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Lira
Ancient BassAddict
Registered: Nov 2001
Location: Brasília, Brazil
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quote: | Originally posted by Joss Weatherby
Soldiers are trained to kill. Marines are trained to kill. Will is trained to watch clouds. |
quote: | Originally posted by Joss Weatherby
Anyway, its their job, lots of people have fun at their jobs. Their job happens to involve killing people. Its not all that disturbing if you can rationalize it like that. Its a job. |
It is disturbing TO rationalize like that. Their job is not to kill, it's to protect their country, and killing is second to that. There was no threat in sight, and he was excited before anything had even happened: that's the problem.
By the way, I studied in military school for seven years, and my father, my grandfather, and my great grandfather were all in the military, so I know their way of thinking a tad bit better than you probably imagine (even though I come from a country that last fought a war in... erm... 1870?).
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Apr-06-2010 02:57
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Joss Weatherby
Banned
Registered: May 2008
Location: The Pacific Northwest, of course
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quote: | Originally posted by Lira
It is disturbing TO rationalize like that. Their job is not to kill, it's to protect their country, and killing is second to that. There was no threat in sight, and he was excited before anything had even happened: that's the problem.
By the way, I studied in military school for seven years, and my father, my grandfather, and my great grandfather were all in the military, so I know their way of thinking a tad bit better than you probably imagine (even though I come from a country that last fought a war in... erm... 1870?). |
Even with that I think you are making a mistake in identity. The job of the organization is to protect their countries national interests. To do that 99% of the time it involves someone dying for something. Soldiers are there to kill. Not play interurban cop or peacekeeper (the US military has never been a peacekeeping force in the most basic sense). Its always been designed to engage in armed combat and kill the enemy.
Thats the problem in these low intensity conflicts. Its not how we were designed. Fortunately Afghanistan is in a lot of ways a more traditional form of combat, but Iraq is not. The US military is still designed to engage, destroy, and conquer.
The debate then goes into "do we change this to represent the conflicts we have now?"
I think the answer is no.
We do not need to be in these types of conflicts in the first place. These bush war type conflicts are something that the US ALONG with the international community need to handle these and maybe a subset of the US military needs to be trained in a much more peacekeeping type set of duties. The US needs to maintain a much smaller, more traditional military in the future. We still need to be able to rapidly deploy any place on the globe but our current set up is too much for us to handle with our budget concerns.
Right now the US is set up to fight TWO major land battles at once against a traditional military force. Obviously these wars we are in right now, especially Iraq strain that traditional mentality.
If we can avoid low intensity conflicts, or at least engage them in a much stronger international community than I think that is the answer. We keep a rapid reaction force that is able to fight one traditional military conflict at a time and the reserve structure intact to rapidly build up manpower if we need to expand in a conflict.
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Apr-06-2010 03:12
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