A US soldier walks at an army base in Karamless, east of Mosul, Iraq, December 25, 2016. (Reuters / Ammar Awad)
Danny Sjursen, The Nation: I’m Watching My Students Become Soldiers in Our Endless Wars
At West Point, Graduation Day felt more like a tragedy than a triumph.
Patches, pins, medals, and badges are the visible signs of an exclusive military culture, a silent language by which soldiers and officers judge each other’s experiences, accomplishments, and general worth. In July 2001, when I first walked through the gate of the US Military Academy at West Point at the ripe young age of 17, the “combat patch” on one’s right shoulder—evidence of a deployment with a specific unit—had more resonance than colorful medals like Ranger badges reflecting specific skills. Back then, before the 9/11 attacks ushered in a series of revenge wars “on terror,” the vast majority of officers stationed at West Point didn’t boast a right shoulder patch. Those who did were mostly veterans of modest combat in the first Gulf War of 1990–91. Nonetheless, even those officers were regarded by the likes of me as gods. After all, they’d seen “the elephant.”
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WNU Editor: The above author is clearly pessimistic on what these endless wars have brought to America. But I find there is a bigger story that is not receiving the attention that it deserves. Even though the American military is a volunteer force, it still has no problem to attract recruits, even with a booming economy. These young men and women want to serve, knowing too well that they may find themselves in a war-zone and all the dangers that it may entail. There is something to be said about that.
5 comments:
"..... something to be said about that"
Perhaps misguided patriotism causes them to put their lives in danger and ultimately to face what at home? Realization that the hidden truth not discussed in this article is that all the similar heartache they experience was not in the process of defending their country, but to aid in discrediting it. But then a job is a job.
https://outline.com/r29Atz
I still feel concern for the South Vietnamese after over half a century since leaving that country. I have family members, one of whom is currently in the US Army and whose grandfather served in the SVN army and then fled SVN when the country fell. I feel the same concern for anyone who is not allowed to exercise their abilities and dreams to a much greater extent than is the case under some of the thuggish regimes in existence today. I felt this way before my war. I feel it as I type. My sense of a universal right and wrong has not changed.
Your above remarks, as you well know but choose to ignore, would have caused you a great deal of unpleasantness in some countries in history and even today.
I don't for the life of me understand how you can type some of the things you type but that is still your right thanks to those you denigrate.
Some days, Bob, you should stick to fly specks. Al three of them.
Roger
Roger
I am sure you understood very well what I was saying, although, and especially for someone who was involved in a very useless war during which a lot of innocent people were needlessly killed, and there were/are many more like it, that it may be very difficult to appreciate the comment I made on the article I posted.
When I read it I felt for the soldier, then I wondered how that soldier would have felt if America had been invaded, for whatever reason, and how he and perhaps his children would deal with such an invasion.
My thoughts on this were inspired by an interview I saw a long time ago when a decorated Vietnam vet was asked if he would fight for his country again. His comment, 'yes for sure but only from my own back porch'.
What do you think Roger? Would you just give up your country, or, fight for it and do you think that a solder of the enemy, in those circumstances discussed in the article, would feel the same as that soldier did?
I know the truth hurts but don't blame me for saying the obvious. Blame your government(s) for sending you and others to fight, kill and be killed for what? More oil, more military posts, more revenue for the WIC?
"These young men and women want to serve, knowing too well that they may find themselves in a war-zone and all the dangers that it may entail. There is something to be said about that." Don't forget that millions of young men fought and died, many just as bravely, for Hitler, too.
Physical courage has its uses, but it doesn't match the moral and intellectual courage needed to tell the truth, when the wars at issue are based on lies.
Bob, Carl, I understand your comments and feel they should have taken precedent in some instances of our foreign involvements starting in 2003 when Bush II tore open the middle east and HRC got us into Libya.
I appreciate your reasoned feedback.
Roger
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