Of course depending on a defensive war, but often times you're not fighting for the state, but your loved ones. Like on a smaller scale nearly everyone would defend the people close to them from harm, for example trying to stop a rapist from abusing your wife/sister/daughter of course not limited to women. Rape can be used against men as well.
In a defensive war the goal of states sovereignty and you defending your loved ones can align.
but often times you're not fighting for the state, but your loved ones.
If I'm part of a state's army, I'm fighting for the militaristic goals of that state. That state only has an interest in my "loved ones" insofar as it's the population they require to achieve their political aims. My loved ones aren't benefactors of the state. That's just state propagana.
Your rape example has little in common from militaristic conflict that it's simply a non-sequitur.
In a defensive war the goal of states sovereignty and you defending your loved ones can align.
I think you misunderstand what wars are to a state: In war, two or more states fight for their interest by destroying an opponents people and resources by destroying their own people an resources. I'm not a resource that's willing to be used up.
What if the state attacking is doing so for the purpose of murdering you and your family and everyone who remotely looks like you or shares your culture?
Still very far from ideal to kill soliders of the invading army, cuz they're also people with lives and aren't always willing in their choice, or worse case, indoctorinated.
There truly are monsters whom love wars and killing and enter the army exactly because, but those are almost certainly a minority
Edit: I'm not exactly sure why, but it seems like my comment is being read as if in opposition rather than in addition. I'm not saying "don't kill", I'm saying "shame it did come to that", where it did come to that because of military as a concept. Military as a reaction to other militaries only exists as a need to other militaries existing as well. So if there was no military to exist in the first place, there would simply be no need for one as a reaction either
I wouldn't phrase it as 'deserve', but yeah, obviously. Pacifism is as bad of a failure when it doesn't prevent those whom bring harm from doing so. I have no issue with them dying since it did come to that point. But I still, personally, believe that I can get to grieve for them nonetheless. It's not contradictory as I see it.
(I'm more than open to a discussion and even invite for someone to correct me if I'm wrong, not in the sense of "I challange" as much as "I want to improve")
I get it's not what I would like to happen in general that a soldier invades another country. Still, they have to die in order to avoid being occupied. It's a different debate on which is worse and depends a lot on the occupying country and the recipient, generally occupation bad tho.
I think every army that had to defend their home country would have preferred doing other things, and until 2022 i honestly tought that invasions were a thing of the past, at least in Europe. Russia showed otherwise, now i think that being capable of defending yourself is important. You dont have to have a ginormous army like the US but you have to be enough of a threat that somebody would think twice before attacking.
I live in Australia and until 2024 I thought we don't need an army, we're so far from any threats. But now I think we need to build drone bombers so we can drone strike some IDF bases.
You're right, all war is bad. War sucks and it should never have to happen. Even wars fought for good reasons are still terrible and it would be a better world if they never had to be fought at all.
The part you're missing is that war is not the military. They're different things. Militaries fight wars, that doesn't mean that wars will magically stop happening to everyone who gets rid of their military. It would be wonderful to live in a world where militaries aren't needed, but instead we live in a world where many countries live under the constant threat of invasion.
The Canadian military maintains a constant presence in Latvia, because if we didn't, Russia would walk in there tomorrow and take over. My wife just finished a tour. The Latvians don't resent the presence of our military, they love us. Everywhere she went, barring some very specific exceptions, people were glad to see them. They felt happy, reassured by their visible presence. People from the other side of the world who had upended their lives to spend six months away from family and loved ones defending their tiny little country from the threat of brutal autocratic rule.
No one wants these things to be necessary, but they are, whether we like it or not. We would not be living in a better world right now if, in 1939, the whole world had just rolled over and let the Nazis walk in without a fight, would we?
War is always nasty, cruel, and terrible for the people involved, even if it is a just fight. Killing people is nothing to celebrate and there is nothing honorable about it
I agree with you. The rest of this comment may seem to imply otherwise, but two things can be true at the same time.
There is celebration to be had in not being genocided by successfully overcoming an invading force though. There is celebration to be had when you've eliminated a threat to your family's lives.
If someone wants to play stupid games, let them win stupid prizes. I don't agree with murder, but killing in self-defense, even at scale, is reasonable. I would even go as far as to say it is good to live a longer, safer life. As far as "good" and "bad" are just projections of human's fear of discomfort and suffering, and desire for pleasure and comfort.
It is good to live, it is bad to die. If soldiers didn't want to die, they wouldn't go to war. They made their choices. Its a weird use of free-will in my opinion, but its an option.
Oftentimes governments make use of that and try to indoctrinate their governments into thinking a war is defensive when it isn't. False flags, clamping down on freedom of speech, large-scale censorship, promoting authoritarian and totalitarian tenets, violence against independent journalists and protesters, and so on.
That said, billionnaires and power-tripping CEOs are the source of far-right ideologies (as it benefits them to repress all labourers), and those should be combatted. When someone claims antifascism is an issue, they have practically admitted to being a fascist. And the only good fascist...
Yeah, doesn't op know that Iran is TWO WEEKS away from developing nukes!? We're in grave danger, we need to bomb all their schools ASAP because that's where the kids learn to build nukes.
NGL tho I did learn how to build nukes in high school... All you need is a big donut of enriched uranium and a core you can slide into it quickly enough.
If a fighting force assembles when its home country is attacked and disbands once they're no longer being invaded, it hardly feels like "the military" at that point. That's not how it works these days, at least in most places.
Switzerland has conscription for men and voluntary service for women over 19. They receive military training and are issued a service weapon. They then return to civilian life, with the idea being the population is now an armed militia in the case of invasion.
It seems to have worked out for them so far, surviving being right in the middle of 2 world wars.
It seems to have worked out for them so far, surviving being right in the middle of 2 world wars.
Their conscription system is only a part of the story.
Switzerland was not invaded in WW2 because:
A. it is geographically difficult to invade, has a lot of bunkers and armed people.
B. because the Nazis used it to exchange gold and currency to Swiss Francs and get free access to trade with neutral countries. Switzerland was more useful to Germany as a "banker" and middleman during trade embargoes than it could have ever been as occupied territory.
I know about Switzerland, they have a military with conscription. Lots of countries in Europe are currently considering reintroducing conscription, but that's not some random fighting force that assembles out of nowhere in times of need, it's still a military.
That training is funded from the Swiss military budget for the purpose of protecting the state of Switzerland? Suggesting that conscription, aka a mandatory military service term, is akin to a training program for stateless militias seems to me a bit of a stretch...
If a fighting force assembles when its home country is attacked and disbands once they're no longer being invaded, it hardly feels like "the military" at that point. That's not how it works these days, at least in most places.
I'm pro abolition of the state, but this comment thread had no mention of a stateless society.
You could train them, obviously. My point was that when people think of "joining the military" they aren't thinking about a defensive war - which is true. So "the military" is, overall, pretty bad. (Some might argue a necessary evil, perhaps, but it's still bad.)
The logistics of what you'd replace the current system with are beyond the scope of "is the military bad?"
I would argue that the vast majority of people think that joining the military is about defensive war. There is a reason that military enlistment skyrockets in a country after that country has been attacked by a foreign source.
Generally a government must convince its populace that a war not taking place on its own soil is still defensive, because offensive war isn't palatable to the vast majority of people.
I was asking because I don't know of any. I recognize I don't know everything and would be happy to learn more history.
I'm not saying genocides don't happen. Of the ones I can think of, the victims were not able to form militaries to fight back. Genocide requires a power imbalance.
Are organized rebellions (like the Hutu in 1959) military? I would argue they are not because they were not the state. I think that's an important distinction. Being the state sanctioned group which remains at least somewhat assembled during peace carries special weight.
Maybe you could say Hamas et al cause wars in response to genocide but again I don't think they strictly fall into a state military.
Ukraine is literally defending itself right now against a state that is committing genocide on its occupied territory.
But, looking at history, there are wars specifically started to cause state-sponsored genocide in another state. And I'll avoid anything Israeli.
There's the first Congo war, which specially killed everyone in now-Congo to make room for the Hutu Rwandans. They started killing Tutsi in their own country, but specifically attacked another state to keep the genocide going.
There's the Bosnian Genocide, though that wasn't technically started to do genocide, it was kept going in order to commit more genocide.
Indonesia invaded East Timor for the express purpose of "pacifying" the sovereign state, killing a third of all people there.
After Bangladesh gained independence from Pakistan, Pakistan launched a war specifically to get rid of the Bengal people who initiated their independence.
And of course, you already mentioned WW2, a war started with the explicit goal of creating more living room for the German people.
There are significantly more genocides where there's a larger gap between conquering an area and genociding the original inhabitants though. If you annex a place first, and then genocide it, it falls outside your specific examples. Granted, I'm skirting those a bit, since Russia sees the Donbass as Russian, and them not being at war with Ukraine...
I think it's also important to note here that the previous poster is creating an unrealistic standard by insisting that genocide even be in the picture.
Any war of aggression is a bad thing that people should be able to defend themselves from. And that means having a military. And defending other people from wars of aggression means having a military.
We don't have to be talking about genocide. Whether or not Russia is committing genocide in Ukraine (they are certainly engaged in ethnic cleansing, regardless of any other definitions) is actually irrelevant. The people of Ukraine should not have their future determined by the fact that Putin has men with guns and the willingness to use them. It's as simple as that. And as long as people like Putin exist in the world, having a military will often be the only way to prevent stuff like that from happening.
I am genuinely curious to know who is framing the war between Russia and Ukraine as genocide. My understanding is Ukraine views it as imperialism and Russia views it as liberating people who are Russian from Ukrainian rule (if we are talking about Crimea/Donbas) or stopping Ukraine from doing some sort of evil, I'm not totally clear on this one.
First Congo War is debatable but before I expand on that I want to make sure you understand the war happened after the 1994 genocide? You are referring to a second genocide? (Not debating if the mass killing during the war counted as genocide, just wanting to make sure we are talking about the same thing).
Bosnia genocide I don't think I need to reply further because I agree it wasn't started to do genocide.
East Timor: disagree. There was a civil war because of how the colonial power left (one could say by design) and Indonesia saw it as an annexation opportunity. It wasn't a war between two established states in response to intention to commit genocide.
Bangladesh: I don't think I know who the military who opposed Pakistan was?
WWII: My point has been no allied power cared about liebestraum until it threatened their own borders/colonial interests. If we go back to the comment I was replying to, the person was talking about one country defending itself against another because they thought they didn't deserve to live because of their world view, sexuality or colour of skin. I suppose if you stretch world view into believing they should be allowed to live their life in peace then sure that applies. I can't argue with that one.
There's no such thing as a perfectly moral war. But would the world be better off today if everyone had just rolled over and let the Nazis do what they want?
Would the world be better off today if people fought the Nazis earlier and not only when it threatened their imperialism and no one used it to further their imperialism? Yes. But that wasn't what we were discussing.
