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I was conscripted at age 18. I'm a lot older now and it blows my mind more and more at how war and veterans and victories and leaders are celebrated and therefo

I was conscripted at age 18. I'm a lot older now and it blows my mind more and more at how war and veterans and victories and leaders are celebrated and therefore... legitimized. The masses are made to think fighting a war (soldier) for someone else (the president and the military industrial complex) is an honorable thing to do. Because patriotism. Which is bullshit. We share this little blue ball in space with all of these people who scare us, whose ideals we ridicule. And people who love and live and dream like we do. There is no honor in violence. Even less in oppression. Regardless of justification.

mc32 7y ago
The problem is there are those who don’t share your idealism and would take this position and take full advantage of it. Vietnam might have been a boondoggle of a war. But it certainly better than had we folded and let the dominoes fall in many places where there was some discontent but not nearly as much as there would be with Soviet style governance. Certainly there were smarter ways to wage the war, but short of taking over the corrupt local govt there wasn’t much else we could do. We suggested land redistribution and other forms of reform, as we implemented successfully in South Korea but the South Vietnamese wouldn't have it.
- ahelwer 7y ago
  Are you suggesting that the US government was right to indiscriminantly bomb a small nation halfway around the world for self-determining into a style of governance disliked by the US? Or are you suggesting the North Vietnamese were a tool of the Chinese or Russians? In which case - like Robert McNamara - you would be told by the former foreign minister of Vietnam that you should read a history book[0], because you have no knowledge of the region's history. The Vietnam war was a disgrace waged for no valid reasons, accomplishing nothing except ending the lives of millions of Vietnamese people. To defend it in this day, with all the benefit of hindsight, is utterly beyond the pale and should rightfully be compared to supporting other historical atrocities such as the genocide of Native Americans. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHdMeHxDg90&t=2m8s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHdMeHxDg90&t=2m8s
  - mc32 7y ago
    I suggest you talk to members of the first generation of the Vietnamese diaspora living in the US and see what they think about the war. No war however done is good to have. Some wars are necessary and come with great loss. It’s unavoidable. There were many mistakes in Vietnam-the whole war, but it wasn’t pointless. The middle eastern wars we went into are pointless. Those are local conflicts and we should let them settle their own scores. The Vietnam war was more than about Vietnam. Kennedy knew that.
    - ahelwer 7y ago
      Thankfully I live in Seattle, so there are quite a few Vietnamese people. Generally once you get to know them they'll open up about how the war was (to repeat) a disgrace waged for no valid reasons, accomplishing nothing except ending the lives of millions of Vietnamese people. Of course, if some random American comes up to them demanding their thoughts on the Vietnam war they might have a different answer. You should consider re-examining your belief in domino theory.
      - ioufjiosufisd 7y ago
        The largest Vietnamese communities in America (i.e. in Southern and Northen California) still universally fly the South Vietnam flag. You can often see this flag flown with the American flag.
  - ioufjiosufisd 7y ago
    Using your argument, how exactly do you know better than the Vietnamese in the South (minus the Viet Cong) who wanted the US's help to combat the North's aggression? They literally fought alongside the US.
    - dondawest 7y ago
      Why do you assume that the aforementioned “small nation halfway around the world indiscriminately bombed by the US government” is Vietnam and not Cambodia? Do you think the US was right to carpet-bomb Cambodia?
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  You simply don’t know. The whole country and its neighboring countries got destroyed by the Vietnam war. I am not sure if a communist takeover would have been worse for the regular citizen. When you look at Eastern Europe I think people were better off under communist government compared to the devastation a war may have brought.
  - conjectures 7y ago
    The problem with this as a general policy is that it is bad game theory. It means bad actors get to win by threatening to cause more damage fighting than if they win without a fight. You're always hostage to threats from bad actors.
