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Your second paragraph seems callous to me. Going to war for the sake of not wasting one's hard training, so to speak, is not moral. At least as I look at it.

Your second paragraph seems callous to me. Going to war for the sake of not wasting one's hard training, so to speak, is not moral. At least as I look at it. War is horrible and should be avoided at all costs. Sometimes it is justifiable and necessary. War should be a last resort. I wish society had alternate means of accomplishing your first paragraph without resort to the second.

bootload 12y ago
"Your second paragraph seems callous to me. Going to war for the sake of not wasting one's hard training, so to speak, is not moral. At least as I look at it." Don't waste good.
rob_lh 12y ago
It could be a callous viewpoint, but intent certainly matters. Just going to war to use your training is wholly callous. But take any of the recent genocides (Rwanda) or even ISIS - innocent people are unquestionably being killed. A soldier hears about this in the news, prepares every day to stop large forces like that, and instead is being asked to stand down. The media obviously plays a large role in shaping the perspective of horrors being done in the world, and I wouldn't argue war is the solution to all but a few problems. However, it is fairly straightforward and morally defensible that innocent people would be alive if other people were killed, and soldiers are prepared and ready to kill.
- mercurial 12y ago
  Innocent people are unquestionably being killed, but the US shocked and awed plenty of civilians back in the day. And its actions did cause a major civil war. So it all depends on what you think of the deeper reasons behind wars, and of how much civilian leaders have considered the consequences of their actions. The problem is that wars are rarely waged to protect innocents, they are an answer to strategic considerations.
- lostlogin 12y ago
  Keep in mind that the average war kills as many civilians as it does combatants. War is not precise, despite what we are told. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio
  - pluma 12y ago
    But luckily the US is changing that by re-defining who is or is not a civilian. Last I checked the official stance was that any able-bodied adult or adolescent male in a war zone is considered an enemy combatant in official statistics.
- Htsthbjig 12y ago
  "But take any of the recent genocides (Rwanda) or even ISIS - innocent people are unquestionably being killed." Yeah, take that. What you don't talk about is that what we call ISIS today was US best friend just months ago. They were called euphemistically "moderate rebels fighting for democracy in Syria" and they were supported economically and with weapons by the US and Saudi Arabia to kill innocent people there(and put a puppet state in place). Of course they took the weapons and crossed the border to occupy Iraq, as the failed state the US created made it so easier than fighting against a well organized, and Russia supported army. Media creates your perceptions based on their own interest. If the news come from far away, media has total control of shaping your emotions, as you don't have family, friends, eyes or ears in the place.
  - WettowelReactor 12y ago
    The situation is quite a bit more complicated and nuanced than how you present it here. The whole mess is made up of a plethora of parties with differing ideologies and priorities. Ascribing the formation of ISIS to the US lacks any real thought on the subject.
Mz 12y ago
I was a military wife for a lot of years. Also, my dad was career military and fought in two wars. When you get trained to deal death, yes, you tend to become somewhat callous. Being exposed to that culture helped me effectively combat a serious medical condition. I don't think it is somehow inherently evil.
nostrademons 12y ago
Society does have alternate means of accomplishing the first without the second - there's the Peace Corps/Americorp, getting a job, starting a business, volunteerism, doing a Ph.D. Not all paths are appropriate for all people, though.
AYBABTME 12y ago
Why is it callous? Why get in the army in the first place, if not to do the work of the army? I'd be hypocritical to join the army with the desire to then avoid operations. I can understand that people be against war. I don't like violence. I don't encourage violence and certainly do not enjoy wars. But wars exist and as a citizen, you can decide to wish that war magically weren't a thing, or do something about their existence. I did not encourage the concept of war by taking part in it, no more than I encourage system outages when I take part in building or fixing them. War is not just war. It's not "just going somewhere to kill people". I didn't decide "Oh all that sweat wasted, better kill foreigners to make up for it". I volunteered because I thought I could make a positive influence, if any, by being a reasonable person doing their job in the most humane way I could. Not every soldier is an angry, bloodthirsty, moronic killer. Most of them aren't. I don't wish to kill an innocent person anymore than you do. I don't wish to kill a guilty person either. But sometimes, participating in a war, or killing a person, is the only way to make the war less harmful, or prevent that person from killing many more. Avoiding wars at all cost is not a magic bullet against wars. That's my take on it, I might be wrong.