Living inside any of those lines doesn't seem to guarantee that. 'People on the other side' is a story the powerful have been telling us for years. What if they start a war and nobody attends?
This is the real world, you don't get guarantees, you get what you have and you have to work with that.
Refusing to engage with any system that doesn't meet your definition of perfect is - and I hate to use this word but there's no other way to describe it - childish.
Sometimes stubborn grandmas have to go sit in front of tanks if change is to happen in this real world full of real men and their real weapons.
Childish is that you believe you have to be stuck forever in the reality that presents itself to you. Direct action means saying 'No' to what you don't want directly.
I live in the reality I have now following my convictions - that means if that kills me it does. That's what convictions are.
You seem so desperately wanting to deny me my opting out of reality, telling me I don't get to opt out. Who are you to tell me what I get to opt out of? Or to tell me what reality is in the first place? I only engage with what I want to engage with. And if it knocks on my door with guns? Well shoot me, if that's what humanity has to offer I don't want my place in it anyways. It probably would help non-humans a lot if we all perished. I assure you I'm not that gloomy in real life.
Disclaimer: I try to survive in this stupid timeline just like the next person, painfully aware that currently we are all complicit in genocide and murder for the sake of our comfort and our habits, not just in Gaza (which is just one of many ghosts in Capitalism's haunted house). The last bit of moral ground I feel I have is that I can loudly proclaim that I will not be sent to war.
Kind of answering to both your answers here. Capitalism sucks, but at least don't let them send you off to kill and get killed.
Sorry, I don't think I should buy into myths about how the regular people in enemy countries want to eat babies or whatever so that rich people can have more 🤷♀️
So if one day that made up line shifted and now you were in the territory of a government that believes you don't deserve human rights for whatever reason, you'd be totally cool with that.
I'm not cool with being inside any made-up lines. Fighting for any of those mental constructs perpetuates the problem, even though it might be tempting.
OK? I'm not cool with living under capitalism, but I'll still die if I don't get a job. At some point we have to live with the fact that social and political conditions are going to happen to us regardless of how we feel about them. You don't get to opt out of concentration camps.
... And about the camps: if you are in any country backing Israel or the US you are currently supporting concentation camps. So don't tell me radical pacifism is worse than what everybody is doing already by their non-revolt.
This is just whataboutism. You're not actually making a point, just deflecting.
I would actually 100% support a UN peacekeeping mission in Gaza. I think that the people of Palestine should be defended from Isreal's genocide, and if it takes tanks and guns to do that, I believe that's what we should do.
Doesn't mean I like it. The world I want is one where Isreal isn't engaged in a genocide in the first place. But that's not the world we have. You're not making anyone's life better by sticking your head in the sand.
In your other reply you suggested that I should just refuse to eat and simply die because I want capitalism to end. Who does that help? That's a serious question, and I actually want you to answer it; if I kill myself rather than engage with capitalism, what have I done to bring about its end? Whose life have I improved?
And as long as you keep working under capitalism it will keep existing.
Yes, I understand that sometimes the other option is to die. And the personal line I draw is that I'd rather die than be sent to war. Of course, if the real situation actually arrives my self-preservation instinct will probably kick in and I'll end up dying anyways, just in some trench. But I do wish I had the mental fortitude to tell them to fuck off. In practice it's unlikely to occur at all, I'm too old and a woman.
Joining a military that aggresses other nations? Yeah, spot on.
Joining a military to defend your line on the ground against people you see as fellow earthlings? Still a fair take.
Joining a military to defend against people who want you dead because of how you were born? That's where this starts to unravel. That kind of stuff sadly exists in this world.
I'm not gonna fault an american for an opinion like that, but if you're involved with european leftists who are too busy virtue signalling to adopt any pragmatic defense policy positions, you get a real appreciation for the nuance.
I'm all for artistic prose, emphatic amd impactful prose, but so many people think impact is more important than accuracy and coherence.
We can assume they mean (or would accept the substitution of) "the military industrial complex" instead of the concept of "maintaining a military", but the symmetry required them to be less accurate.
Haiti's independence war, the October revolution, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Irish independence movement, the French revolution, India's independence guerillas, Indonesia's independence guerillas, women's rights movements (including suffragette terrorism), the Black Panthers, Christians in the Roman empire, Al Qaeda fighting off NATO, ...
I'm not suggesting pacifism, I'm suggesting decentralized violence that isn't at the command of a state.
Unironically, yes. Shape the tools of violence for the situation, keep them in the hands of those they are meant to defend, and suddenly it's a lot less evil.
It's the same way your grandma knitting you a scarf is less evil than a sweatshop knitting you one.
Sure. Let yourself become "internal" and then assassinate and terror-bomb and sabotage them. I wasn't suggesting pacifism, I was suggesting not outsourcing your "self-defense" to a state.
Militaries can never give you self-defense, they can only give self-defense to themselves, more specifically military high command. Or the military-industrial complex if you're feeling fancy. You are a source of taxes, morale, and manpower.
One thing to remember is that the alternative to a military is being able to spend all the money and resources and labor and life that was going to the military on other projects. Even spending it all on self-defense if need be.
The complacency came from being overfed on chemically engineered, heartily poisoned garbage, sportsball, video games, television, alcohol, drugs, and algorithms.
One thing I've noticed about boomers is the constant TV on in the background. Very commonly FOX news, or newsmax these days, cnn, etc. Their world view is absolutely shaped by their media diet.
Meanwhile, our generation has always had the Internet. We view the world through that lens, which has a bit more of an expanded view, especially since people from those "scary" countries can come on places like reddit and post. Which is why I think the push for AI has been so strong. Now the Epstein class have some sort of means to taint what we read online, slowly moving our own worldview to the one the boomers have had from their own propaganda. It used to take owning the news stations to push their agenda, but now they had to pivot to now posting via bots to get their messages in.
All this to say, I think we had a nice gap where a kinder worldview emerged for some generations, but I worry that the generation growing up with the internet how it is becoming is going to slip back into the boomer thinking if it continues this way.
Their strategy for corrupting the youth has been promoting a vapid hyper capitalist hustle culture and signal boosting influencers who embody that depravity. However, unlike the boomers of yore, the economy we face is terrible and only getting worse, with none of us having any personal wealth left to protect. They're going hard into fascism in an effort to redirect the anger, but even that has a limited half life. Eventually they're gonna need to start cannibalizing each other in mass movements against other elites, because we need somebody to pay and they need to make it not them. I forsee war in some form as an inevitability.
Iran has long possessed the ability to survive decapitation and respond to an existential threat by closing the strait. It's why no US President tried it before now. Ukraine was more of a surprise than Iran, but Russia not realizing that their own neighbor wouldn't be a pushover the second time was still a danger that they could've foreseen. In both cases, deterrence didn't work because the invaders were greedy and irrationally confident.
And sincerely your "being cocky" smells like kremlin apology sauce, you sincerely don't think Ukraine is at fault in any kind of way for the 2014 invasion or the 2022 full scale invasion?
I don't know why you think I was saying Ukraine was at fault for once again being the target of Russian imperialism. If anything, I'm giving them more credit than you are
No you don't, because you have no idea how much credit I give the Ukrainian people, which if you wonder is around astronomical.
You can also just accept and say "ah yeah they didn't have formidable armies. I was thinking about how it went after the invasions." But that's too hard for some people I guess.
What's even more wild is to ask a religious leader for a religion that says "don't kill people" about how killing people in a war isn't a sin. I was only a child when I saw one of my peers ask a priest this. The mental gymnastics the priest was trying to pull was blatantly obvious to me, even as a kid.
It all makes perfect sense when you realize that the "don't kill people" part only meant "don't kill fellow tribesmen". Non-tribesmen were 100% fair game. The God of that religion commanded multiple genocides against other tribes.
You run into the same problems with said religion and slavery. The whole "it was different and more indentured servitude than chattel slavery" was only for inside the tribe. Chattel slavery was explicitly allowed for the non-tribesman.
Modern religious leaders may be uncomfortable with this and have to perform some Olympic level mental gymnastics, but that is just because ethics and values have changed slightly in 2000 or so years.
Some people genuinely deserve it. So here is the best-intent version in all its escalating absurdity:
The problem is who gets to crown themselves the judge of who deserves to die, which is why judicial systems exist, but who assigns the judges? So then you need an external mandate or a consensus mechanism in place, long story short, you get a ruler with a divine mandate, a parliament/jury consensus system, or an AI swarm convergence mechanism depending on the era you’re currently crossing.
But then you can’t trial the chief of another tribe/country/swarm for crimes they committed which aren’t wrong at all according to their values, like say, a Muslim marrying a first cousin wouldn’t be doing something wrong according to their moral system, but it would be a big taboo in the USA and the west. So if you’re say, a pious chieftain, and you wanted to take the stuff from the next tribe over, just start thinking smart, think of the letter not the spirit. You got all you need.
And now you know why an army is a national survival necessity, and why even religions themselves aren’t safe from a politician, whom they sometimes have to kill.
When I was young people around me told me that the further west on the map country is, the wealthiest and more free people live there without any conflict bothering them. With USA (the west-most country on map) as a shiny utopia with everyone peacefully living there being rich and free.
When I was a teen and my country joined EU I saw countless young adults emigrate west, seeking wealth and freedom beyond anyone's wildest dreams. Terrorists and oppressive regimes waged war in the eastern lands.
When I am an adult, the supposed peacekeeper of the world is waging wars to protect pedophiles. Former empire where sun never sets is trying to outlaw being young and sell their citizens data to highest bidder. And EU is bi-yearly trying to pass universal invigilation act.
I feel like my moral compass never really changed, it's just the world around me that changed beyond recognition. I worry how it will be when I get old, if I even get to live to old age.
Hang in there, buddy, it's rough but we are all in this together.
US quality of life is going down because labor market has lower demand. it used to be: economic growth -> high demand for labor -> high wages -> quality of life.
the only thing that it has to do with being "west" was that new land -> lots of stuff to do -> growth -> high wages -> quality of life. once the land is settled, that stops.
Better society safety nets. Accepting that constantly chasing quarterly gains is unsustainable. Sometimes its fine for a company to just "Do/make X" instead of constantly pivoting and enshitifying chasing every % of profits. Accepting that sometimes employees will have moments of zero productivity and thats fine because your company is creating jobs and supporting the economy (instead of laying people off because $$$$)
I was once asked why I joined the military and my answer was 'l needed money'. This seemed to shock my companion who was astounded that I was willing to potentially kill people over money. My response was that it was a far better reason than for imaginary friends or the colour of their skin.
Canada isn't any better. Edit: Why is this being down voted when the comment under is being upvoted I looked at their profile they are candadian they say this multiple times.
