Do you think American soldiers are put on too high of a pedestal

[FatAndFaithless]

...What exactly does "going all out" mean for a war?

Not trying to be too politically correct about it. For example, pilots flying overhead would see the enemy, but because they were in a particular location or weren't particularly doing anything threatening, they weren't allowed to target them.

Erm...I wouldn't call things like rules of engagement or limits to what the military can do as being 'politically correct.'

[Amarok]

You know it amazes me we will use vets as political props and for pageantry or idolize them culturally .But we as a society won't do the truly useful thing for them and take care of those vets that are mentally and physically scarred. Or stop making the same stupid mistakes that end up creating more of them.

[Catholic_Lady]

Not trying to be too politically correct about it. For example, pilots flying overhead would see the enemy, but because they were in a particular location or weren't particularly doing anything threatening, they weren't allowed to target them.

Erm...I wouldn't call things like rules of engagement or limits to what the military can do as being 'politically correct.'

The reason Vietnam was fought this way, was because video/cameras were starting to become popular, allowing people to see the effects of war and how horrible it is. The US government/leaders didn't want people to see how horrible it was so they half assed the war, setting all kinds of limitations and perimeters to the military that didn't make any sense, for the sake of saving their face. Partially by using agent orange... which at the end only made things worse.

[FatAndFaithless]

Erm...I wouldn't call things like rules of engagement or limits to what the military can do as being 'politically correct.'

The reason Vietnam was fought this way, was because video/cameras were starting to become popular, allowing people to see the effects of war and how horrible it is. The US government/leaders didn't want people to see how horrible it was so they half assed the war, setting all kinds of limitations and perimeters to the military that didn't make any sense, for the sake of saving their face. Partially by using agent orange... which at the end only made things worse.

I still don't see your point... You're saying the US Military needs less oversight in its operations, so that the war gets done quicker?  What about the rules of engagement...or things like the geneva conventions...or non-proliferation treaties...or the Chemical Weapons Convention?  I'm assuming you'd draw the line somewhere.  Hell, agent orange couldn't be used now specifically because of oversight. Would you prefer the military do "whatever it takes" as long as we don't see/hear about it?

I'm not sure I see what any of this has to do with being 'politically correct,' it's about what kind of conduct is appropriate for our military and how we'd like our allies' militaries to act as well.

[Jackalope]

Conservatives often strike me as bereft of the knowledge of the depth of human suffering.

I can tell you the vast majority of military members and their families are, themselves, conservatives.

They say the Air Force is the branch with the most liberals. Which is crazy, because even here it's rare to find one. Off the top of my head, I can think of like 3 out of everyone I know. My husband says there are always a ton of liberal jokes going around at his work. Especially around the time of the election.

I can tell you from personal experience that there is a some degree of fear in "coming out" as anything other than a conservative in the military.

[Minimalist]

The Vietnam war was incredibly terrible, for everyone involved. The soldiers who came back were treated like crap, and because the leaders of our country were being super politically correct about the war (to save their own popularity), not only did we lose, but innocent people are still suffering the consequences of it.

Agent orange was used to kill off the forest so that we could better see our targets so that we could be sure to only shoot the enemies who were actually in a particular area, doing a particular thing. As a result, many little children are still being born with birth defects associated with agent orange. It's truly horrendous: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...fects.html  

I don't know enough about the Vietnam war to know whether it was a just war on our part or not, whether we should have gone to war with them at all. But I do know that the "best" war is a swift one. Trying to be too politically correct during a war only ends up making it take longer and takes more innocent lives with it. Either we go to war all out, or we don't go to war at all, imho.

It was a bit before your time and it wasn't really an issue of political correctness.  What it really was, simply, was a typical knee-jerk reaction by the Washington establishment of the time - and the time was back when Eisenhower was President that basically went "THERE'S COMMUNISTS ATTACKING!!!  WE HAVE TO DEFEND DEMOCRACY!"  Leaving aside that there was precious little "democracy" to defend.  We have this annoying tendency to not want to "appear weak" and in so doing weaken ourselves terribly.  At the very least one can say that it was a bi-partisan fuck up.  Eisenhower began introducing "advisors" in the 50's and Kennedy continued in the early 60's.  In 1965 an incident happened in the Tonkin Gulf in which a single US destroyer engaged 3 North Vietnamese torpedo boats.  There were no casualties but the Defense Department played it ( and a second, seemingly imaginary) event two days later into the Second Battle of Surigao Strait.  This served as the basis for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which allowed Johnson to introduce American ground troops into Vietnam.

And the rest, as the saying goes, is history.

[Catholic_Lady]

I can tell you the vast majority of military members and their families are, themselves, conservatives.

They say the Air Force is the branch with the most liberals. Which is crazy, because even here it's rare to find one. Off the top of my head, I can think of like 3 out of everyone I know. My husband says there are always a ton of liberal jokes going around at his work. Especially around the time of the election.

I can tell you from personal experience that there is a some degree of fear in "coming out" as anything other than a conservative in the military.

Yeah, that is very true. Liberals in the military are definitely the odd ones out.

---

The reason Vietnam was fought this way, was because video/cameras were starting to become popular, allowing people to see the effects of war and how horrible it is. The US government/leaders didn't want people to see how horrible it was so they half assed the war, setting all kinds of limitations and perimeters to the military that didn't make any sense, for the sake of saving their face. Partially by using agent orange... which at the end only made things worse.

I still don't see your point... You're saying the US Military needs less oversight in its operations, so that the war gets done quicker?  What about the rules of engagement...or things like the geneva conventions...or non-proliferation treaties...or the Chemical Weapons Convention?  I'm assuming you'd draw the line somewhere.  Hell, agent orange couldn't be used now specifically because of oversight.  Would you prefer the military do "whatever it takes" as long as we don't see/hear about it?

I'm not sure I see what any of this has to do with being 'politically correct,' it's about what kind of conduct is appropriate for our military and how we'd like our allies' militaries to act as well.

Agent orange was used in large part so that we could see what our enemies were doing, so that we could be sure it was "ok" to target them at that particular time in a specific location... rather than just bombing enemy sites and getting it over with. We were trying too hard to fight a nice, clean, polite war so that our government leaders wouldn't "look bad". And in doing so we set all sorts of unreasonable limitations, and half assed it. We weren't letting the military just do what they needed to do to get the job done quickly. And in doing that, not only did we lose, but we drew it out longer, lost more of our people, and effected more innocent Vietnamese lives overall. 

I don't know much about these sorts of things. I'm only repeating what my husband explained to me specifically about the Vietnam war. Being in the military, he's studied up a lot on history, especially war related stuff, and also has done a lot of military strategic studies.

[FatAndFaithless]

So..yes, you're advocating letting the military do whatever it takes to end it quickly?

What kind of oversight do you think the military needs, if any? I mean, if you do a flyover and see enemy combatants in a city, do you just bomb the shit out of the city, collateral damage be damned? I mean..that puts a shockingly low value on the lives of any civilians or non-coms in the area. Shit, why not just nuke Baghdad if it would've killed Saddam?

[abaris]

We were trying too hard to fight a nice, clean, polite war so that our government leaders wouldn't "look bad".

Scratch the surface just a bit, will you? The people in Vietnam wouldn't agree with nice and clean in any case. Especially those in Hanoi that got the shit bombed out of them. All in all the US dropped more bombs than in WWII on that small a territory.

[FatAndFaithless]

Not to mention neighboring countries with whom we weren't at war...