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> ... giving their lives for their country This is so surreal to somebody from Europe - how can you justify to be on the moral, just side (or even look at your

> ... giving their lives for their country This is so surreal to somebody from Europe - how can you justify to be on the moral, just side (or even look at yourself in the mirror and call yourself a good christian or just a good person), when you go to place half around the world which did no aggression towards your home country, invade it, rape it, kill civilians left and right and utterly destroy it for generations to come. Without any proper reason whatsoever. "I was told to" can't be possibly enough. He might have been a gentle loving person back home, but when deployed, he had to follow orders. He had to kill people in foreign land, people that were home there, defending their home country from foreign invasion. If foreign power invaded your home country/town, wouldn't you stand up to it? (I would probably just leave till all calms down which seems never for Iraq/Afghanistan, but not everybody wants to lose their only home or actually can leave) No possible moral high ground there. Soldiers are hired guns who kill for the money (or the thrill of it), trying to add some higher meaning there is just unrealistic wishful thinking from army PR campaigns. Yet another life with possibly great potential wasted on... nothing (actually worse than that - adding more 'evil' to this already messed up world). Serve your country by improving lives of your fellow citizens, however that might be, not by joining some amoral war machinery

mango7283 8y ago
Is being Europe really relevent? NATO forces were involved in Afghanistan... Are they different from American soldiers in this regard?
- antod 8y ago
  This was about Iraq though. Apart from the UK, NATO pretty much stayed out of that. And despite having less to justify it, the consequences (direct and indirect) of invading Iraq were worse than invading Afghanistan.
- saiya-jin 8y ago
  As other poster mentioned I meant mainly Iraq where situation is different, sorry for not being more clear. In most European countries if not all, if politicians tried to sell some remote unjust war they want to start by striking patriotic tunes (so people would make similar ridiculous claims), they would get laughed at/outright rejected. Politicians would have to put in place mandatory drafts and even then a lot of people would run away/go rather to jail. It just feels so surreal to be so much out of touch with reality in a modern western world in 21st century to believe in such lies and very much risk their lives for them. Now if somebody couldn't care less about shooting kids, mums and old people and of course patriots and other random folks on the other side and wants to have adrenaline ride, that's another story. But lets be honest about this.
  - mango7283 8y ago
    Fair enough. Even so, NATO countries still participate in other military operations such as the bombings in Syria and Libya - is the difference that those had the force of UN resolutions behind them, involved only air attacks and were not sold on the back of patriotism?
- zaarn 8y ago
  Even at peak my country deployed only a little over 5000 soldiers into Afghanistan, a majority of those for supportive and police roles, not for active combat. Even that is being opposed.
seventhtiger 8y ago
America has not been invaded. The closest you get is 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. Their cultural memory does not respect the horrors of a foreign invasion. The only people who experience war are young men who go halfway across the world then come back hailed as heroes. Their old WW2 veterans still haven't experienced their hometown being firebombed to ash and dust. In most of the world you can point to the rubble a city was built on and the older generations will tell you about it.
- bovermyer 8y ago
  America has been invaded, actually. First in 1812, by the British. There were two more invasions by foreign armies in 1915 and 1916, but I'm not sure they count, since they weren't sovereign powers and were quickly dealt with. But you're right, there is no living American who remembers an invasion of our territory.
  - richardhod 8y ago
    Context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812
  - Cthulhu_ 8y ago
    And earlier in the late 1400's by Columbus, the Spanish, the British, etc.
    - bovermyer 8y ago
      Yes, but in case I was using the context of "America as sovereign nation" rather than "America as geographic region."

mango7283 8y ago

Is being Europe really relevent? NATO forces were involved in Afghanistan... Are they different from American soldiers in this regard?

antod 8y ago
This was about Iraq though. Apart from the UK, NATO pretty much stayed out of that. And despite having less to justify it, the consequences (direct and indirect) of invading Iraq were worse than invading Afghanistan.
saiya-jin 8y ago
As other poster mentioned I meant mainly Iraq where situation is different, sorry for not being more clear. In most European countries if not all, if politicians tried to sell some remote unjust war they want to start by striking patriotic tunes (so people would make similar ridiculous claims), they would get laughed at/outright rejected. Politicians would have to put in place mandatory drafts and even then a lot of people would run away/go rather to jail. It just feels so surreal to be so much out of touch with reality in a modern western world in 21st century to believe in such lies and very much risk their lives for them. Now if somebody couldn't care less about shooting kids, mums and old people and of course patriots and other random folks on the other side and wants to have adrenaline ride, that's another story. But lets be honest about this.
- mango7283 8y ago
  Fair enough. Even so, NATO countries still participate in other military operations such as the bombings in Syria and Libya - is the difference that those had the force of UN resolutions behind them, involved only air attacks and were not sold on the back of patriotism?
zaarn 8y ago
Even at peak my country deployed only a little over 5000 soldiers into Afghanistan, a majority of those for supportive and police roles, not for active combat. Even that is being opposed.

seventhtiger 8y ago

America has not been invaded. The closest you get is 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. Their cultural memory does not respect the horrors of a foreign invasion. The only people who experience war are young men who go halfway across the world then come back hailed as heroes. Their old WW2 veterans still haven't experienced their hometown being firebombed to ash and dust. In most of the world you can point to the rubble a city was built on and the older generations will tell you about it.

bovermyer 8y ago
America has been invaded, actually. First in 1812, by the British. There were two more invasions by foreign armies in 1915 and 1916, but I'm not sure they count, since they weren't sovereign powers and were quickly dealt with. But you're right, there is no living American who remembers an invasion of our territory.
- richardhod 8y ago
  Context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  And earlier in the late 1400's by Columbus, the Spanish, the British, etc.
  - bovermyer 8y ago
    Yes, but in case I was using the context of "America as sovereign nation" rather than "America as geographic region."