I always had a deep puzzlement with the military as an institution. It’s basically an organization designed to take young people and teach them to run toward a firing machine gun when told to do so. It defies all logic at the individual level, and it scares me.
You seem to have developed an understanding of the military based entirely around a small slice of WW2 movies and video games, and then assumed that has any bearing on the real world.
The way you actually learn to deal with a machine gun (and this was true even in WW2) is find cover, set up suppressing fires, use smoke and terrain for concealment as you advance, and eventually get someone into a position where they can flank and take out the machine gun nest, probably with a grenade so they don't expose themselves. Most importantly, everything I just described above involves teamwork. You protect each other, you trust each other, you rely on each other.
Safety is paramount. No one is teaching you to run screaming at a machine gun nest with no regard for your own life. That shit barely even happens in movies anymore.
A huge amount of what you learn as a soldier is basically how to keep yourself safe in extremely dangerous situations. Yes, you still have to have a willingness to put yourself in extremely dangerous situations in the first place, but the whole point of learning to do this stuff well is learning how to be the person who can survive those extremely dangerous situations.
You're claiming "forests" ("militaries treat young, enlisted lives as expendable for unnecessary wars") exist and then pointing at a cardboard standee of a tree you brought as evidence.
Yeah, you're right, but you can admit when your attempt at artistry fails your point.
Because, like, it's plain obvious your "run toward a firing machine gun" is a figure of speech.
I'm curious what you think OP meant by their statement seeing as they claim my interpretation was reading something that wasn't there. You're saying it's not literal and they're saying it's not the idea that war wastes lives carelessly. So how should someone read the statement that the military teaches people to run into machine gun fire? It reads as a critique, although I suppose that could be the start of the misunderstanding.
This is for people that will come after (assuming the whole post isn't randomly deleted).
I think my reading of your comment's anti-military message was reasonable, certainly not mean-spirited. However, I will admit my first comment was more declarative than inquisitive. A more open dialogue might have been "Then what is the forest?"
When we talk about voluntary enlistments they typically rely on mythology of noble and valiant warriors and honorable deaths, or the military represents a path out of poverty.
It's really eye opening to read accounts of civil war and WW1 soldiers who found out how brutal war actually was.
This is exactly why WWI is so interesting to me. All over the world (mostly Europe) we had these notions about honor and glory in war. Then after a bunch of people got fed to machine gun fire the collective consciousness of humanity shifts. Obviously there were folks ahead of the curve and already knew this.
But in general for western civilization WWI is the inflection point.
I feel like I hear a lot more about how Desert Storm was the massive shift to the general public getting to see the horror of war. It's absolutely true that there was a step change! I think it's valuable to include WWI in this discussion because adding to your point about the machine gun the change in war technology fundamentally changed who was surviving the war and how, and what stories and life changing injuries they brought home.
It's tragic and world changing if your loved one goes off to war and dies, but that's also very abstract. Having them come back and either:
re-enter society with visible bodily damage
require constant care for the rest of their lives
seem to be okay in body but come hope deeply changed by the trauma
really change how the people who weren't there view the reality of war. Even for myself, it was hearing my grandmother sobbing as she recalled atrocities in WWII (she was a child) that really shaped how I view war.
I find it hard to digest that people in north america appear to have become less opposed to wars (specifically the wars of the US) than they did in the 2000s (which are the first wars I have adult memory of). If I had to guess I would say it's a mix of overwhelm with everything else and that war is back to being more remote. I'm sure the people who are being droned still think it's horrific.
Also US centric but I went to the Atlanta History Center a few years back. I am not from the states. The way the US Civil war was presented was so different from what I had learned. This makes sense, especially as canada uses the US as a shield for their own atrocities, and likes to emphasize how chattel slavery was outlawed here sooner. What I didn't expect was the exhibit on how the horror of war left such a mark on the population. It was very enlightening!
Good point about Desert Storm. Because North America has been so insulated from war/ major conflicts we have grown to be more tolerable of waging it. Every 20ish years we have to be reminded that it is something to be avoided.
Also, I hadn't even thought about how much medicine had changed and that allowed more people to survive but with injuries.
Another thing to point out is that Canada and the USA have only seen imperialist/ asymmetric warfare in my lifetime and this colors how we view the seriousness of it. How many d-bag Seals have podcasts or books glorifying themselves and how their rugged manliness got them through war? In reality they just had better equipment, logistics, and training on their side. But again it feeds into the propaganda machine pushing these societies to go to war.
Not to worry - eventually the industrialization of war will be such that invaders only need to use unmanned craft to decimate their opposition's home population on their 9-5 shift and then get drinks afterwards. (/s)
But you have only a couple of choices when someone wrong shows up to kill you.
Give in and let them take you over, maybe they kill you
Put up a fight, possibly killing them, possibly killing you
The military is necessarily bad because humans are necessarily bad. If everyone could just train to defend themselves and agree not to use the military on it's own citizens, it would be a closer to neutral
Humans are not necessarily bad. Working together in tough times is what made humans evolutionary wise superior and still does. It is power that makes humans bad. And more power even more so. Or how some English Lord put it:
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
humans have fought wars for longer than our recorded history, you can't blame it all on fools seeking concepts of power. hell, we were fighting back when we were still apes swinging from trees.
We can't seem to break free of those evolutionary ties that we have to out-compete each other. There are lots of great people, but we're still at that tipping point where some bullshit makes one county chain-reaction genocide another country.
you almost got it. Power does not corrupt. Power attracts narcissists and psychopaths. Those people have been corrupt before. There are hierarchies all over the place where people higher up have authoritative control over the people (or even other beings) below them and the vast majority of those do not abuse this power hierarchy. Those people that do are mentally ill. It is just the higher you look the more likely you’ll find a mentally deranged narcissist because those are the people that really are into that shit and thus exert the effort to get there. For everybody else it is not worth it.
So what then? Everyone hug and get along? You understand there's way too many aggressively stupid people out there that believe profoundly idiotic shit that peace will never be a thing long beyond the sun itself aging into a supernova.
You focus too much on physical aggression to fight physical aggression.
Ever heard of diplomacy? Of political, economic, industrial pressure? What about all the wars that were prevented due to clever people making some clever moves that did not involve murder on a systematic scale.
Furthermore, we've spent an incredible amount of resources on perfectioning killing each other, and barely on exploring ways to wage war without killing.
Ever heard of diplomacy? Of political, economic, industrial pressure? What about all the wars that were prevented due to clever people making some clever moves that did not involve murder on a systematic scale.
There are times where none of this works, then what?
Take Ukraine for example. They gained their independence peacefully and democratically. After their independence, their talented diplomats and leaders made the unpredencted move to diplomatically negotiate a deal with their former oppressors to give up their entire nuclear arsenal in exchange for a promise of peace, and they even leveraged Western powers to serve as mediators and witnesses to showcase that their intentions genuine to the world. Russia signed the agreement with a smile, and then on to invade annex Crimea in 2014 as well as start the war in Donbass in 2014 in complete violation of the agreement.
The West saw this violation as an insult against their goodwill and their diplomacy as well as a challenge to their power so they backed Ukraine and applied severe political and economic sanctions on Russia. This forced Russia to come to the negotiation table in September of that year where they, again, promised to cease all hostilities against Ukraine if Ukraine agreed to freeze the conflict on the current frontlines. Ukraine agreed and the ceasefire was violated by Russia immediately.
At that point, Ukraine wanted to fight back with the help of the West, but Germany and France loved Putin, so they split off from the US and pressured Ukraine into signing a new ceasefire agreement with Russia under similar terms a few months later in early 2015. Russia once again agreed, but this time they held true to their word because the EU powers basically legitimatized Russia's claim that the frontlines are the new borders.
Not even a decade later in 2022, Russia amassed the largest troop build up in Europe in decades and launched the largest and most brutal invasion in the continent since WWII... in blatant violation of their previous agreements. The invasion is unprovoked and is done purely for the imperial ambitions of Putin. He wants reestablish the borders of the Soviet Union and the glory of the Russian empire through military might.
So now Ukraine has spent over 3 decades trying to use diplomacy, they have tried the most extreme and clever political tactics, they have rallied the West to turn Russian into an economic and political pariah in the world, they have use the UN and other global institutions to apply pressure... yet here we are. Four years later of nonstop war, and millions of Ukrainians displaced, hundreds of their settlements are razed, 1/5 of their country is still occupied, a million of their young men are killed or wounded, and their economy is in shambles. The only thing stopping them from complete annihilation as a nation is their military.
Are you seriously going to sit here and tell me that the Ukrainians are evil for using their military to defend themselves? Are you seriously going to try to wag your finger about Ukrainians needing to try other avenues? Are you seriously going to tell Ukrainians to hit back against Russia who wants to genocide them? You would have to a complete clown to do that. There's no way you can see what's happening there and think that their military and their use of it is not justified.
Diplomacy? My sweet summer child, that only works for a little while. How many wars have happened within just your own teenage lifetime where diplomacy was used to prevent it, but a war was fought anyways?
The simplest way to rebuke you is to quite frankly say to you that we are all still chimps with nukes.
If you honestly and truly believe that societies that have collected into nationalistic/tribalistic cultures as a whole could stop fighting each other, then I would say that you are ridiculously naive and ignorant. Literally for the entire of human history there have been people and entire cultural movements to foster peace amongst us all using diplomacy, for at least ten thousand fucking years, and people still want to kill each other.
The wealthy and powerful already know this and always/everywhere they wall themselves in away from society as a whole and protect themselves, then pay for protection using the same violence you are against using; we call them oligarchs.
The 21st century is considered to be one of the most peaceful times in human history. That's indeed due to international cooperation efforts, i.e., diplomacy.
Get your facts straight next time you climb on a high horse to make condescending comments.
Most people don't understand the concept of the industrial military complex. There is only one way forward to end the madness and that is to dismantle this system permanently.
You are not going to be able to stop this with a game of whack a mole. I am not a fan of a violent solution, but if done it would have to be universal all at once since this concept has already spread to every nation in the world.
Without a doubt an industry that can only grow from death and destruction is inherently a threat to human life. Couple that with fascism and you have a government that conspires with corporations to engaged in wars of opportunity for profit. A closed loop of human destruction that grows like a cancer.
I think the real solution is just getting the wealthy to dismantle the system. It sounds kind of silly and simple, but they are the only ones with the power to actually change anything at this point in a meaningful way.
I am not sure I agree with this. Even if the threat of violence is effective I am not sure it is the correct thing to do. I think we can both agree there may be solutions we haven't even thought of yet.
That's actually now what the final quote is. The military is an evil institution. The members are not necessarily. Like, in Ukraine case, people are defending their country from invading genocidal force. That's not evil, quite noble even. The concept of military however is.