- lukifer 12y ago
  As Sun Tzu said, the greatest warrior is the one who need never fight. While this can be interpreted as a pacifist/moral sentiment, it is really deeply practical: fighting incurs risks and resources, even if victorious. The most effective victories come from a credible deterrent which is never actually used. So I don't think your training would have been wasted by not seeing combat, any more than a policeman's weapon is wasted even if it is never fired.
  - pluma 12y ago
    If only US policemen listened more closely to Sun Tzu.
- BuckRogers 12y ago
  You sound like a good person to me, but I do think you're wrong. It would be very hard for you to not see things the way you've described them, without going crazy at least. It may be best to reject others' opinions, considering what you've done. Just to maintain that sanity. We all lie to ourselves for many things in our lives to maintain sanity. I'm not saying this in any way to be a slight towards you. I personally think the current wars are actually abusive to those who join. Just because someone signs up to -defend- the nation, doesn't mean the political elite has a right to abuse those people. Since I think the wars are unjust, illegal and doing more harm overall than good. I'd never participate and would never encourage anyone I know to do so either. The best way to end war, which is never the 'right thing' in my mind to refuse to participate. There are -always- alternatives even if the argument coming from the profiting parties don't frame it in such a way that this is clear. Short of having foreign troops as we have them overseas, in your hometown. Then there likely are few alternatives. Someday, and I think that day is approaching or we wouldn't be automating war, we'll see everyone as the same as us. I'd grab a gun and defend my home in Afghanistan too. I don't blame those people. Just as I'd be a 'terrorist' if the Chinese were in the US today to liberate us. I don't believe in gods or the tooth fairy- but I'd be happy to ally myself with Christian Fundamentalists if it meant preventing some jackass Chinese soldier from blowing up my grandmother's house, raping my wife, or just for simply marching around my hometown like they own the place. Which all of these things happen when you give someone a gun and license to kill. The whole get-the-bad-guy argument has been proven wrong so many times. Looking at the situation today, Saddam was a great guy who we wish we could put back into place. Now there's ISIS, it's all a huge joke on us. I don't honestly believe it's about any noble goals though. It's about perpetual war, using any argument at any cost to keep it going. This is the Vietnam they failed to turn into a perpetual goldmine for those who finance it and build the bombs. If you get my overall point here, you'll see I actually Support the Troops better than those who have the stupid bumper stickers or tell you "thank you for your service". The best way to support them is to bring them home where they belong, defending the nation from attack. I can't thank anyone for their service since I don't support the mission, but I also can't bear the thought we as citizens have somehow allowed this to go on for so long. If political influence wasn't strictly measured by our bank accounts in our society, you'd never had a war to fight.
griffinmahon 12y ago
"Callous" is probably an imprecise word choice for the sentiment you're trying to communicate. And anyway it's not necessarily immoral to go to war for this reason depending on how you perform the calculus, e.g., depending on how much government money went into training and considering most soldiers don't kill others, it might be morally permissible. I also doubt that the commenter would wholly support going to war or that he would seriously disagree with any of the assertions in "your second paragraph". But life is hard, and people have to try to achieve their goals and form a coherent narrative out of things. You might do better to reconcile a critique of the military with the fact that people in the military are not all bad or in the wrong.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
dba7dba 12y ago
A quote from "This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History" "The single greatest weakness of a free people is always their moral doubts."
PeterisP 12y ago
War is horrible and thus starting a war should be avoidable at all costs - it should be a last resort, but this recommendation applies to the politicians and country leaders. For the trooper, it's entirely differnent - assuming that a war exists already, the choice is about which bodies get sent there, and not wasting your training is a reasonable argument. Once a war exists, joining it usually contributes to it's end; if the other things are somewhat comparable, a shorter war is less horrible to everybody (especially local civilians) than a prolonged war, and you get a shorter war by winning with an overwhelming force.
- 82xx 12y ago
  If no one joined then the war would end much more quickly.

