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[Iduno]

Yanquis: Not all American soldiers are childkillers
American soldiers:

EDIT: I can't wait for the enlightened American progressives in here to explain how this good old boy is an anomaly and that not ALL American soldiers are cowardly, raping, aggresive thugs who have a monopoly on violence against people who can't fight back. I can only hope that those fucking cops you lads hate go on to treat you like your fucking childkiller boys treat people abroad.

They do. It's pretty common for military people to retire, become police, and retire again. It's not just the money, it's mostly the power and being able to kill, rape, and rob whomever you want. There are other reasons to join one or the other, but decent people don't last long.

Right. A video of Trump saying the n slur wouldn't stop anyone from voting for him.

Being racist, homophobic, a racist, etc. hasn't stopped anyone from voting for any political candidate in the US. Obama built the concentration camps Trump uses, took millions of dollars to sabatoge people's medical care, and set the stage for killing BLM protestors while labeling them all thugs. He still has a legacy as a hero because he's a far-right Democrat instead of a far-right Republican.

Hasn't "just following orders" been confirmed to be not a valid excuse since Nuremberg?

Sure, if you accept the rulings of war crime courts. This is the US, so we do not.

[SalmonGod]

I think LW may have meant leaders should be held responsible in addition to the folks what did it.

Maybe.  But I'd like to think LW has seen enough of my opinions around to know that I don't let leaders off the hook.  We've both frequented this forum's political threads for around 10 years.  I put a lot of energy into criticizing terrible leaders.  I bring up war crimes and the like often enough, and usually never mention soldiers or workers.  The only exception would be cops, who I criticize a lot.  So I thought it safe to assume that LW knows I'm not absolving leadership roles of responsibility.  Far from it.

But in cases of participation in egregiously unethical behavior, I think it's important to recognize that a terrible leader is only capable of making a bad mark on the world because their orders are followed.  A military leader ordering war crimes only causes war crimes to actually happen because of people following orders.

And in the context of my original point when I jumped in on this, which was -- "Don't join the military" -- and the responses about how capitalism makes sinners of all of us/military's just another job and so on...

If my boss at my non-military job tells me to shoot someone (or insert whatever other more realistic extremely unethical but legal thing), I can quit.  I can just walk out the door of my office any time I want and never return.  I may face economic hardship as a consequence.  But I retain the legal right to refuse my boss's orders if I find them too heinous, and I face only natural consequences for doing so.  So when I take a normal civilian job, I may be participating in an unethical system, but I retain ethical agency.  I can set boundaries.  I can decide at any time that something is too low for me.  So when you accept employment at some vanilla civilian job, there is no special ethical weight to that decision.  Every other person in society is bearing at least the same ethical weight to survive.  It's not until my boss tells me to do something extremely unethical that I am faced with a choice which will distinguish my character from anyone else's.

If a general tells a soldier to shoot someone and they refuse, they face a court martial, and pretty serious consequences under a completely different legal system set up specifically for soldiers.  They gave up their ethical agency under the law when they joined the military.  So their choice is made at the moment they sign up.  They are making an agreement in advance to follow extremely unethical orders.  Even if they are never actually faced with such an order and expect it's unlikely they ever will be, they are still making that agreement to do so.  And if they don't believe that's what they're doing, then they didn't do their homework on one of the most important decisions of their lives.  The character of that decision is thus incredibly different in nature from the ethics of civilian work, and it's silly to me to say that when military leadership orders soldiers to do terrible things that those soldiers bear no responsibility for having agreed to subject themselves to such orders in the first place.

[Starver]

Hasn't "just following orders" been confirmed to be not a valid excuse since Nuremberg?

Sure, if you accept the rulings of war crime courts. This is the US, so we do not.

Just the other day, there was this news, showing/extending the colours on that issue.

(edited for s5upidness of keyboard... And that one purposefully left in.)

[SalmonGod]

Yanquis: Not all American soldiers are childkillers
American soldiers:

EDIT: I can't wait for the enlightened American progressives in here to explain how this good old boy is an anomaly and that not ALL American soldiers are cowardly, raping, aggresive thugs who have a monopoly on violence against people who can't fight back. I can only hope that those fucking cops you lads hate go on to treat you like your fucking childkiller boys treat people abroad.

They do. It's pretty common for military people to retire, become police, and retire again. It's not just the money, it's mostly the power and being able to kill, rape, and rob whomever you want. There are other reasons to join one or the other, but decent people don't last long.

And to be clear, I'm not trying to demonize all military personnel to this extent.  Don't lump me in with this. 

I honestly believe most just don't put much thought into the decision when they sign up.  Which is why it's important to counteract troop worship culture and speak frankly about the nature of the decision, so kids do have the ability to recognize the nature of what military recruiters are asking them to do.  Because honoring all dead soldiers unquestionably as heroic sacrifices, framing it as defending freedom and service to country, and promoting the idea that soldiers bear no responsibility for what they're told to do all just makes it easier for kids to approach that decision to enlist uncritically.

[Sirus]

Yes I saw the picture, though I didn't notice the boom mic. I'd still want some audio (or better yet, video) of the incident however, as this could just be some still image taken out of context. Or a statement from the guy in the picture, or the boom mic operator, or something. Something other than a story being sold in a book written by a known fibber.

So this purportedly is the video in question.

[hector13]

Looks like something he did for 2012.

Highly amusing that he suggested Obama has no experience in balancing payroll or some shit when Trump has bankrupted multiple businesses, and also that Obama was to blame for an economy that tanked before he actually took office.

Aside from that, I’m not sure this is a big deal.

[sluissa]

It's only mildly more insulting than the typical campaign ad. It's actually interesting to see a Trump from 4 years ago compared to Trump today. Presidents tend to visibly age quite a bit in office, and Trump is no exception, I'm just used to seeing presidents look like that after 8 years rather than just 4.