Have you seen what happens to animal species that evolve on some island and one day an non native exotic animal is introduced? In a lot of cases that animal goes extinct. Even if we would all magically agree to never attack other counties and all dissolve our army's, only 1 country has to break the packt and we all have a real chance to be invaded. If we are doing imaginary systems, I would suggest a system where we all agree to respect current borders and never invade and all also agree to fight any country that breaks the rule. Sort of a more global and more elaborate NATO.
As a teen I talked to people from all around the world, usually connected by our shared fandoms. I remember talking to a girl in California who said she wanted to join the military when she grew up. Apparently she came from a military family, and couldn't understand why I was appalled at the idea of choosing such a path. We discussed it civilly, and eventually agreed to disagree. I can't help but wonder if she went through with it and, if so, how she feels about it today.
I'm curious what the alternative to "agree to disagree" is.
Agree to agree? Refuse to agree? Refuse to disagree?
Either you convince someone to change their mind or you don't. If you don't convince them then you either keep trying past the point where it is clearly futile or you stop trying. If both sides of a disagreement stop trying then they've agreed that they disagree.
Oh! I did think of an alternative. You could pretend to agree and secretly disagree. Is that what you are suggesting is preferable?
Like this stupid pointless fucking Iraq war. Even if dumbfuck somehow "wins", which its clear will never happen, do they not realize all the destruction done by the US is just going to create yet another ISIS/Al Queda/whatever style terrorist organization as retatiation?
Then it'll be "oh boy, gotta kill more brown people in the desert!"
They're distinct countries with their own unique challenges, cultures, and agendas. Simply viewing them as a blanket middle eastern "enemy" to America is a big part of the problem. The only important thing these "enemies" have in common is that America needs to keep them divided, lest the Arab world coalesces into a superpower to rival the greatest. That said, it's not just outside meddling making that difficult; these countries have qualitative differences.
You are not wrong. On any level. Like I said, the endless nonsense is just... endless. Itnhas "We have always been aw war with Eurasia" vibes, because that is basically the point pushed by the constant nonsense. Can't let these countries become stronger or unified or whatever. They are just always "the enemy", "terrorists", Muslims" etc.
And I am.not saying I agree with thst mindset at all, it just followa with what you said about the US constantly over there.
And it goes with the idea that war in general is just fucking stupid and never solves shit.
My aha moment was at a museum on an air base when I realized that everything there was designed around killing people. Sure, the technology was cool but I couldn't celebrate the purpose. I really don't support our military anymore, unfortunately I know it's a necessary evil in the current world.
Stop murdering each other. Agreed.
It is possible to stop aggressors without systematically murdering people. We have invested so much resources throughout history into perfectioning murder. But so little to explore ways of war without murder.
This is something that has to start before a war even begins. Investing way more resources into researching and developing non-lethal warfare. Knocking people out instead of killing them will achieve pretty much the same effect of stopping aggressions. I do see, that currently, Ukraine is stuck using the same tools of systematic murder that have been developed over millenia. So they don't really have as much of a choice. However, others have, others can.
What kind of a delusional view is this? A country that's willing to go to war is a country that's willing to kill. War is not a child's game, it's literally a matter of life or death. There's no such thing as a non lethal war. You can't add safety rules to something that has no rules and expect countries at war to abide. That's the whole reason why the geneva conventions and war crimes are a big joke. No country would willingly put themselves at a disadvantage by using non lethal weapons when their enemies will use lethal weapons, especially when there's no enforcer to come to your aid when it happens. War will always be a competition about death, destruction, and power.
That's exactly the kind of backwards thinking that keeps us stuck in this mess.
You are missing the fact that most people don't want to die. Including soldiers on either side of the war and that a large portion of them don't want to put themselves on the frontlines. Many are pressured into it. And don't mistake the few rulers in power for the whole country.
And yes, there are plethora of examples for non lethal military operations. What's missing, is putting this onto a larger scale.
Furthermore, you are assuming that going for non-lethal options is directly putting a side into a disadvantage. This is not necessarily the case and mustn't be. If the goal is to defend against and stop aggressors, there already exist several ways to achieve this without having to kill a single person. And there could be many many many more, if we would invest more resources into that kind of warfare instead of finding more clecer ways to be murderers and traumatize entire generations.
It's not a matter of mentality, it's a matter of reality. Your reasoning is simply not tethered to the reality of the world.
Everybody wants a peaceful world filled with sunshine and rainbows, but we don't live in that world. While you're right that a lot of people don't want to die, it's also true that a lot of people simply have no problem killing others. People like you forget that the laws of nature apply to us as well. It only seems like it doesn't because we cleverly figured out that if we monopolized violence, society becomes a lot easier to manage because there's a greater power to enforce common standards. However, there's no greater between countries. There's no state of countries that a victim country can turn to for justice or help. They're on their own, and the only way they can protect themselves is if they have the means to fight back.
You can talk about hypotheticals for eternity, it doesn't mean anything. At the end of the day, there are dictators, there are violent people, there are extremist groups, there are warmongering societies. It would be nice if they didn't exist, but they have always existed and they still exist now. We can't address what could be, we can only address what is. If you're a country in the world right now, it is your responsibility to protect your citizens from external threats because that's why you exist as an entity. It is the duty of the state to use every means necessary to ensure the best for its citizens, including the use of violence as a means of defense and deterrence.
If the goal is to defend against and stop aggressors, there already exist several ways to achieve this without having to kill a single person.
When you find a way for Ukraine to defend and stop Russia's ongoing invasion against them, then please tell me because you might just be the first person in history who has solved war.
But that's incredibly childish view of the world. Not every world leader is like Putin or Aliyev. A lot of times, the world leader of a country is the voice of reason preventing war. If given the opportunity, mulims in Egypt would massacre the Copetic Christains the first opportunity they can, but Al Sisi is a secular dictator and he's the one preventing that from happening. Same goes for the Balkans going to war again, as corrupt as their governments are, they're the reason why they're not fighting. The different ethnic groups there genuinely hate and want to kill each other. The idea that all wars are a result of evil state leaders is true a lot of times, but pretending that its always the case is a gross oversimplification of the world.
The responses to this post have kinda proven its point. Even when self defense is necessary, killing people is bad, war is bad, and the military is evil. Violence will never be a favorable thing, even if it is unavoidable, and it is never something we can take lightly or promote as a banal part of life. The only way we should consider violence in our daily life is to reaffirm why we need to toil to make society fair and just. Minimizing the drivers of conflict is more effective at stopping it than people want to accept.
Injustice being inevitable is not an excuse to sneer at those who want to combat it. The moment you accept it as immutable is the moment that you start to perpetuate it.
Yeah, but no on the military part when considering most countries that are not aggressors. A hypothetical "punchback guy" that punches a bully back when you get punched is in my opinion not evil, the bully is.
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What about defensive wars, though? Occupations are often quite brutal, as well.
Even when a war is necessary to prevent a worse outcome, it is still bad
Well yeah, but if that's the only kind of war that a military is planning on fighting, IMO it's a bit much to call it "evil".
As militaries are a tool of states to protect their sovereign power: That's not what militaries do, though.
I don't want to die for a state. Even if that state is being challenged in it's sovereignity.
Of course depending on a defensive war, but often times you're not fighting for the state, but your loved ones. Like on a smaller scale nearly everyone would defend the people close to them from harm, for example trying to stop a rapist from abusing your wife/sister/daughter of course not limited to women. Rape can be used against men as well.
In a defensive war the goal of states sovereignty and you defending your loved ones can align.
If I'm part of a state's army, I'm fighting for the militaristic goals of that state. That state only has an interest in my "loved ones" insofar as it's the population they require to achieve their political aims. My loved ones aren't benefactors of the state. That's just state propagana.
Your rape example has little in common from militaristic conflict that it's simply a non-sequitur.
I think you misunderstand what wars are to a state: In war, two or more states fight for their interest by destroying an opponents people and resources by destroying their own people an resources. I'm not a resource that's willing to be used up.
What if the state attacking is doing so for the purpose of murdering you and your family and everyone who remotely looks like you or shares your culture?
That still doesn't mean that I'd be ready to die for another state.
So you prefer to roll over and get genocided?
Not what I said.
I'd flee or if there's any reasonable chance to survive, I'd join some self-defense militia. But I wouldn't die for a state.
Still very far from ideal to kill soliders of the invading army, cuz they're also people with lives and aren't always willing in their choice, or worse case, indoctorinated. There truly are monsters whom love wars and killing and enter the army exactly because, but those are almost certainly a minority
Edit: I'm not exactly sure why, but it seems like my comment is being read as if in opposition rather than in addition. I'm not saying "don't kill", I'm saying "shame it did come to that", where it did come to that because of military as a concept. Military as a reaction to other militaries only exists as a need to other militaries existing as well. So if there was no military to exist in the first place, there would simply be no need for one as a reaction either
Sure it's not ideal but I won't cry for any dead Russian soldiers. You walked across that border, you deserve to die.
I wouldn't phrase it as 'deserve', but yeah, obviously. Pacifism is as bad of a failure when it doesn't prevent those whom bring harm from doing so. I have no issue with them dying since it did come to that point. But I still, personally, believe that I can get to grieve for them nonetheless. It's not contradictory as I see it.
(I'm more than open to a discussion and even invite for someone to correct me if I'm wrong, not in the sense of "I challange" as much as "I want to improve")
Idk. If you’re coming to kill me fuck you. I don’t really care about your justification.
“Ooh, but I was indoctrinated, it wasn’t my fault” No. You are coming to kill me so fuck you.
I get it's not what I would like to happen in general that a soldier invades another country. Still, they have to die in order to avoid being occupied. It's a different debate on which is worse and depends a lot on the occupying country and the recipient, generally occupation bad tho.
I think every army that had to defend their home country would have preferred doing other things, and until 2022 i honestly tought that invasions were a thing of the past, at least in Europe. Russia showed otherwise, now i think that being capable of defending yourself is important. You dont have to have a ginormous army like the US but you have to be enough of a threat that somebody would think twice before attacking.
I live in Australia and until 2024 I thought we don't need an army, we're so far from any threats. But now I think we need to build drone bombers so we can drone strike some IDF bases.
You're right, all war is bad. War sucks and it should never have to happen. Even wars fought for good reasons are still terrible and it would be a better world if they never had to be fought at all.
The part you're missing is that war is not the military. They're different things. Militaries fight wars, that doesn't mean that wars will magically stop happening to everyone who gets rid of their military. It would be wonderful to live in a world where militaries aren't needed, but instead we live in a world where many countries live under the constant threat of invasion.
The Canadian military maintains a constant presence in Latvia, because if we didn't, Russia would walk in there tomorrow and take over. My wife just finished a tour. The Latvians don't resent the presence of our military, they love us. Everywhere she went, barring some very specific exceptions, people were glad to see them. They felt happy, reassured by their visible presence. People from the other side of the world who had upended their lives to spend six months away from family and loved ones defending their tiny little country from the threat of brutal autocratic rule.