    - Ididntdothis 7y ago
      I know. It’s a very complex situation. But I think we should also not blindly accept a lot of wars as “ necessary “ and better than the alternative. It’s also often not clear who is the good or bad guy. As far as i know in Vietnam for example the main goal was to get rid of the colonialists. If the west had accepted that maybe north Vietnam wouldn’t have aligned with the Soviets. In addition the west also aligned with highly corrupt leaders in the south. We see the same dynamic in the Middle East. Out of short term interests we ally with highly corrupt dictatorial governments there and then we are surprised that things blow up in our face.
    - dondawest 7y ago
      All animals in the universe are “hostage to threats from bad actors.” Most fights in the animal kingdom are avoided by a simple size comparison between two animals, after which the smaller animal submits. Size is an implicit threat, one that can never be eliminated. How exactly do you propose to eliminate the implicit threat of one animal/group of animals simply being larger than another?
      - emiliobumachar 7y ago
        I would think most fights in the animal kingdom are predation, where the prey faces death and the predator, starvation. Perhaps you had just dominance fights within the same species in mind?
- nitwit005 7y ago
  While the estimates of total casualties vary quite a bit, an enormous number of people were killed in Vietnam. It was basically a genocide. Even if you believe in the domino theory (personally think that was nonsense) there's no real scenario where the war could have been a net positive. The US put that corrupt local government in power by the way.
b_tterc_p 7y ago
This is something that bothers me, perhaps even more in current circumstances. Our military recruitment model targets people who are primarily just poor. Then we call them heroes and treat them like shit. But by calling them heroes it implies they signed up for purposes like patriotism and honor. Not the reality that a lot of them are just shifted into it for lack of better options. It’s a grave disservice to soldiers to hide their struggles with bullshit praise. There may well be heroism involved in military service, but it’s used as blinders to avoid the fact that we have screwed over vets for years ever since, idk, the bonus army; and fully intend to continue doing so.
- nradov 7y ago
  US military recruiting now targets more middle class than poor people. The poor people too often fail to meet entrance standards due to not having a high school diploma, low test scores, history of drug abuse, criminal record, or medical problems.
  - b_tterc_p 7y ago
    I’m not sure this is true I found this article which sort of suggested it, but the math didn’t match my intuition. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-recruitment-problem-the-military-doesnt-want-to-talk-about/ https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-recruit... Obesity and intelligence are certainly problem factors, but I just don’t believe middle class millennials are the ones going to the military. I have to believe it’s still the poor who aren’t disqualified. Open to contradiction though.
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  Is that surprising your not going to get many young people with skills and qualifications joining up as an infantry man. One of my mates signed up and said that he enjoyed his 7 years but then it was time to get a job that paid a living wage. Which is why the military and related orgs have such a hard time recruiting people experienced technical skills.
  - 7y ago
_pmf_ 7y ago
Full Metal Jacket: "Joker, maybe you'd like our guys to read the paper and feel bad?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOI7cqUYaS4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOI7cqUYaS4
snarfy 7y ago
IMO every soldier should know that 'war is a racket' [1] [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
phjesusthatguy3 7y ago
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46560/dulce-et-decorum-est https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46560/dulce-et-decoru... I don't know how 10-year-old me found that poem, but I memorized it for a fifth-grade poetry recital. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, indeed.
johnny313 7y ago
I volunteered at 18 just after 9-11, reached the same conclusion pretty quickly... I fear the US political establishment learned the wrong lesson from Viet Nam. Avoiding the social costs (like the draft) to our current military engagements overseas has allowed the US to be indefinitely at war for 18 years.

