I want to add lawyers for the DHS who advocated in immigration court for the removal of asylum seekers without due process, or who have enabled their removal by asking that the proceedings be dismissed, or who have advocated for their "pretermission" removal to third party countries (like Uganda), to this list.
"It might be cool to be in the military and you might love the work and you might feel a strong bond of brotherhood with those you work with but there is just no way to avoid the fact that you are there to follow orders and the person giving the orders now is bad and the result will be that you will do bad things, and that will be your responsibility, your fault, and your legacy. Your life is worth more than that. You are not a bad person. You do not want to be a mere tool of a villain. When the boss is going to drag your soul to hell with his, it is time to do something else." That could have been said for the over 300 military interventions America has made since 1945. In 1953 Eisenhower's coup of a democratically elected government in Iran and installed the Shaw fucked up Iran for good! After THAT came the Ayatollahs.
The thing is that it has been obvious for a very long time now that the US military was going to be ordered to do evil things like this – and as you have said, when we say "evil", we don't mean by our standards as left-wingers, but by *their* standards as people who sincerely believe that they are serving something greater than themselves.
It was obvious on 6 November 2024, when Trump was confirmed as the winner of the election. It was a very real possibility for months prior to then. It has continued to be obvious since then, and only more so as time has worn on, and more such evil things have, in actual fact, been ordered and carried out. A whole bunch of soldiers and their families seem to have only just become aware of their circumstances and seem to expect us to play along with the canard that it was only reasonable for them to do so now.
No. This has not been a matter of reading the signs; this has been a matter of reading the writing on the wall, a wall so big and adorned in its writing so clearly that the message is legible from any distance and angle. There has been ample time and ample evidence that US soldiers were going to be made into instruments of evil even by its own standards.
Even if we accept the argument that, in the minds of these soldiers, it's incompetence and not active malice that has driven this gross negligence, that would not be good enough. At a certain point, incompetence becomes its own form of malice, and in any event that degree of incompetence renders you unfit to be a soldier; unfit to be a professional; unfit to hold a position of trust; unfit to wield any kind of power.
Somehow how the "we need good people to stay in the military in order to prevent the bad things from happening" theory has so far failed to prevent any bad things from happening. I'm sure if we keep waiting we'll get there though.
It was easy when I was in the Air Force. Yes, there was an unpopular war in Vietnam, but being apolitical at the time, I didn’t think about any of what Hamilton just brought up. But I also didn’t have such a clown show of leadership at the top that today’s soldiers have. I hope these well intended troopers can see more beyond themselves than I could and muster up the gall to to the right thing when commanded to do the opposite.
In my daily life I am surrounded by veterans. From all branches of the military. They joined for all the reasons you wrote about. A few saw extreme action. Most did not. Most were clerks, mechanics, logistics grunts. Most liked their immediate bosses, who were competent understanding, and instructional.
To tell these men and women to quit because the temporary CEO is a crazy, no good, psychopath. Does them a disservice. Have you looked at the current job market? Their options are few.
The moral questions of war do not feed families. Or provide a well defined training ladder to a better job. Employment insecurity is everywhere. To ask these young folks to bear the brunt of moral decisions they neither made nor agree with. Is to expose your privilege, and invalidate their struggle.
Unclear to me why we should believe that it is justified to kill the soldiers in Iran who joined their military for identical reasons, yet it is unjustified and tragic for the soldiers of other nations to kill our soldiers who are supporting the military effort to attack them.
I would argue that true concern for the lives of these people serving as soldiers is to urge them not to be involved in an enterprise that might justify either them or their peers in a foreign country killing or being killed. Crime is a way that people with few options support themselves-- not different from the reality of the way many people use the military you describe-- but rather than advocating for people to pursue crime I think we should work on getting them better life opportunities.
The options might be few, but if one of those is not to drop bombs on elementary school kids, the choice for any morally sentient human being should be a no brainer.
The following piece, in part, addresses a similar topic to Hamilton's. 'Three reasons why the American president "appears" to be being stupid by sending troops to Iran' (and I hadn't heard them anywhere else before):
I want to add lawyers for the DHS who advocated in immigration court for the removal of asylum seekers without due process, or who have enabled their removal by asking that the proceedings be dismissed, or who have advocated for their "pretermission" removal to third party countries (like Uganda), to this list.