No one wants these things to be necessary, but they are, whether we like it or not. We would not be living in a better world right now if, in 1939, the whole world had just rolled over and let the Nazis walk in without a fight, would we?
Pacifism is so logically inconsistent.
Do elaborate.
War is always nasty, cruel, and terrible for the people involved, even if it is a just fight. Killing people is nothing to celebrate and there is nothing honorable about it
I agree with you. The rest of this comment may seem to imply otherwise, but two things can be true at the same time.
There is celebration to be had in not being genocided by successfully overcoming an invading force though. There is celebration to be had when you've eliminated a threat to your family's lives.
If someone wants to play stupid games, let them win stupid prizes. I don't agree with murder, but killing in self-defense, even at scale, is reasonable. I would even go as far as to say it is good to live a longer, safer life. As far as "good" and "bad" are just projections of human's fear of discomfort and suffering, and desire for pleasure and comfort.
It is good to live, it is bad to die. If soldiers didn't want to die, they wouldn't go to war. They made their choices. Its a weird use of free-will in my opinion, but its an option.
Defensive wars? Like insurrections against invading armies and mercenaries?
Oftentimes governments make use of that and try to indoctrinate their governments into thinking a war is defensive when it isn't. False flags, clamping down on freedom of speech, large-scale censorship, promoting authoritarian and totalitarian tenets, violence against independent journalists and protesters, and so on.
That said, billionnaires and power-tripping CEOs are the source of far-right ideologies (as it benefits them to repress all labourers), and those should be combatted. When someone claims antifascism is an issue, they have practically admitted to being a fascist. And the only good fascist...
Yeah, doesn't op know that Iran is TWO WEEKS away from developing nukes!? We're in grave danger, we need to bomb all their schools ASAP because that's where the kids learn to build nukes.
NGL tho I did learn how to build nukes in high school... All you need is a big donut of enriched uranium and a core you can slide into it quickly enough.
That doesn't change the fact that genuine defensive wars are not evil and they justify the existence of militaries.
If a fighting force assembles when its home country is attacked and disbands once they're no longer being invaded, it hardly feels like "the military" at that point. That's not how it works these days, at least in most places.
That's a little naïve, isn't it? Your fighting force isn't trained, doesn't have any equipment and so on, more people will die because of this.
Switzerland has conscription for men and voluntary service for women over 19. They receive military training and are issued a service weapon. They then return to civilian life, with the idea being the population is now an armed militia in the case of invasion.
It seems to have worked out for them so far, surviving being right in the middle of 2 world wars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland#Government_and_politics scroll down from there to Military
Their conscription system is only a part of the story. Switzerland was not invaded in WW2 because:
A. it is geographically difficult to invade, has a lot of bunkers and armed people.
B. because the Nazis used it to exchange gold and currency to Swiss Francs and get free access to trade with neutral countries. Switzerland was more useful to Germany as a "banker" and middleman during trade embargoes than it could have ever been as occupied territory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland_during_World_War_I_and_World_War_II#Financial_relationships_with_Nazi_Germany
I know about Switzerland, they have a military with conscription. Lots of countries in Europe are currently considering reintroducing conscription, but that's not some random fighting force that assembles out of nowhere in times of need, it's still a military.
quick note:
that's national service, not conscription.
So it is a military then?
That training is funded from the Swiss military budget for the purpose of protecting the state of Switzerland? Suggesting that conscription, aka a mandatory military service term, is akin to a training program for stateless militias seems to me a bit of a stretch...
I'm pro abolition of the state, but this comment thread had no mention of a stateless society.
Fair point, I'll accept that bit of nuance.
You could train them, obviously. My point was that when people think of "joining the military" they aren't thinking about a defensive war - which is true. So "the military" is, overall, pretty bad. (Some might argue a necessary evil, perhaps, but it's still bad.)
The logistics of what you'd replace the current system with are beyond the scope of "is the military bad?"
I would argue that the vast majority of people think that joining the military is about defensive war. There is a reason that military enlistment skyrockets in a country after that country has been attacked by a foreign source.
Generally a government must convince its populace that a war not taking place on its own soil is still defensive, because offensive war isn't palatable to the vast majority of people.
They are defending a made-up line on a map full of made-up lines and names. I don't care about the make-believe show.
But what if the people on the other side of the line think you don't deserve to live because of your world view, your sexuality, your skin colour?
I can't think of a war that happened because of this. Please don't say WW2 because even the history books don't claim it was to stop the atrocities.
That's a very weirdly specific take that's very dishonest.
There are a huge number of wars that resulted in the genocide, or at least mass death of the losing party.
Many people have defended themselves specifically because the attacking side wanted to kill them all.
I was asking because I don't know of any. I recognize I don't know everything and would be happy to learn more history.
I'm not saying genocides don't happen. Of the ones I can think of, the victims were not able to form militaries to fight back. Genocide requires a power imbalance.
Are organized rebellions (like the Hutu in 1959) military? I would argue they are not because they were not the state. I think that's an important distinction. Being the state sanctioned group which remains at least somewhat assembled during peace carries special weight.
Maybe you could say Hamas et al cause wars in response to genocide but again I don't think they strictly fall into a state military.
I don't even need history.
Ukraine is literally defending itself right now against a state that is committing genocide on its occupied territory.
But, looking at history, there are wars specifically started to cause state-sponsored genocide in another state. And I'll avoid anything Israeli.
There's the first Congo war, which specially killed everyone in now-Congo to make room for the Hutu Rwandans. They started killing Tutsi in their own country, but specifically attacked another state to keep the genocide going.
There's the Bosnian Genocide, though that wasn't technically started to do genocide, it was kept going in order to commit more genocide.
Indonesia invaded East Timor for the express purpose of "pacifying" the sovereign state, killing a third of all people there.
After Bangladesh gained independence from Pakistan, Pakistan launched a war specifically to get rid of the Bengal people who initiated their independence.
And of course, you already mentioned WW2, a war started with the explicit goal of creating more living room for the German people.
There are significantly more genocides where there's a larger gap between conquering an area and genociding the original inhabitants though. If you annex a place first, and then genocide it, it falls outside your specific examples. Granted, I'm skirting those a bit, since Russia sees the Donbass as Russian, and them not being at war with Ukraine...
I think it's also important to note here that the previous poster is creating an unrealistic standard by insisting that genocide even be in the picture.
Any war of aggression is a bad thing that people should be able to defend themselves from. And that means having a military. And defending other people from wars of aggression means having a military.
We don't have to be talking about genocide. Whether or not Russia is committing genocide in Ukraine (they are certainly engaged in ethnic cleansing, regardless of any other definitions) is actually irrelevant. The people of Ukraine should not have their future determined by the fact that Putin has men with guns and the willingness to use them. It's as simple as that. And as long as people like Putin exist in the world, having a military will often be the only way to prevent stuff like that from happening.
I am genuinely curious to know who is framing the war between Russia and Ukraine as genocide. My understanding is Ukraine views it as imperialism and Russia views it as liberating people who are Russian from Ukrainian rule (if we are talking about Crimea/Donbas) or stopping Ukraine from doing some sort of evil, I'm not totally clear on this one.
First Congo War is debatable but before I expand on that I want to make sure you understand the war happened after the 1994 genocide? You are referring to a second genocide? (Not debating if the mass killing during the war counted as genocide, just wanting to make sure we are talking about the same thing).
Bosnia genocide I don't think I need to reply further because I agree it wasn't started to do genocide.
East Timor: disagree. There was a civil war because of how the colonial power left (one could say by design) and Indonesia saw it as an annexation opportunity. It wasn't a war between two established states in response to intention to commit genocide.
Bangladesh: I don't think I know who the military who opposed Pakistan was?
WWII: My point has been no allied power cared about liebestraum until it threatened their own borders/colonial interests. If we go back to the comment I was replying to, the person was talking about one country defending itself against another because they thought they didn't deserve to live because of their world view, sexuality or colour of skin. I suppose if you stretch world view into believing they should be allowed to live their life in peace then sure that applies. I can't argue with that one.
Well that seems an arbitrary distinction.
It is an arbitrary distinction. I'm explaining my viewpoint.
There's no such thing as a perfectly moral war. But would the world be better off today if everyone had just rolled over and let the Nazis do what they want?
Would the world be better off today if people fought the Nazis earlier and not only when it threatened their imperialism and no one used it to further their imperialism? Yes. But that wasn't what we were discussing.
All you're doing here is dodging the question.
No, I answered your question.
Edit: I can be more clear.
Is it good someone stopped the Nazis from genocide? Yes.
Did armed resistance to the Nazis from state military start because of the genocide? No.
Living inside any of those lines doesn't seem to guarantee that. 'People on the other side' is a story the powerful have been telling us for years. What if they start a war and nobody attends?
This is the real world, you don't get guarantees, you get what you have and you have to work with that.
Refusing to engage with any system that doesn't meet your definition of perfect is - and I hate to use this word but there's no other way to describe it - childish.
Sometimes stubborn grandmas have to go sit in front of tanks if change is to happen in this real world full of real men and their real weapons.
Childish is that you believe you have to be stuck forever in the reality that presents itself to you. Direct action means saying 'No' to what you don't want directly.
A refusal to engage is engagement as well.
You work to change the reality, but you still live in the reality you have now.
I want to end capitalism, but I still buy food and pay rent, because I currently live in capitalism. You don't get to opt out of reality.
I live in the reality I have now following my convictions - that means if that kills me it does. That's what convictions are.
You seem so desperately wanting to deny me my opting out of reality, telling me I don't get to opt out. Who are you to tell me what I get to opt out of? Or to tell me what reality is in the first place? I only engage with what I want to engage with. And if it knocks on my door with guns? Well shoot me, if that's what humanity has to offer I don't want my place in it anyways. It probably would help non-humans a lot if we all perished. I assure you I'm not that gloomy in real life.
Disclaimer: I try to survive in this stupid timeline just like the next person, painfully aware that currently we are all complicit in genocide and murder for the sake of our comfort and our habits, not just in Gaza (which is just one of many ghosts in Capitalism's haunted house). The last bit of moral ground I feel I have is that I can loudly proclaim that I will not be sent to war.
Kind of answering to both your answers here. Capitalism sucks, but at least don't let them send you off to kill and get killed.
I really like this response.
Sorry, I don't think I should buy into myths about how the regular people in enemy countries want to eat babies or whatever so that rich people can have more 🤷♀️
So if one day that made up line shifted and now you were in the territory of a government that believes you don't deserve human rights for whatever reason, you'd be totally cool with that.
I'm not cool with being inside any made-up lines. Fighting for any of those mental constructs perpetuates the problem, even though it might be tempting.
I think, in their example, the person would be literally fighting for survival, not for made up lines.
