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Edited on Sat Feb-26-05 04:33 AM by punpirate
... but both sides have points.
By and large, the defense of the military used frequently is that we continuingly owe our freedom to them; that's a bit disingenuous, but I understand the origins of the sentiment (dates to the Revolutionary War and WWII). But, in truth, since the end of WWII, the military has been used almost exclusively for political purposes, not purely for the defense of our freedom and our internal Constitutional rights. The perception of that has queered ordinary people on the military, rightly or wrongly.
Since the advent of the all-volunteer military, many people feel that a young kid off the street should understand that he or she is being used by politicians and resist the inducements to become a part of that political process. That's not as easy for a poor kid to do as it might seem.
That said, this war has generated plenty of divisions, and some of those divisions have been created by soldiers themselves, largely because some soldiers have behaved atrociously and in contravention of their own general orders. Some people, and I am one of them, know that it is part of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) that a soldier is obligated to disobey an illegal order. Some soldiers in this most recent war have not done so and have reveled in the execution of those illegal orders, not realizing that they have tarnished the reputation of all soldiers by doing so.
There is a part of the public which is repulsed by such behavior (torture, indiscriminate killings of civilians, overt or disguised racism and the like) and would choose to see that as representative, especially if they were not in favor of the war.
There is another part of the public which would prefer to see that behavior as simply following orders and, therefore, excusable (the rejected Nuremberg defense).
Another part of the public chooses to see whatever the military does, collectively and individually, as beyond reproach because they are seen by that group as "defending our freedoms."
Myself, I see most of our soldiers (and most of the opposing insurgents, as well) as victims, as pawns in a greater game in which they haven't been coached in the rules of the game or told anything of the ultimate intentions for the game itself. The remainder are, on both sides, the few who gain pleasure from the pain of others. Those latter individuals should be judged for what they do in the contravention of ordinary human decency.
But, blame bleeds out like blood from a wound. When a Marine general describes killing as "fun," it's understandable why a portion of the public comes to think of such remarks as the prevailing opinion of all Marines. When an Army general fuses his religion with his command, as has LTG "Jerry" Boykin, some of the public thinks all under him share his irrational world view. When the president ignores and covers up war crimes (including his own) and fills the airwaves with empty praise of the military for purely political purposes, some part of the public makes an unfortunate association between the crime of the president and the people under his command.
What most of the public doesn't realize is that the mere preparation of an individual for war is a dehumanizing process. War itself reinforces callousness, inhumanity and an indifference to human suffering which no sane person can tolerate without the protective veil of what we call patriotism.
When people, in the military and out of it, are misused by their leaders for ill purpose, are led to war by false patriotism and lies, confusion and misunderstanding and blame bleed out like blood from a wound.
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