[Starver]

That was my takeaway, definitely. Not only did 'fauxbama' not look like Obama[1], but Trump does not look like the (train)wreck he's become.

Obama greyed a bit[2], but I think wears well in general (even given the racial stereotype about that[3]) and I'm not sure we ever saw him visibly stressed like we've seen Trump stressed. Frazzled even.


[1] He looks to me a lot more like some other person... maybe a tertiary character in Fresh Prince, but I don't have very good face-memory or castlist-memory, so this is very probably wrong and I'd be luck if it was instead just a tertiary/token character from something else of that era that I'm thinking of. And given the time since, it could only be a 'tribute double' of them, anyway, who has themselves aged or worse in the meanwhile.

[2] Hence this guy, hopefully chosen from Central Casting for "a distinguished amount of greying" rather than any other visual quality then that greying applied as make-up...

[3] Being a lizard-man, etc?

[askovdk]

Short personal anecdote about the glorified American military.
I’m from Denmark, and in my early twenties I visited Washington DC, and in all honesty talked with my American host about; how powerful the message from the Vietnam memorial wall was, and how the Americans could be proud to have the guts to have such a statement in the center of their capital.
See, to me the memorial wall is a wall of _shame_ on the politicians, - each name carved in stone represents a soldier dead, because the political government couldn’t do their job and avoid war. So to have such a memorial reminding the political hart of US, that the government’s decisions can kill this many soldiers, was (and in my eyes still is) a bold and strong statement.
I can’t remember my host’s reaction, but I have later learned that some Americans consider the wall a place where the soldiers are honored.

[wierd]

It is... Unpopular... To address that the elephant is in the room. (No matter how much tempera paint, paper mache, and festive bunting they swaddle it with to make it look like one of the decorations.)

Specifically,  It is NOT common knowledge outside of more historian-esque (and even then, borderline conspiracy theory territory), how the Vietnam conflict was very much a product of the Johnson's, with their heavy investiture in the military industrial complex(1), and the need to distract the public from domestic affairs of state that would have derailed some political careers(2).

(1)
 (Honorable mention-- The Johnson's were no stranger to straight up graft either)
(2)

As such, the notion that the vietnam war memorial is anything other than "Support our TROOPS!", (and thus, not the smarting black-eye that the political establishment had to endure after being forced to concede to the anti-war movements of the period, but not until after they had sufficiently distracted the public) is not well considered over here.

[dragdeler]

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[sluissa]

I blame decades of movies and TV shows(and more recently games) that glorify war.

Started, more or less as straight up propaganda pieces during WW2(possibly even earlier?) and people liked them so much they just kept making them.

[Rolan7]

So, today isn't the real Labor Day.

At the time, Chicago authorities had no doubts about whom to hold responsible. Local radicals were rounded up and quickly convicted of inciting the "riot," as the city fathers dubbed it. No credible evidence was produced linking the defendants to the bomb, as the prosecution freely conceded. But an example had to be set.

"They are no more guilty than the thousands who follow them," the prosecutor said in his closing argument. "Gentlemen of the jury, convict these men, make examples of them, hang them and you save our institutions, our society."

[dragdeler]

-

[Starver]

In the UK, our focii are:

• The Cenotaph, Whithall (government centre, handy walking distance from Parliament and Palace, Abbey and agregated business-zones), central London - does not (IIRC) have any particular names, merely acts as a focus of Rememberance of WW1/2/other conflicts;
• Local 'Cenotaphs', or something of that flavour, in virtually every community (often by the church, town/city-hall, set into government/services building (as was, if not currently so), by the village green or the centre of the hamlet) - tend to have have the names of the local casualties (Great War, added WW2, maybe later additions for later conflicts) except for the few "Doubly Blessed" locations where no casualties occured which may instead depict local Participants (as might others have, on separate areas) as having served and survived.
• The National Memorial Arboretum, a relatively recent (post-Afghan/Iraq initiations?) creation out in the 'wilds' of Shropshire. A somewhat more geographically-central location for the nation than the London-based one, but not yet perceived as a focus for the general public, even though featured in occasional broadcasts. I cannot speak for the military psyche. - Every single casualty (from WW1 onwards?) is supposedly carved into the structure, with 'space to spare' designed in from the onset

Then there's locations like the Menin Gate which have many, many casualties engraved (in MG's case that are, or at least were, not 'engraved' within known graves) more as pilgramage destinations than necessarily a central point of record, but with the same sense of ceremony, complimentary to the (known) graves made to the various Unknown Soldiers.


I can't say how much we (generically) treat those names/symbols as honouring the dead vs. highlighting the failures that caused those deaths (war being politics by other means, when the original means failed/were allowed to fail[1]). On 11/11 of every year, I try to honour them in thought and by deed (of observance) in attending a Rememberance Day gathering[2], and I definitely feel sadness more than gladness, but it's hardly at the forefront of my mind for most of the rest of my year, nor a spur to End All Conflict (regardless of it being not within my power to do much in that line). It's a reflection on the inevitably-happened, I suppose, in crude terms.

I don't think there's much glorifying done, though. Not much "I'm glad his name is there", for sons, brothers, fathers, grandfathers, etc. (And daughters, etc, in memorials that cover positions and/or conflicts where this is a thing.) Not for people who have gone beyond childish games of cowboys and indians/nazis and allies/earthmen and aliens/whatever kids get up to these days when not sat playing Call Of Duty Halo Fortnite, and haven't gone on to spraypaint marble with skewed swastikas or somesuch for whatever reason...


[1]*cough*Brexit*/cough*
[2] Hmmm... Might be different this year, Covid regulations and predominant older people attending, etc... Watch this space?