OK? I'm not cool with living under capitalism, but I'll still die if I don't get a job. At some point we have to live with the fact that social and political conditions are going to happen to us regardless of how we feel about them. You don't get to opt out of concentration camps.
... And about the camps: if you are in any country backing Israel or the US you are currently supporting concentation camps. So don't tell me radical pacifism is worse than what everybody is doing already by their non-revolt.
This is just whataboutism. You're not actually making a point, just deflecting.
I would actually 100% support a UN peacekeeping mission in Gaza. I think that the people of Palestine should be defended from Isreal's genocide, and if it takes tanks and guns to do that, I believe that's what we should do.
Doesn't mean I like it. The world I want is one where Isreal isn't engaged in a genocide in the first place. But that's not the world we have. You're not making anyone's life better by sticking your head in the sand.
In your other reply you suggested that I should just refuse to eat and simply die because I want capitalism to end. Who does that help? That's a serious question, and I actually want you to answer it; if I kill myself rather than engage with capitalism, what have I done to bring about its end? Whose life have I improved?
And as long as you keep working under capitalism it will keep existing.
Yes, I understand that sometimes the other option is to die. And the personal line I draw is that I'd rather die than be sent to war. Of course, if the real situation actually arrives my self-preservation instinct will probably kick in and I'll end up dying anyways, just in some trench. But I do wish I had the mental fortitude to tell them to fuck off. In practice it's unlikely to occur at all, I'm too old and a woman.
Joining a military that aggresses other nations? Yeah, spot on. Joining a military to defend your line on the ground against people you see as fellow earthlings? Still a fair take. Joining a military to defend against people who want you dead because of how you were born? That's where this starts to unravel. That kind of stuff sadly exists in this world.
I'm not gonna fault an american for an opinion like that, but if you're involved with european leftists who are too busy virtue signalling to adopt any pragmatic defense policy positions, you get a real appreciation for the nuance.
I'm all for artistic prose, emphatic amd impactful prose, but so many people think impact is more important than accuracy and coherence.
We can assume they mean (or would accept the substitution of) "the military industrial complex" instead of the concept of "maintaining a military", but the symmetry required them to be less accurate.
This applies as well to the french, polish or British armies no debate.
I mean self-defense is not bad. US is just not defending itself from anyone.
Self-defense from a self inflicted problem though?
If only we had countless examples from history of people successfully defending themselves without a military...
Do we?
Haiti's independence war, the October revolution, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Irish independence movement, the French revolution, India's independence guerillas, Indonesia's independence guerillas, women's rights movements (including suffragette terrorism), the Black Panthers, Christians in the Roman empire, Al Qaeda fighting off NATO, ...
I'm not suggesting pacifism, I'm suggesting decentralized violence that isn't at the command of a state.
Ah, bespoke artisanal violence. That's the difference
Unironically, yes. Shape the tools of violence for the situation, keep them in the hands of those they are meant to defend, and suddenly it's a lot less evil.
It's the same way your grandma knitting you a scarf is less evil than a sweatshop knitting you one.
That only works for internal resistance I believe? Like, Ukrainians can't defend against the Kremlin with a sitting strike
However, we definitely need more sitting strikes nowadays. We've grown complacent in exchange for small pleasantries
Sure. Let yourself become "internal" and then assassinate and terror-bomb and sabotage them. I wasn't suggesting pacifism, I was suggesting not outsourcing your "self-defense" to a state.
Militaries can never give you self-defense, they can only give self-defense to themselves, more specifically military high command. Or the military-industrial complex if you're feeling fancy. You are a source of taxes, morale, and manpower.
One thing to remember is that the alternative to a military is being able to spend all the money and resources and labor and life that was going to the military on other projects. Even spending it all on self-defense if need be.
We have only grown complacent because they have everyone starved on the edge of poverty and no one can afford to risk it.
The complacency came from being overfed on chemically engineered, heartily poisoned garbage, sportsball, video games, television, alcohol, drugs, and algorithms.
So many absurd things that I was told "you'll understand/agree when you're older" that turned out to just be boomer copium.
No, I don't hate taxes (the opposite). No, I'm not more conservative (the opposite).
One thing I've noticed about boomers is the constant TV on in the background. Very commonly FOX news, or newsmax these days, cnn, etc. Their world view is absolutely shaped by their media diet.
Meanwhile, our generation has always had the Internet. We view the world through that lens, which has a bit more of an expanded view, especially since people from those "scary" countries can come on places like reddit and post. Which is why I think the push for AI has been so strong. Now the Epstein class have some sort of means to taint what we read online, slowly moving our own worldview to the one the boomers have had from their own propaganda. It used to take owning the news stations to push their agenda, but now they had to pivot to now posting via bots to get their messages in.
All this to say, I think we had a nice gap where a kinder worldview emerged for some generations, but I worry that the generation growing up with the internet how it is becoming is going to slip back into the boomer thinking if it continues this way.
Their strategy for corrupting the youth has been promoting a vapid hyper capitalist hustle culture and signal boosting influencers who embody that depravity. However, unlike the boomers of yore, the economy we face is terrible and only getting worse, with none of us having any personal wealth left to protect. They're going hard into fascism in an effort to redirect the anger, but even that has a limited half life. Eventually they're gonna need to start cannibalizing each other in mass movements against other elites, because we need somebody to pay and they need to make it not them. I forsee war in some form as an inevitability.
Not true for me.
As someone pointed out, this is understandable if you're from the USA.
Otherwise, I see it like this:
Every country has an army.
Their own, or the one of another country.
The baseline is that going to war is bad, having a defensive army is absolutely not (and will prevent deaths as russia won't dare attack you).
Having a formidable army has clearly not deterred global superpowers from attacking you, especially if they get too cocky like in Iran and Ukraine
Neither Ukraine nor Iran had a "formidable" army when they were attacked.
Russia was supposedly the second army in the world too.
Iran has long possessed the ability to survive decapitation and respond to an existential threat by closing the strait. It's why no US President tried it before now. Ukraine was more of a surprise than Iran, but Russia not realizing that their own neighbor wouldn't be a pushover the second time was still a danger that they could've foreseen. In both cases, deterrence didn't work because the invaders were greedy and irrationally confident.
And?
Still didn't have "formidable" armies.
And sincerely your "being cocky" smells like kremlin apology sauce, you sincerely don't think Ukraine is at fault in any kind of way for the 2014 invasion or the 2022 full scale invasion?
I don't know why you think I was saying Ukraine was at fault for once again being the target of Russian imperialism. If anything, I'm giving them more credit than you are
No you don't, because you have no idea how much credit I give the Ukrainian people, which if you wonder is around astronomical.
You can also just accept and say "ah yeah they didn't have formidable armies. I was thinking about how it went after the invasions." But that's too hard for some people I guess.
this reads like satire
Sometimes, but do you let your neighbor waltz in and subjugate you?
I have a standing subjugation appointment with my neighbor every Thursday in fact. Don’t knock it til you try it.
What's even more wild is to ask a religious leader for a religion that says "don't kill people" about how killing people in a war isn't a sin. I was only a child when I saw one of my peers ask a priest this. The mental gymnastics the priest was trying to pull was blatantly obvious to me, even as a kid.
It all makes perfect sense when you realize that the "don't kill people" part only meant "don't kill fellow tribesmen". Non-tribesmen were 100% fair game. The God of that religion commanded multiple genocides against other tribes.
You run into the same problems with said religion and slavery. The whole "it was different and more indentured servitude than chattel slavery" was only for inside the tribe. Chattel slavery was explicitly allowed for the non-tribesman.
Modern religious leaders may be uncomfortable with this and have to perform some Olympic level mental gymnastics, but that is just because ethics and values have changed slightly in 2000 or so years.
Some people genuinely deserve it. So here is the best-intent version in all its escalating absurdity:
The problem is who gets to crown themselves the judge of who deserves to die, which is why judicial systems exist, but who assigns the judges? So then you need an external mandate or a consensus mechanism in place, long story short, you get a ruler with a divine mandate, a parliament/jury consensus system, or an AI swarm convergence mechanism depending on the era you’re currently crossing.
But then you can’t trial the chief of another tribe/country/swarm for crimes they committed which aren’t wrong at all according to their values, like say, a Muslim marrying a first cousin wouldn’t be doing something wrong according to their moral system, but it would be a big taboo in the USA and the west. So if you’re say, a pious chieftain, and you wanted to take the stuff from the next tribe over, just start thinking smart, think of the letter not the spirit. You got all you need.
And now you know why an army is a national survival necessity, and why even religions themselves aren’t safe from a politician, whom they sometimes have to kill.
When I was young people around me told me that the further west on the map country is, the wealthiest and more free people live there without any conflict bothering them. With USA (the west-most country on map) as a shiny utopia with everyone peacefully living there being rich and free.
When I was a teen and my country joined EU I saw countless young adults emigrate west, seeking wealth and freedom beyond anyone's wildest dreams. Terrorists and oppressive regimes waged war in the eastern lands.
When I am an adult, the supposed peacekeeper of the world is waging wars to protect pedophiles. Former empire where sun never sets is trying to outlaw being young and sell their citizens data to highest bidder. And EU is bi-yearly trying to pass universal invigilation act.
I feel like my moral compass never really changed, it's just the world around me that changed beyond recognition. I worry how it will be when I get old, if I even get to live to old age.
Hang in there, buddy, it's rough but we are all in this together.
US quality of life is going down because labor market has lower demand. it used to be: economic growth -> high demand for labor -> high wages -> quality of life.
the only thing that it has to do with being "west" was that new land -> lots of stuff to do -> growth -> high wages -> quality of life. once the land is settled, that stops.
If nazis in ww2 had propaganda as good as american dream, nobody would know they lost the war to this day.
actually, to live without economic growth takes entirely different strategies than the labor market and wage mechanism.
it needs strategies that the US has not shown mastery of yet.
I know, but like, what? How? I just can't see a society where that works with current ideas
Better society safety nets. Accepting that constantly chasing quarterly gains is unsustainable. Sometimes its fine for a company to just "Do/make X" instead of constantly pivoting and enshitifying chasing every % of profits. Accepting that sometimes employees will have moments of zero productivity and thats fine because your company is creating jobs and supporting the economy (instead of laying people off because $$$$)
I was once asked why I joined the military and my answer was 'l needed money'. This seemed to shock my companion who was astounded that I was willing to potentially kill people over money. My response was that it was a far better reason than for imaginary friends or the colour of their skin.
Honestly I always had more respect for mercenaries for not spreading bullshit about imagined values and just admitting why they joined lol
Still a terrible reason and it makes you an awful person to be a mercenary for imperialism to kill innocents for bourgeois profits.
Never denied I was an awful person. Also, not in the American military.
Canada isn't any better. Edit: Why is this being down voted when the comment under is being upvoted I looked at their profile they are candadian they say this multiple times.