"It might be cool to be in the military and you might love the work and you might feel a strong bond of brotherhood with those you work with but there is just no way to avoid the fact that you are there to follow orders and the person giving the orders now is bad and the result will be that you will do bad things, and that will be your responsibility, your fault, and your legacy. Your life is worth more than that. You are not a bad person. You do not want to be a mere tool of a villain. When the boss is going to drag your soul to hell with his, it is time to do something else." That could have been said for the over 300 military interventions America has made since 1945. In 1953 Eisenhower's coup of a democratically elected government in Iran and installed the Shaw fucked up Iran for good! After THAT came the Ayatollahs.
The thing is that it has been obvious for a very long time now that the US military was going to be ordered to do evil things like this – and as you have said, when we say "evil", we don't mean by our standards as left-wingers, but by *their* standards as people who sincerely believe that they are serving something greater than themselves.
It was obvious on 6 November 2024, when Trump was confirmed as the winner of the election. It was a very real possibility for months prior to then. It has continued to be obvious since then, and only more so as time has worn on, and more such evil things have, in actual fact, been ordered and carried out. A whole bunch of soldiers and their families seem to have only just become aware of their circumstances and seem to expect us to play along with the canard that it was only reasonable for them to do so now.
No. This has not been a matter of reading the signs; this has been a matter of reading the writing on the wall, a wall so big and adorned in its writing so clearly that the message is legible from any distance and angle. There has been ample time and ample evidence that US soldiers were going to be made into instruments of evil even by its own standards.
Even if we accept the argument that, in the minds of these soldiers, it's incompetence and not active malice that has driven this gross negligence, that would not be good enough. At a certain point, incompetence becomes its own form of malice, and in any event that degree of incompetence renders you unfit to be a soldier; unfit to be a professional; unfit to hold a position of trust; unfit to wield any kind of power.
Ron Kovic himself could've written that.
Still waiting for the good soldiers to stand up, aren't we?
Somehow how the "we need good people to stay in the military in order to prevent the bad things from happening" theory has so far failed to prevent any bad things from happening. I'm sure if we keep waiting we'll get there though.
I think the OP is trying to say there are no good soldiers
"At the end of the day we all for work for the same man, and he sells Marlboros." -Pete Townsend.
It was easy when I was in the Air Force. Yes, there was an unpopular war in Vietnam, but being apolitical at the time, I didn’t think about any of what Hamilton just brought up. But I also didn’t have such a clown show of leadership at the top that today’s soldiers have. I hope these well intended troopers can see more beyond themselves than I could and muster up the gall to to the right thing when commanded to do the opposite.
In my daily life I am surrounded by veterans. From all branches of the military. They joined for all the reasons you wrote about. A few saw extreme action. Most did not. Most were clerks, mechanics, logistics grunts. Most liked their immediate bosses, who were competent understanding, and instructional.
To tell these men and women to quit because the temporary CEO is a crazy, no good, psychopath. Does them a disservice. Have you looked at the current job market? Their options are few.
The moral questions of war do not feed families. Or provide a well defined training ladder to a better job. Employment insecurity is everywhere. To ask these young folks to bear the brunt of moral decisions they neither made nor agree with. Is to expose your privilege, and invalidate their struggle.
Unclear to me why we should believe that it is justified to kill the soldiers in Iran who joined their military for identical reasons, yet it is unjustified and tragic for the soldiers of other nations to kill our soldiers who are supporting the military effort to attack them.
I would argue that true concern for the lives of these people serving as soldiers is to urge them not to be involved in an enterprise that might justify either them or their peers in a foreign country killing or being killed. Crime is a way that people with few options support themselves-- not different from the reality of the way many people use the military you describe-- but rather than advocating for people to pursue crime I think we should work on getting them better life opportunities.
The options might be few, but if one of those is not to drop bombs on elementary school kids, the choice for any morally sentient human being should be a no brainer.
The following piece, in part, addresses a similar topic to Hamilton's. 'Three reasons why the American president "appears" to be being stupid by sending troops to Iran' (and I hadn't heard them anywhere else before):
https://emanuelprez.substack.com/p/why-are-us-forces-being-sent-to-iran
Excellent.