mc32 7y ago

The problem is there are those who don’t share your idealism and would take this position and take full advantage of it. Vietnam might have been a boondoggle of a war. But it certainly better than had we folded and let the dominoes fall in many places where there was some discontent but not nearly as much as there would be with Soviet style governance. Certainly there were smarter ways to wage the war, but short of taking over the corrupt local govt there wasn’t much else we could do. We suggested land redistribution and other forms of reform, as we implemented successfully in South Korea but the South Vietnamese wouldn't have it.

ahelwer 7y ago
Are you suggesting that the US government was right to indiscriminantly bomb a small nation halfway around the world for self-determining into a style of governance disliked by the US? Or are you suggesting the North Vietnamese were a tool of the Chinese or Russians? In which case - like Robert McNamara - you would be told by the former foreign minister of Vietnam that you should read a history book[0], because you have no knowledge of the region's history. The Vietnam war was a disgrace waged for no valid reasons, accomplishing nothing except ending the lives of millions of Vietnamese people. To defend it in this day, with all the benefit of hindsight, is utterly beyond the pale and should rightfully be compared to supporting other historical atrocities such as the genocide of Native Americans. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHdMeHxDg90&t=2m8s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHdMeHxDg90&t=2m8s
- mc32 7y ago
  I suggest you talk to members of the first generation of the Vietnamese diaspora living in the US and see what they think about the war. No war however done is good to have. Some wars are necessary and come with great loss. It’s unavoidable. There were many mistakes in Vietnam-the whole war, but it wasn’t pointless. The middle eastern wars we went into are pointless. Those are local conflicts and we should let them settle their own scores. The Vietnam war was more than about Vietnam. Kennedy knew that.
  - ahelwer 7y ago
    Thankfully I live in Seattle, so there are quite a few Vietnamese people. Generally once you get to know them they'll open up about how the war was (to repeat) a disgrace waged for no valid reasons, accomplishing nothing except ending the lives of millions of Vietnamese people. Of course, if some random American comes up to them demanding their thoughts on the Vietnam war they might have a different answer. You should consider re-examining your belief in domino theory.
    - ioufjiosufisd 7y ago
      The largest Vietnamese communities in America (i.e. in Southern and Northen California) still universally fly the South Vietnam flag. You can often see this flag flown with the American flag.
- ioufjiosufisd 7y ago
  Using your argument, how exactly do you know better than the Vietnamese in the South (minus the Viet Cong) who wanted the US's help to combat the North's aggression? They literally fought alongside the US.
  - dondawest 7y ago
    Why do you assume that the aforementioned “small nation halfway around the world indiscriminately bombed by the US government” is Vietnam and not Cambodia? Do you think the US was right to carpet-bomb Cambodia?
Ididntdothis 7y ago
You simply don’t know. The whole country and its neighboring countries got destroyed by the Vietnam war. I am not sure if a communist takeover would have been worse for the regular citizen. When you look at Eastern Europe I think people were better off under communist government compared to the devastation a war may have brought.
- conjectures 7y ago
  The problem with this as a general policy is that it is bad game theory. It means bad actors get to win by threatening to cause more damage fighting than if they win without a fight. You're always hostage to threats from bad actors.
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago
    I know. It’s a very complex situation. But I think we should also not blindly accept a lot of wars as “ necessary “ and better than the alternative. It’s also often not clear who is the good or bad guy. As far as i know in Vietnam for example the main goal was to get rid of the colonialists. If the west had accepted that maybe north Vietnam wouldn’t have aligned with the Soviets. In addition the west also aligned with highly corrupt leaders in the south. We see the same dynamic in the Middle East. Out of short term interests we ally with highly corrupt dictatorial governments there and then we are surprised that things blow up in our face.
  - dondawest 7y ago
    All animals in the universe are “hostage to threats from bad actors.” Most fights in the animal kingdom are avoided by a simple size comparison between two animals, after which the smaller animal submits. Size is an implicit threat, one that can never be eliminated. How exactly do you propose to eliminate the implicit threat of one animal/group of animals simply being larger than another?
    - emiliobumachar 7y ago
      I would think most fights in the animal kingdom are predation, where the prey faces death and the predator, starvation. Perhaps you had just dominance fights within the same species in mind?
nitwit005 7y ago
While the estimates of total casualties vary quite a bit, an enormous number of people were killed in Vietnam. It was basically a genocide. Even if you believe in the domino theory (personally think that was nonsense) there's no real scenario where the war could have been a net positive. The US put that corrupt local government in power by the way.

b_tterc_p 7y ago

This is something that bothers me, perhaps even more in current circumstances. Our military recruitment model targets people who are primarily just poor. Then we call them heroes and treat them like shit. But by calling them heroes it implies they signed up for purposes like patriotism and honor. Not the reality that a lot of them are just shifted into it for lack of better options. It’s a grave disservice to soldiers to hide their struggles with bullshit praise. There may well be heroism involved in military service, but it’s used as blinders to avoid the fact that we have screwed over vets for years ever since, idk, the bonus army; and fully intend to continue doing so.

nradov 7y ago
US military recruiting now targets more middle class than poor people. The poor people too often fail to meet entrance standards due to not having a high school diploma, low test scores, history of drug abuse, criminal record, or medical problems.
- b_tterc_p 7y ago
  I’m not sure this is true I found this article which sort of suggested it, but the math didn’t match my intuition. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-recruitment-problem-the-military-doesnt-want-to-talk-about/ https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-recruit... Obesity and intelligence are certainly problem factors, but I just don’t believe middle class millennials are the ones going to the military. I have to believe it’s still the poor who aren’t disqualified. Open to contradiction though.
C1sc0cat 7y ago
Is that surprising your not going to get many young people with skills and qualifications joining up as an infantry man. One of my mates signed up and said that he enjoyed his 7 years but then it was time to get a job that paid a living wage. Which is why the military and related orgs have such a hard time recruiting people experienced technical skills.
- 7y ago

_pmf_ 7y ago

Full Metal Jacket: "Joker, maybe you'd like our guys to read the paper and feel bad?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOI7cqUYaS4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOI7cqUYaS4

snarfy 7y ago

IMO every soldier should know that 'war is a racket' [1] [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

phjesusthatguy3 7y ago

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46560/dulce-et-decorum-est https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46560/dulce-et-decoru... I don't know how 10-year-old me found that poem, but I memorized it for a fifth-grade poetry recital. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, indeed.

johnny313 7y ago

I volunteered at 18 just after 9-11, reached the same conclusion pretty quickly... I fear the US political establishment learned the wrong lesson from Viet Nam. Avoiding the social costs (like the draft) to our current military engagements overseas has allowed the US to be indefinitely at war for 18 years.