In memory of the veterans that were killing people for "freedom"

submitted by zyxzevn from i.imgur.com

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[–]zyxzevn[S] 2 insightful - 3 fun2 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 3 fun -  (3 children)

I respect them as human beings, but they still supported the war machine.

If someone kills another humans, or only threatens them, they are acting in a violent way. We should like any violent action, consider each action whether these are criminal or not.

Vets have killed innocent people in Vietnam, often out of anger. Sometimes by command. If they have any soul left, they can often not live with themselves any more.

It does not help them to thank them for a crime. Instead we should guide them in a way to pay back what they did. Soldiers should be helping countries to rebuild infrastructure and become friends with the people there again. They need to be able to forgive themselves and maybe other need the people to forgive them. Otherwise they will fight an eternal battle in their minds.

If you look at the Roman empire, you can see that they build infrastructures in the conquered areas. They allowed normal markets to grow. And they were helping citizens more like a police, with people from the area.

The US empire just destroys things and build factories and mines for the US rich. They also help local criminal bands (or terrorists) to be stronger. They are the inverse of the police. The CIA creates a market for weapons, drugs and slaves.

[–]astronautrob 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Murder & killing someone in combat is not the same thing. Vets who have killed innocents or civilians should not be thanked for their crime, I agree, but that is a very small percentage of vets. Most veterans have never killed anyone, &a lot have never even fired a bullet in combat. What the U.S. does after the war has nothing to do with the individual veteran. We have a waitress day. Would you not thank a waitress because restaurants make people fat, or x reaaon or y reason. Its not their fault really. There are a lot of good people who are veterans who fight the good fight now. To put them all one category because some soldiers kill some civilians in war is silly. Killing in combat, which few vets have done, is not a crime. Killing innocents is murder of course but even less vets have done that than killong in combat. Plus this cartoon mentions the CIA which is tech not a military branch, it's silly.

[–]beermeem 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

What's fascinating is the depth of the studies that have been done about how likely a soldier is to fire their gun. The longer ago the war, the more likely it is that soldiers were found to have never fired their weapon, even in combat. Starting around the time of the Vietnam War, the Army started doing studies on how to better train soldiers to be more willing to fire their weapons. These studies ramped up in the 90's and into the early 2000's, especially with the advent of drone operators and the early controversies the government had with drone operator whistle blowers and drown operators flaming out and not being able to perform after a certain amount of time.

I'm sure this is one of the main reasons most right thinking people in the military want an all volunteer force. But of course this has led to an increase in advertising and recruitment and essentially the militarization of our sports leagues. So no forced draft but an increased presence of our military in civilian life, essentially because the military figured out that people it can convince to join without forcing them to join are more likely to do what's asked of them when the time comes.

[–]astronautrob 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Super fascinating, I agree. I also find the period early in the gun powder age very fascinating &how the trainong for the individual foot soldier changed. Before the mass use of handgunners in battle military leaders would tell soldier to pick out an individual target &try to shoot &kill that target. As guns become more in use they changed to training the handgunners to instead shoot at the same level as fellow handgunners &to only aim at the mass of the other force instead of individual soldiers. It even more disconnected the soldier from killing than what was already taking place because of the introduction of long range missles. I wonder if when makong that switch more soldiers than not didn't like it &contributed to them "missing" more shots or not shooting at all.