" War, what is it good for? "....Edwin Starr.

[bozo]

@bozo

Neither you nor I nor anyone else knows "why" US troops are fighting anywhere as individuals. " To free the people" is not a sentiment I ever heard from the several hundred Vietnam Vets with whom I served. ( I am NOT a vet) However, I think it's likely that at least some US soldiers are naive enough and gullible enough to believe that shit.

NATIONS never,ever, go to war on moral principle.Politicians use sentiments such as patriotism freedom and religion to con the poor dumb bastards who do the actual fighting and dying.


I think there is a common misconception of the US as the world's police. US interference in the affairs of other countries occurs only when it is perceived to be in the best interest of the US. That is what powerful nations do. The good news is that that kind of power is only temporary.

Padraic, we may disagree on much, but I endorse you on this.

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That's nice. Let's just call Dotard and those like him "Dumb Bastards" and that should prove the point that politicos must 'con' their soldiers into going to war. Throw in a couple 'naive's and 'gullible's to emphasize the point.

Good move.

That's one opinion padraic, I just don't happen to share it. Nor did the 'several hundred' soldiers I did serve with.

But then again, they were just a bunch of dumb, naive, gullible bastards right?

I quote my favourite poet, Shelley ( himself quoting Godwin ) on the nature of soldiering:-

A soldier is a man whose business it is to kill those who never offended him, and who are the innocent martyrs of other mens' iniquities. Whatever may become of the abstract question of the justifiableness of war, it seems impossible that the soldier should not be a depraved and unnatural being.
To these more serious and momentous considerations it may be proper to add a recollection of the military character. Its first constituent is obedience: a soldier is, of all descriptions of men, the most completely a machine; yet his profession inevitably teaches him something of a dogmatism, swaggering, and self-consequence: he is like the puppet of a showman, who, at the very time he is made to strut and swell and display the most farcial airs, we perfectly know cannot assume the most insignificant gesture, advance either to the right or the left, but as he is moved by his exhibitor.