity toward the Germans, for instance; undoubtedly, racist sentiments had much to do to with it, in the most racist nation of all time.
-- Wade Frazier, A Healed Planet

Ignorance denied.

reply to post by tovenar


Im all for saving american lives but not if in doing so we drop nuclear weapons on civilian cities. If we dropped them on a military installation then fine but we didnt. Armies fight armies not defensles civilians. We had a new toy we couldnt wait to try out. Truman decided to use nuclear warfare in a conventional war when the threat wasnt warrented to do so.

"The money makes it worthwhile" i dont know anyone who signed up for the money. Average salary of enlisted soldier is $43,000 a yr. My friend makes more then me working at Homedepot

Originally posted by petrus4
1. The revenge for Pearl Harbor theme;

Seriously? A much more realistic reason was that Hiroshima, while not having a large military base, was the largest collection of war industries outside the capital district, which the Allies wanted to keep intact if possible.

2. The United States government was playing chess with the Soviet Union, and its eye was firmly on what the post-war world would look like, with the defeat of Japan an inevitability that the policymakers were already looking far beyond; the United States government wanted to limit the Soviet Union's influence in Eastern Asia after the war, especially in China;

That doesn't even make sense. The Soviet Union had refused to mobilize against Japan until the second bomb was dropped on August 9. Patton had been fired in the European theater for saying that we should move faster than the Soviet Union, and insist on controlling Berlin. Truman wanted to appease the Russians, and slowed down the advance in southern Germany, so that the soviets could take the german capitol, one of their primary war aims.

How is minimizing US casualties "playing chess" with the soviet union? The west had no control over when the soviets finally attacked japan.

3. The atom bomb was the "ace in the hole" that the United States was eagerly waiting to play; it would be a demonstration of power to the Soviet Union that they could not ignore; the desire to demonstrate the bomb before the world was calculated to have maximum impact on the Soviet Union.

Actually, the biggest concern was that it would fail to detonate, and that the US would be handing over 25% of its enriched uranium stockpile to the Japanese and that THEY would find a way to detonate the bomb--on the incoming US fleet! As soon as the Trinity Expirament succeeded, the US raced to get the bomb deployed to Japan. They had thousands of sailors' lives hanging in the balance, and the US fleet under increasing threat from Kamikaze attack, the closer they got to the Japanese mainland. So, number 3 is a bunch of crap as well

The war was not a foregone conclusion in the summer of 1945. And it is racist to assume that that Japanese weren't a credible threat the the US, that the US couldn't really be afraid of non-whites (the Japanese people) and that somehow, dropping a bomb on them was "really" about sending a message to other white people (Russians) who were fighting on the same side.

That's sort of like the people on ATS who say that the Pyramids must have been built by aliens, since "simple people" like the brownskinned Maya or Egyptians, would not have been capable of building a wonder.

4. Using such a horrific weapon on the Japanese was logical, given the hatred that Americans held for the Japanese, a hatred that far exceeded American animosity toward the Germans, for instance; undoubtedly, racist sentiments had much to do to with it, in the most racist nation of all time.
-- Wade Frazier, A Healed Planet

What a freaking crock. US policy after December 1944 was that all paratroopers and SS officers were to be shot on sight instead of being allowed to surrender. One US commander, a Major-General, ordered his troops to accept no surrenders at all once they had crossed the Rhine into Germany. His order was never countermanded by higher ups. SS and paratroopers were only taken alive once the German state had surrendered unconditionally to the Allies.

If it was racist to drop the bomb on Hiroshima, then explain the fire-bombings of Dresden and Hamburg, which killed as many as the atomic bombs did. Even worse, the Dresden bombing was momentarily halted after the first hour, in order to kill as many firemen and police as possible, when they came out to battle the flames.

And characterizing America as the "most racist nation of all time" only betrays your own ignorance of historical racism. Maybe you'd care to rank America's racism among the following list:

-The Japanese "rape of Nanking"
-South African Apartheid
-German colonies in Sudwest Afrika (Namibia,)
- Belgian Congo,
-Rhodesia
-French colonies in Hispaniola
-Armenian genocide

Or maybe you only meant to say that America was more racist than.....Nazi Germany??? Seriously?

That's just America-hatin', plain and simple.

Originally posted by tovenar
Originally posted by petrus4

2. The United States government was playing chess with the Soviet Union, and its eye was firmly on what the post-war world would look like, with the defeat of Japan an inevitability that the policymakers were already looking far beyond; the United States government wanted to limit the Soviet Union's influence in Eastern Asia after the war, especially in China;

That doesn't even make sense. The Soviet Union had refused to mobilize against Japan until the second bomb was dropped on August 9.

(Emphasis mine)

You obviously didn't read the three words I emphasised above.

What a freaking crock. US policy after December 1944 was that all paratroopers and SS officers were to be shot on sight instead of being allowed to surrender. One US commander, a Major-General, ordered his troops to accept no surrenders at all once they had crossed the Rhine into Germany. His order was never countermanded by higher ups. SS and paratroopers were only taken alive once the German state had surrendered unconditionally to the Allies.

That might have been true where rank and file soldiers were concerned, yes; but unfortunately for you, I know about the existence of Operation Paperclip. I also know about the degree of German influence that was present in the creation of the CIA. That influence did not come from nowhere.

If it was racist to drop the bomb on Hiroshima, then explain the fire-bombings of Dresden and Hamburg, which killed as many as the atomic bombs did. Even worse, the Dresden bombing was momentarily halted after the first hour, in order to kill as many firemen and police as possible, when they came out to battle the flames.

The Germans having committed attrocities in no way excuses the Americans having done so. This is a ridiculous argument.

And characterizing America as the "most racist nation of all time" only betrays your own ignorance of historical racism. Maybe you'd care to rank America's racism among the following list:

I only need to mention what was done to the Native Americans, and also the dislocation/slavery of the black population.

You are a victim of nationalist mind control, and that has quite clearly been the motivation behind your attempt (and I emphasise the word attempt) to refute me, here.

Originally posted by petrus4

If it was racist to drop the bomb on Hiroshima, then explain the fire-bombings of Dresden and Hamburg, which killed as many as the atomic bombs did. Even worse, the Dresden bombing was momentarily halted after the first hour, in order to kill as many firemen and police as possible, when they came out to battle the flames.

The Germans having committed attrocities in no way excuses the Americans having done so. This is a ridiculous argument.
.

Oh. My. God.

Those weren't German atrocities. You don't even know what you're trying to refute, do you?

Dresden and Hamburg were Allied bombing campaigns on Germany. Showing that the US bombed non-Japanese cities every bit as much as Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

You don't know the basics of military history, and yet you're arguing that my view is wrong????

You're really so sure that America is the worst nation in history, but you have no idea what history you're talking about; just your own prejudices.

If you don't know which side committed which atrocities, how do you know that your view of America is correct? How can America be "the most racist nation in history," when you don't know enough history (America's or anyone else's) to even comment in a knowing way?