Do you "Support our Troops"?

[juggernaut]

I'm in now till nov. And I still work with soldiers everyday, most have been in the "Sandbox". I have been luckly in my ex-career. And have not been in combat. I have seen some interesting things and scary places but never combat. I always try and look at this from both sides as I have a added perspective as seeing and dealing with it everyday. 1 part of me blames the leaders another part of me blames all the soldiers involved. The way I was tought was you do not obey an unlawful command. Regardless! Period!. I can bet that everyone of those soldiers is wishing they did what they were tought. Maybe not so the younger and lower enlisted as when you are at that level, disobeying a direct order is a scary thing. You are never really sure if your commanders over your commander are going to protect you. The upper-level enlisted should be ashamed, they know better and have been in long enough to not have fear of dis-obedience. We are also dealing with a differant style of branch, The Marines. They are trained to be killing machines. I'm sure most Americans have one or two as a relative or friend and know what I'm talking about. Not your most mentally stable people I have run accross. They are of such a brotherhood that its something no one will understand unless they have gone through it with them. We cannot place a judgement on soldiers as a whole. Here we are as a group of adult webmasters who consitantly yell out foul when we are placed in the same catagory as CP webmasters. There are bad bunches to every pile. Let's not turn this into another "We hate soldiers!" era of the early and mid-seventys. We are not in a possition to say what we would or would not have done if we were there. It's hard to place yourself in an envirorment where if you turn your back or even have been perceived to have turned your back on your brother what would happen. Those of you who have been in know how easy it is for a person to be ostracized. Something you cannot afford to let happen. Who knows, you can be the one on the floor the next day and the guy next to you thinks you fucked him. You think he might move just a little slower to help you out? Would you take that chance? How easy would it be for you to turn to the "dark side" and kill some people if you have watched friend after friend get wounded or killed day after day by these people? When you were most likly lied to as to the reason you were going in. When you are there you cannot make friends with that culture, you cannot trust them 100%. One day the nice lady who waves to you every morning. Is blowing herself up 30 feet away from you. Think of what it's like to wake up everyday and not knowing if you or the person you are friends with is going to die. Think if you were walking down the street in your local town and someone just exploded. They live in a world we cannot comprehend sitting were we sit. Bad things happen in war, that's why it's call war.
I for one will not place judgement on those guys. They are going to be punished both via the courts and their own souls.

[sue-fl]

Oh hell no! You can not stop supporting our troops because of the actions of a few bad ones. Jim your right that they had to pull up a lot of people who are not ready for combat though. Our men and women are over their because the joined the armed services, and happen to have an idiot as a boss. There are a lot of good soldiers over there, you can't blame them all for the actions of a few though.

[docholly]

I'm almost 100% positive that those people in the military who joined before 2001 never ever imagined that they'd be in a war in Iraq. I'm almost 100% positive that those in the NATIONAL guard never thought they'd be in Iraq and not walking the streets of Paducah. It's a weekend job to make extra money. Certainly my now ex-husband never thought he'd be gone this long (March 2003-now) floating on a boat off the coast of Oman when he was promised a teaching position in Annapolis. He says the news they have on the ship's feed is so totally different than what we have. The only time they can access websites like CNN or other news sites is when he gets shore leave and can go to an internet cafe in Muscat. And he's an officer. But the superiors feel it would have an affect on the ship's mentality if they knew we were losing the fucking war.

but that does not negate what I refer to as the "video game mentality" because a good portion of the ground troops are 30 and under.. They've been saturated with 'war games' on their video and now they get to live it in real life. Back in 2003 after we 1st invaded. one of the reporters on the scene for CNN was interviewing this young man from the LA area. The reporter asked him how he was doing and was this what he expected when he enlisted. The kid said.. "No it's not like the video games, people get shot but they don't get a replay" So i think in their head they must feel it is OK to go into a town and slaughter innocent people. Afterall they could do that on their playstation.

We aren't talking Harvard graduates here. Who enlists in a volunteer military at horrible wages and even worse living conditions? Some of them who's only hope is to get out 'dodge city'

Wars, for whatever reason, are never good. People, sometimes innocent die. But this war is unconscionable because it was started on lies, it's been accelerated on more lies and maybe not in my lifetime will GWB go down as not only the very worst president we ever had but will be right up there with the other butchers in history like Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin etc.

Nixon is looking pretty good these days.

[virgohippy]

Thanks for your sentiments Jim. It means a lot that you can evaluate this so openly, especially considering the sacrifices you've made as a disabled veteran. But what do you mean by "support our troops"?

It seems to me that the greatest support I can make to our troops is to demand they come home. If that means calling this war an abomination, and thereby lessening the honor those serving might gain by doing their job, then I will criticize. I'm not going to hesitate simply because a person is putting their life in jeopardy for ideas I don't believe in.

That being said, if someone does choose serve I won't automatically hate them. I just can't condone giving up human life for intangible ideals.

Anyway...

Anyone catch that the Iraqi's wanted to do their own investigation into those 24 civilians shot up by those soldiers? If that's not a step towards independence, I don't know what is! Standing up to someone bigger than you with a gun is damn ballsy, man! Too bad uncle sam is such an overloard.