bootload 12y ago

"Your second paragraph seems callous to me. Going to war for the sake of not wasting one's hard training, so to speak, is not moral. At least as I look at it." Don't waste good.

rob_lh 12y ago

It could be a callous viewpoint, but intent certainly matters. Just going to war to use your training is wholly callous. But take any of the recent genocides (Rwanda) or even ISIS - innocent people are unquestionably being killed. A soldier hears about this in the news, prepares every day to stop large forces like that, and instead is being asked to stand down. The media obviously plays a large role in shaping the perspective of horrors being done in the world, and I wouldn't argue war is the solution to all but a few problems. However, it is fairly straightforward and morally defensible that innocent people would be alive if other people were killed, and soldiers are prepared and ready to kill.

mercurial 12y ago
Innocent people are unquestionably being killed, but the US shocked and awed plenty of civilians back in the day. And its actions did cause a major civil war. So it all depends on what you think of the deeper reasons behind wars, and of how much civilian leaders have considered the consequences of their actions. The problem is that wars are rarely waged to protect innocents, they are an answer to strategic considerations.
lostlogin 12y ago
Keep in mind that the average war kills as many civilians as it does combatants. War is not precise, despite what we are told. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio
- pluma 12y ago
  But luckily the US is changing that by re-defining who is or is not a civilian. Last I checked the official stance was that any able-bodied adult or adolescent male in a war zone is considered an enemy combatant in official statistics.
Htsthbjig 12y ago
"But take any of the recent genocides (Rwanda) or even ISIS - innocent people are unquestionably being killed." Yeah, take that. What you don't talk about is that what we call ISIS today was US best friend just months ago. They were called euphemistically "moderate rebels fighting for democracy in Syria" and they were supported economically and with weapons by the US and Saudi Arabia to kill innocent people there(and put a puppet state in place). Of course they took the weapons and crossed the border to occupy Iraq, as the failed state the US created made it so easier than fighting against a well organized, and Russia supported army. Media creates your perceptions based on their own interest. If the news come from far away, media has total control of shaping your emotions, as you don't have family, friends, eyes or ears in the place.
- WettowelReactor 12y ago
  The situation is quite a bit more complicated and nuanced than how you present it here. The whole mess is made up of a plethora of parties with differing ideologies and priorities. Ascribing the formation of ISIS to the US lacks any real thought on the subject.

Mz 12y ago

I was a military wife for a lot of years. Also, my dad was career military and fought in two wars. When you get trained to deal death, yes, you tend to become somewhat callous. Being exposed to that culture helped me effectively combat a serious medical condition. I don't think it is somehow inherently evil.

nostrademons 12y ago

Society does have alternate means of accomplishing the first without the second - there's the Peace Corps/Americorp, getting a job, starting a business, volunteerism, doing a Ph.D. Not all paths are appropriate for all people, though.

AYBABTME 12y ago

Why is it callous? Why get in the army in the first place, if not to do the work of the army? I'd be hypocritical to join the army with the desire to then avoid operations. I can understand that people be against war. I don't like violence. I don't encourage violence and certainly do not enjoy wars. But wars exist and as a citizen, you can decide to wish that war magically weren't a thing, or do something about their existence. I did not encourage the concept of war by taking part in it, no more than I encourage system outages when I take part in building or fixing them. War is not just war. It's not "just going somewhere to kill people". I didn't decide "Oh all that sweat wasted, better kill foreigners to make up for it". I volunteered because I thought I could make a positive influence, if any, by being a reasonable person doing their job in the most humane way I could. Not every soldier is an angry, bloodthirsty, moronic killer. Most of them aren't. I don't wish to kill an innocent person anymore than you do. I don't wish to kill a guilty person either. But sometimes, participating in a war, or killing a person, is the only way to make the war less harmful, or prevent that person from killing many more. Avoiding wars at all cost is not a magic bullet against wars. That's my take on it, I might be wrong.

