(November 16, 2019 at 8:03 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Ta.  But the furtherance of the wealth and luxury of the great is so often the chief motive for military action that it seems rather silly to call it a 'side effect'.

Boru

Interpretation of events is subjective.

(November 16, 2019 at 8:30 am)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote:

(November 16, 2019 at 8:03 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Ta.  But the furtherance of the wealth and luxury of the great is so often the chief motive for military action that it seems rather silly to call it a 'side effect'.

Boru

Interpretation of events is subjective.

True enough. You see a different sort of value in military service, having served your self.  My own view of military service is admittedly coloured by my own experience with uniformed, jack-booted thugs.

Boru

(November 16, 2019 at 8:33 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:

(November 16, 2019 at 8:30 am)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote: Interpretation of events is subjective.

True enough. You see a different sort of value in military service, having served your self.  My own view of military service is admittedly coloured by my own experience with uniformed, jack-booted thugs.

Boru

How many actual jack-booted thugs did I serve with?

(November 16, 2019 at 8:33 am)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote:

(November 16, 2019 at 8:33 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: True enough. You see a different sort of value in military service, having served your self.  My own view of military service is admittedly coloured by my own experience with uniformed, jack-booted thugs.

Boru

How many actual jack-booted thugs did I serve with?

I have no way of knowing, but I wasn't accusing you of doing so.  I was attempting to explain my own subjective view of military service.

Boru

And you're making a sweeping generalization about the people in the military.

Yes, I am.  Unfair of me, isn't it?

Boru

(November 16, 2019 at 8:55 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Yes, I am.  Unfair of me, isn't it?

Boru

No, just typical and unimaginative. All soldiers are jack-booted thugs. All blacks sell drugs. All Mexicans are lazy. If that's the way you want to think ...

(November 16, 2019 at 9:03 am)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote:

(November 16, 2019 at 8:55 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Yes, I am.  Unfair of me, isn't it?

Boru

No, just typical and unimaginative. All soldiers are jack-booted thugs. All blacks sell drugs. All Mexicans are lazy. If that's the way you want to think ...

On the contrary, I think most soldiers - like most cops - perform a valuable service under difficult circumstances.  My issue is with military service, not service people.

Sorry if I didn't make that clear.

Boru

"uniformed, jack-booted thugs" you said.

Like any situation where there's a vast disparity in power between the guy holding the gun and the people they're holding it around, shit can go pear shaped fast. Obviously times have changed, but..today, the military roe are stricter than the environment under which domestic police forces operate - so, depending on where and when (and with whom) a person has interacted, they may have a very different view of soldiers and service.

It also doesn't help that it's a shit job that doesn't usually appeal to the kinds of people we want doing it, who have more opportunities compared to the kinds of people we don't...for whom it holds even greater appeal.

To an extent, being conditioned to fall into the "jack booted thug" role is a practical requirement of combat arms, however distasteful it may be. Sympathy for the devil here, though, since..when shit has -really- gone pear shaped and despite our normal reservations....we very much appreciate seeing our jack booted thugs cresting the ridge line. It only takes an instant to go from smiling distributor of humanitarian relief to killer, or dead. Those are the three states of affairs that anyone who volunteers for that sort of duty finds themselves in. If nothing else, we might appreciate that those people choose to do and place themselves in that position in our stead. That someone is doing it.