They also didn't say Canada
Like Albania's any improvement.
Looked at their profile they live in Canada say they are Canadian that's why I said that.
On some level I have more sympathy for someone who at least believes they're doing the right thing
Yeah well I think because they have some sense of (perverted) morals behind it, while you were doing it just for profit.
They're really buying into a lifestyle.
And that style is included in the compensation package.
I always had a deep puzzlement with the military as an institution. It’s basically an organization designed to take young people and teach them to run toward a firing machine gun when told to do so. It defies all logic at the individual level, and it scares me.
But... It's not?
You seem to have developed an understanding of the military based entirely around a small slice of WW2 movies and video games, and then assumed that has any bearing on the real world.
The way you actually learn to deal with a machine gun (and this was true even in WW2) is find cover, set up suppressing fires, use smoke and terrain for concealment as you advance, and eventually get someone into a position where they can flank and take out the machine gun nest, probably with a grenade so they don't expose themselves. Most importantly, everything I just described above involves teamwork. You protect each other, you trust each other, you rely on each other.
Safety is paramount. No one is teaching you to run screaming at a machine gun nest with no regard for your own life. That shit barely even happens in movies anymore.
A huge amount of what you learn as a soldier is basically how to keep yourself safe in extremely dangerous situations. Yes, you still have to have a willingness to put yourself in extremely dangerous situations in the first place, but the whole point of learning to do this stuff well is learning how to be the person who can survive those extremely dangerous situations.
I think you are missing the forest for the trees here.
You're claiming "forests" ("militaries treat young, enlisted lives as expendable for unnecessary wars") exist and then pointing at a cardboard standee of a tree you brought as evidence.
Yeah, you're right, but you can admit when your attempt at artistry fails your point.
Read my comment again. You are reading things that are not there.
I'm curious what you think OP meant by their statement seeing as they claim my interpretation was reading something that wasn't there. You're saying it's not literal and they're saying it's not the idea that war wastes lives carelessly. So how should someone read the statement that the military teaches people to run into machine gun fire? It reads as a critique, although I suppose that could be the start of the misunderstanding.
Sorry, I was trying to think of a more reasonable alternative than your literal statement that didn't make sense.
Can you please explain what you meant by
Such that you think someone who explained that the statement is false is missing the forest?
Read back your comment. Does it sound like an honest, good faith effort at dialog?
I’m blocking you now and I’m not going to think twice about this exchange.
This is for people that will come after (assuming the whole post isn't randomly deleted).
I think my reading of your comment's anti-military message was reasonable, certainly not mean-spirited. However, I will admit my first comment was more declarative than inquisitive. A more open dialogue might have been "Then what is the forest?"
OK. So elaborate. What is it that disturbs you?
it teaches them that the cause is more important than their individual life.
the cause is usually some politician getting more power... so yeah, lots of brainwashing needed
The rich need cannon fodder.
When we talk about voluntary enlistments they typically rely on mythology of noble and valiant warriors and honorable deaths, or the military represents a path out of poverty.
It's really eye opening to read accounts of civil war and WW1 soldiers who found out how brutal war actually was.
This is exactly why WWI is so interesting to me. All over the world (mostly Europe) we had these notions about honor and glory in war. Then after a bunch of people got fed to machine gun fire the collective consciousness of humanity shifts. Obviously there were folks ahead of the curve and already knew this.
But in general for western civilization WWI is the inflection point.
It's so interesting!
I feel like I hear a lot more about how Desert Storm was the massive shift to the general public getting to see the horror of war. It's absolutely true that there was a step change! I think it's valuable to include WWI in this discussion because adding to your point about the machine gun the change in war technology fundamentally changed who was surviving the war and how, and what stories and life changing injuries they brought home.
It's tragic and world changing if your loved one goes off to war and dies, but that's also very abstract. Having them come back and either:
really change how the people who weren't there view the reality of war. Even for myself, it was hearing my grandmother sobbing as she recalled atrocities in WWII (she was a child) that really shaped how I view war.
I find it hard to digest that people in north america appear to have become less opposed to wars (specifically the wars of the US) than they did in the 2000s (which are the first wars I have adult memory of). If I had to guess I would say it's a mix of overwhelm with everything else and that war is back to being more remote. I'm sure the people who are being droned still think it's horrific.
Also US centric but I went to the Atlanta History Center a few years back. I am not from the states. The way the US Civil war was presented was so different from what I had learned. This makes sense, especially as canada uses the US as a shield for their own atrocities, and likes to emphasize how chattel slavery was outlawed here sooner. What I didn't expect was the exhibit on how the horror of war left such a mark on the population. It was very enlightening!
Good point about Desert Storm. Because North America has been so insulated from war/ major conflicts we have grown to be more tolerable of waging it. Every 20ish years we have to be reminded that it is something to be avoided.
Also, I hadn't even thought about how much medicine had changed and that allowed more people to survive but with injuries.
Another thing to point out is that Canada and the USA have only seen imperialist/ asymmetric warfare in my lifetime and this colors how we view the seriousness of it. How many d-bag Seals have podcasts or books glorifying themselves and how their rugged manliness got them through war? In reality they just had better equipment, logistics, and training on their side. But again it feeds into the propaganda machine pushing these societies to go to war.
Not to worry - eventually the industrialization of war will be such that invaders only need to use unmanned craft to decimate their opposition's home population on their 9-5 shift and then get drinks afterwards. (/s)
The police are made to oppress your own citizens while the military is made to oppress foreign citizens
And if you're smart, you can even use the military to oppress your own citizens!
I smell an incoming quote from "Battlestar Galactica"
I am intrigued, please tell me where to find out what you're talking about haha
itt: people justifying why their institution of mass murder is actually good
To protect from that other persons institution of mass murder. OBV.
Killing people is wrong.
But you have only a couple of choices when someone wrong shows up to kill you.
Give in and let them take you over, maybe they kill you
Put up a fight, possibly killing them, possibly killing you
The military is necessarily bad because humans are necessarily bad. If everyone could just train to defend themselves and agree not to use the military on it's own citizens, it would be a closer to neutral
Humans are not necessarily bad. Working together in tough times is what made humans evolutionary wise superior and still does. It is power that makes humans bad. And more power even more so. Or how some English Lord put it:
humans have fought wars for longer than our recorded history, you can't blame it all on fools seeking concepts of power. hell, we were fighting back when we were still apes swinging from trees.
We can't seem to break free of those evolutionary ties that we have to out-compete each other. There are lots of great people, but we're still at that tipping point where some bullshit makes one county chain-reaction genocide another country.
you almost got it. Power does not corrupt. Power attracts narcissists and psychopaths. Those people have been corrupt before. There are hierarchies all over the place where people higher up have authoritative control over the people (or even other beings) below them and the vast majority of those do not abuse this power hierarchy. Those people that do are mentally ill. It is just the higher you look the more likely you’ll find a mentally deranged narcissist because those are the people that really are into that shit and thus exert the effort to get there. For everybody else it is not worth it.
Killing people is bad and war is bad and the military is evil and the only way to stop it is to use the military to do a war and kill people.
It's not though.
So what then? Everyone hug and get along? You understand there's way too many aggressively stupid people out there that believe profoundly idiotic shit that peace will never be a thing long beyond the sun itself aging into a supernova.
You focus too much on physical aggression to fight physical aggression.
Ever heard of diplomacy? Of political, economic, industrial pressure? What about all the wars that were prevented due to clever people making some clever moves that did not involve murder on a systematic scale.
Furthermore, we've spent an incredible amount of resources on perfectioning killing each other, and barely on exploring ways to wage war without killing.
There are times where none of this works, then what?
Take Ukraine for example. They gained their independence peacefully and democratically. After their independence, their talented diplomats and leaders made the unpredencted move to diplomatically negotiate a deal with their former oppressors to give up their entire nuclear arsenal in exchange for a promise of peace, and they even leveraged Western powers to serve as mediators and witnesses to showcase that their intentions genuine to the world. Russia signed the agreement with a smile, and then on to invade annex Crimea in 2014 as well as start the war in Donbass in 2014 in complete violation of the agreement.
The West saw this violation as an insult against their goodwill and their diplomacy as well as a challenge to their power so they backed Ukraine and applied severe political and economic sanctions on Russia. This forced Russia to come to the negotiation table in September of that year where they, again, promised to cease all hostilities against Ukraine if Ukraine agreed to freeze the conflict on the current frontlines. Ukraine agreed and the ceasefire was violated by Russia immediately.
At that point, Ukraine wanted to fight back with the help of the West, but Germany and France loved Putin, so they split off from the US and pressured Ukraine into signing a new ceasefire agreement with Russia under similar terms a few months later in early 2015. Russia once again agreed, but this time they held true to their word because the EU powers basically legitimatized Russia's claim that the frontlines are the new borders.
Not even a decade later in 2022, Russia amassed the largest troop build up in Europe in decades and launched the largest and most brutal invasion in the continent since WWII... in blatant violation of their previous agreements. The invasion is unprovoked and is done purely for the imperial ambitions of Putin. He wants reestablish the borders of the Soviet Union and the glory of the Russian empire through military might.
So now Ukraine has spent over 3 decades trying to use diplomacy, they have tried the most extreme and clever political tactics, they have rallied the West to turn Russian into an economic and political pariah in the world, they have use the UN and other global institutions to apply pressure... yet here we are. Four years later of nonstop war, and millions of Ukrainians displaced, hundreds of their settlements are razed, 1/5 of their country is still occupied, a million of their young men are killed or wounded, and their economy is in shambles. The only thing stopping them from complete annihilation as a nation is their military.
Are you seriously going to sit here and tell me that the Ukrainians are evil for using their military to defend themselves? Are you seriously going to try to wag your finger about Ukrainians needing to try other avenues? Are you seriously going to tell Ukrainians to hit back against Russia who wants to genocide them? You would have to a complete clown to do that. There's no way you can see what's happening there and think that their military and their use of it is not justified.
Diplomacy? My sweet summer child, that only works for a little while. How many wars have happened within just your own teenage lifetime where diplomacy was used to prevent it, but a war was fought anyways?
The simplest way to rebuke you is to quite frankly say to you that we are all still chimps with nukes.
If you honestly and truly believe that societies that have collected into nationalistic/tribalistic cultures as a whole could stop fighting each other, then I would say that you are ridiculously naive and ignorant. Literally for the entire of human history there have been people and entire cultural movements to foster peace amongst us all using diplomacy, for at least ten thousand fucking years, and people still want to kill each other.
The wealthy and powerful already know this and always/everywhere they wall themselves in away from society as a whole and protect themselves, then pay for protection using the same violence you are against using; we call them oligarchs.
The 21st century is considered to be one of the most peaceful times in human history. That's indeed due to international cooperation efforts, i.e., diplomacy.
Get your facts straight next time you climb on a high horse to make condescending comments.