lukifer 12y ago
As Sun Tzu said, the greatest warrior is the one who need never fight. While this can be interpreted as a pacifist/moral sentiment, it is really deeply practical: fighting incurs risks and resources, even if victorious. The most effective victories come from a credible deterrent which is never actually used. So I don't think your training would have been wasted by not seeing combat, any more than a policeman's weapon is wasted even if it is never fired.
- pluma 12y ago
  If only US policemen listened more closely to Sun Tzu.
BuckRogers 12y ago
You sound like a good person to me, but I do think you're wrong. It would be very hard for you to not see things the way you've described them, without going crazy at least. It may be best to reject others' opinions, considering what you've done. Just to maintain that sanity. We all lie to ourselves for many things in our lives to maintain sanity. I'm not saying this in any way to be a slight towards you. I personally think the current wars are actually abusive to those who join. Just because someone signs up to -defend- the nation, doesn't mean the political elite has a right to abuse those people. Since I think the wars are unjust, illegal and doing more harm overall than good. I'd never participate and would never encourage anyone I know to do so either. The best way to end war, which is never the 'right thing' in my mind to refuse to participate. There are -always- alternatives even if the argument coming from the profiting parties don't frame it in such a way that this is clear. Short of having foreign troops as we have them overseas, in your hometown. Then there likely are few alternatives. Someday, and I think that day is approaching or we wouldn't be automating war, we'll see everyone as the same as us. I'd grab a gun and defend my home in Afghanistan too. I don't blame those people. Just as I'd be a 'terrorist' if the Chinese were in the US today to liberate us. I don't believe in gods or the tooth fairy- but I'd be happy to ally myself with Christian Fundamentalists if it meant preventing some jackass Chinese soldier from blowing up my grandmother's house, raping my wife, or just for simply marching around my hometown like they own the place. Which all of these things happen when you give someone a gun and license to kill. The whole get-the-bad-guy argument has been proven wrong so many times. Looking at the situation today, Saddam was a great guy who we wish we could put back into place. Now there's ISIS, it's all a huge joke on us. I don't honestly believe it's about any noble goals though. It's about perpetual war, using any argument at any cost to keep it going. This is the Vietnam they failed to turn into a perpetual goldmine for those who finance it and build the bombs. If you get my overall point here, you'll see I actually Support the Troops better than those who have the stupid bumper stickers or tell you "thank you for your service". The best way to support them is to bring them home where they belong, defending the nation from attack. I can't thank anyone for their service since I don't support the mission, but I also can't bear the thought we as citizens have somehow allowed this to go on for so long. If political influence wasn't strictly measured by our bank accounts in our society, you'd never had a war to fight.

griffinmahon 12y ago

"Callous" is probably an imprecise word choice for the sentiment you're trying to communicate. And anyway it's not necessarily immoral to go to war for this reason depending on how you perform the calculus, e.g., depending on how much government money went into training and considering most soldiers don't kill others, it might be morally permissible. I also doubt that the commenter would wholly support going to war or that he would seriously disagree with any of the assertions in "your second paragraph". But life is hard, and people have to try to achieve their goals and form a coherent narrative out of things. You might do better to reconcile a critique of the military with the fact that people in the military are not all bad or in the wrong.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

dba7dba 12y ago

A quote from "This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History" "The single greatest weakness of a free people is always their moral doubts."

PeterisP 12y ago

War is horrible and thus starting a war should be avoidable at all costs - it should be a last resort, but this recommendation applies to the politicians and country leaders. For the trooper, it's entirely differnent - assuming that a war exists already, the choice is about which bodies get sent there, and not wasting your training is a reasonable argument. Once a war exists, joining it usually contributes to it's end; if the other things are somewhat comparable, a shorter war is less horrible to everybody (especially local civilians) than a prolonged war, and you get a shorter war by winning with an overwhelming force.

82xx 12y ago
If no one joined then the war would end much more quickly.