You're really not gonna be able to talk me out of believing militaries are evil without more than that.
I'm not talking you out of "militaries are evil". I just want to point out that war and therefore killing people is not the only option.
I mean killing people is bad.
Yes.
Most people don't understand the concept of the industrial military complex. There is only one way forward to end the madness and that is to dismantle this system permanently.
Amen. But unfortunately, a lot of that dismantling will have to be done at gunpoint.
You are not going to be able to stop this with a game of whack a mole. I am not a fan of a violent solution, but if done it would have to be universal all at once since this concept has already spread to every nation in the world.
Without a doubt an industry that can only grow from death and destruction is inherently a threat to human life. Couple that with fascism and you have a government that conspires with corporations to engaged in wars of opportunity for profit. A closed loop of human destruction that grows like a cancer.
I think the real solution is just getting the wealthy to dismantle the system. It sounds kind of silly and simple, but they are the only ones with the power to actually change anything at this point in a meaningful way.
Absolutely. But the rich will only dismantle the system under threat of violence.
I am not sure I agree with this. Even if the threat of violence is effective I am not sure it is the correct thing to do. I think we can both agree there may be solutions we haven't even thought of yet.
It is manifestly not the correct thing to do. Coercing people under threat of violence is an inherently evil act.
And I fervently hope there is some other solution, but humanity has had many thousands of years to think of one, and none is forthcoming.
You don't get it - there are lots of natural resources there!
Tell that to the people of Ukraine...
People of Ukraine know better than most that killing is bad and war is bad
Except your forgetting the final part of the quote. But please, feel free to tell the members of Ukraine's military " they're evil" 🙄
That's actually now what the final quote is. The military is an evil institution. The members are not necessarily. Like, in Ukraine case, people are defending their country from invading genocidal force. That's not evil, quite noble even. The concept of military however is.
Yeah, this!
Steelman argument: he's speaking about militaries in general, not suggesting that one country disarms first.
If hypothetically Ukraine and Russia both disarmed at the same time, that would be wonderful.
We don't live in hypothetical world.
We don't??? Shit! Now we can't talk about abstract concepts without getting dragged into irrelevant details.
Have you seen what happens to animal species that evolve on some island and one day an non native exotic animal is introduced? In a lot of cases that animal goes extinct. Even if we would all magically agree to never attack other counties and all dissolve our army's, only 1 country has to break the packt and we all have a real chance to be invaded. If we are doing imaginary systems, I would suggest a system where we all agree to respect current borders and never invade and all also agree to fight any country that breaks the rule. Sort of a more global and more elaborate NATO.
As a teen I talked to people from all around the world, usually connected by our shared fandoms. I remember talking to a girl in California who said she wanted to join the military when she grew up. Apparently she came from a military family, and couldn't understand why I was appalled at the idea of choosing such a path. We discussed it civilly, and eventually agreed to disagree. I can't help but wonder if she went through with it and, if so, how she feels about it today.
She was probably conservative enough to not regret it
You shouldn't agree to disagree with people who want to oppress and kill millions of innocents.
Guess I'll have to go back in time and tell my teenage self that, because you're criticizing something that happened twenty years ago.
I'm curious what the alternative to "agree to disagree" is.
Agree to agree? Refuse to agree? Refuse to disagree?
Either you convince someone to change their mind or you don't. If you don't convince them then you either keep trying past the point where it is clearly futile or you stop trying. If both sides of a disagreement stop trying then they've agreed that they disagree.
Oh! I did think of an alternative. You could pretend to agree and secretly disagree. Is that what you are suggesting is preferable?
You will get the murder and destruction when you grow up kid. It all makes sense once you become part of the machine /S
Violence literally just creates more violence.
Like this stupid pointless fucking Iraq war. Even if dumbfuck somehow "wins", which its clear will never happen, do they not realize all the destruction done by the US is just going to create yet another ISIS/Al Queda/whatever style terrorist organization as retatiation?
Then it'll be "oh boy, gotta kill more brown people in the desert!"
Wash, rinse, repeat...
You mean Iran?
Thank you. I was about to sadly check the news.
Probably. Frankly, all these countries just feel like a rerun of the same endless bull shit at this point.
They're distinct countries with their own unique challenges, cultures, and agendas. Simply viewing them as a blanket middle eastern "enemy" to America is a big part of the problem. The only important thing these "enemies" have in common is that America needs to keep them divided, lest the Arab world coalesces into a superpower to rival the greatest. That said, it's not just outside meddling making that difficult; these countries have qualitative differences.
You are not wrong. On any level. Like I said, the endless nonsense is just... endless. Itnhas "We have always been aw war with Eurasia" vibes, because that is basically the point pushed by the constant nonsense. Can't let these countries become stronger or unified or whatever. They are just always "the enemy", "terrorists", Muslims" etc.
And I am.not saying I agree with thst mindset at all, it just followa with what you said about the US constantly over there.
And it goes with the idea that war in general is just fucking stupid and never solves shit.
Iran, Iraq, whatever muslim country Israel has sent their attack-dog after
This and the electoral college. Even 12 year old me was like this shit is fucked right?? Only to be told by adults how stupid I was… smh
I'm glad I was never told this. The benefits of being from a large state I guess
Thats so naive. Anyone who can look at the general population and conclude there is something called maturity is lying to themselves.
how do you define maturity?
And suprise, suprise, House always wins.
Everyone in this thread is forgetting about the evil✋ALIENS🤚that may or may not exist.
I watched the X-Files, I know military isn't on our side
But what if they believe in another Sky Daddy than you?
Surely that is reason to end lives, even though I believe my Sky Daddy will judge anyone without need for my humble intervention for him to do so.
Or what if they don't conform to iron age middle eastern moral standards? Surely they then deserve to die, no?
Hopefully very obvious /s
Apparently not. Sarcasm is hard nowadays 😔
My aha moment was at a museum on an air base when I realized that everything there was designed around killing people. Sure, the technology was cool but I couldn't celebrate the purpose. I really don't support our military anymore, unfortunately I know it's a necessary evil in the current world.
Perhaps necessary, but how necessary? And how much is necessary?
A great question, it kind of depends on people's willingness to compromise and be empathetic.
Stop murdering each other. Agreed. It is possible to stop aggressors without systematically murdering people. We have invested so much resources throughout history into perfectioning murder. But so little to explore ways of war without murder.
How would you solve the war in Ukraine without murder?
Rock paper scissors
This is something that has to start before a war even begins. Investing way more resources into researching and developing non-lethal warfare. Knocking people out instead of killing them will achieve pretty much the same effect of stopping aggressions. I do see, that currently, Ukraine is stuck using the same tools of systematic murder that have been developed over millenia. So they don't really have as much of a choice. However, others have, others can.
What kind of a delusional view is this? A country that's willing to go to war is a country that's willing to kill. War is not a child's game, it's literally a matter of life or death. There's no such thing as a non lethal war. You can't add safety rules to something that has no rules and expect countries at war to abide. That's the whole reason why the geneva conventions and war crimes are a big joke. No country would willingly put themselves at a disadvantage by using non lethal weapons when their enemies will use lethal weapons, especially when there's no enforcer to come to your aid when it happens. War will always be a competition about death, destruction, and power.
That's exactly the kind of backwards thinking that keeps us stuck in this mess.
You are missing the fact that most people don't want to die. Including soldiers on either side of the war and that a large portion of them don't want to put themselves on the frontlines. Many are pressured into it. And don't mistake the few rulers in power for the whole country.
And yes, there are plethora of examples for non lethal military operations. What's missing, is putting this onto a larger scale.
Furthermore, you are assuming that going for non-lethal options is directly putting a side into a disadvantage. This is not necessarily the case and mustn't be. If the goal is to defend against and stop aggressors, there already exist several ways to achieve this without having to kill a single person. And there could be many many many more, if we would invest more resources into that kind of warfare instead of finding more clecer ways to be murderers and traumatize entire generations.
It's not a matter of mentality, it's a matter of reality. Your reasoning is simply not tethered to the reality of the world.
Everybody wants a peaceful world filled with sunshine and rainbows, but we don't live in that world. While you're right that a lot of people don't want to die, it's also true that a lot of people simply have no problem killing others. People like you forget that the laws of nature apply to us as well. It only seems like it doesn't because we cleverly figured out that if we monopolized violence, society becomes a lot easier to manage because there's a greater power to enforce common standards. However, there's no greater between countries. There's no state of countries that a victim country can turn to for justice or help. They're on their own, and the only way they can protect themselves is if they have the means to fight back.
You can talk about hypotheticals for eternity, it doesn't mean anything. At the end of the day, there are dictators, there are violent people, there are extremist groups, there are warmongering societies. It would be nice if they didn't exist, but they have always existed and they still exist now. We can't address what could be, we can only address what is. If you're a country in the world right now, it is your responsibility to protect your citizens from external threats because that's why you exist as an entity. It is the duty of the state to use every means necessary to ensure the best for its citizens, including the use of violence as a means of defense and deterrence.
When you find a way for Ukraine to defend and stop Russia's ongoing invasion against them, then please tell me because you might just be the first person in history who has solved war.
We need to force world leaders to fight to the death in a gladiatorial arena. Only then will we have world peace
Put those murderous maniacs into a room who really want to kill each other instead of dragging other innocent people into it. Would be an improvement.
But that's incredibly childish view of the world. Not every world leader is like Putin or Aliyev. A lot of times, the world leader of a country is the voice of reason preventing war. If given the opportunity, mulims in Egypt would massacre the Copetic Christains the first opportunity they can, but Al Sisi is a secular dictator and he's the one preventing that from happening. Same goes for the Balkans going to war again, as corrupt as their governments are, they're the reason why they're not fighting. The different ethnic groups there genuinely hate and want to kill each other. The idea that all wars are a result of evil state leaders is true a lot of times, but pretending that its always the case is a gross oversimplification of the world.
This is true. It's not like states are immutable actors with total control
A very privileged opinion from a person sheltered by the harsh realities of human nature and the universe in general. Revel in your ignorance.
The responses to this post have kinda proven its point. Even when self defense is necessary, killing people is bad, war is bad, and the military is evil. Violence will never be a favorable thing, even if it is unavoidable, and it is never something we can take lightly or promote as a banal part of life. The only way we should consider violence in our daily life is to reaffirm why we need to toil to make society fair and just. Minimizing the drivers of conflict is more effective at stopping it than people want to accept.
Injustice being inevitable is not an excuse to sneer at those who want to combat it. The moment you accept it as immutable is the moment that you start to perpetuate it.
I wonder where all of those pacifist countries went...
A nonviolent state is an oxymoron
Based an anarchist-pilled.
Yeah, but no on the military part when considering most countries that are not aggressors. A hypothetical "punchback guy" that punches a bully back when you get punched is in my opinion not evil, the bully is.
AntiPK