OMG! Jesus?! There you are! Pretending to dislike us Christians to test our faith.

By the way..that whole Armageddon thing..any time soon?

here here!

decrepidoldfool: “Basically we should only be fighting wars against enemies that pose an existential threat to our country.”

Agreed, but how do you do that? Giving soldiers the right to pick their wars will make them pick on a whole bunch of criteria; how close the war is to home, their own personal political views (ie Republicans are for the war and I’m a Republican), whether they “feel” like it. How do you MAKE them choose on moral grounds? How do you make sure that their judgment is sound? How do you make sure that they are aware of all the data they need to be aware of to say “This war is against a real threat” and “This war isn’t?” Every soldier? Every branch of the military? All the time?

No. Focus your efforts on just a few, those who’s JOB it is to know the real threats from the bogus ones and give them a reason to be honest about it.

James: Even if they were playing by standard marketing rules, then things still would have been better. There ARE truth in advertising laws, however limited they are applied. Coke can’t claim that their drinks have ingredients in them which they really don’t, but there is no such rule for government.

It wasn’t just that they were lying to the country. It was that they were lying with no fear of anything bad happening even if people found out. If there was any doubt as to their guilt, that would be one thing, but everyone knows that they lied. No one even disputes that anymore. The most anyone can say is that they should have know the evidence they had wasn’t accurate. They were either outright evil or they were criminally incompetent, yet apparently neither is actionable, and it should be.

So no.. A soft drink ad tries convince you that their soda is what you want to drink. It doesn’t try to convince you that the soda is actually a parachute that can save your life when you leap from a burning plane or a wrench that can help you fix your car. The reason it doesn’t is because they can be hauled into court for saying that. The government has no such stipulations on what they say.

Even if someone is not a pacifist they might recognize a given war as soft drinks. It shouldn’t fall to individuals to point out the emperor’s clothes are, shall we say, a bit transparent but it often does. And the trigger on that war might be pulled after a person has joined.

Once upon a time the National Guard was mainly deployed in the US. As James says, it was re-purposed to shore up army recruiting. I’m saying; if a soldier can’t reconcile their conscience with a given war, they should be given some stateside duty. Of course I recognize that isn’t exactly a majority opinion.

Basically we should only be fighting wars against enemies that pose an existential threat to our country.

I agree, but the war was marketed like a soft drink and it is a counter-productive effort. I agree, many of those people should be in Prison today. You are right on the mark. There is no accountability for deliberate and conscious lies by politicians.

What we should have is a return to the days when the leaders actually led. Like into combat. Not hide behind a phony National Guard membership that was never even fulfilled while other guard members were flying, fighting, and dying.

Yes, I am disgusted.

James: No. The reason we got into Iraq was because No one in the administration was worried about what would happen to them if anyone found out about that they lied.

Ultimately we did find out, but not one of those people was ever brought to trial for lying to Congress, to the American people and getting us into a war we shouldn’t have been in, and they knew that they would never be held accountable.

If they knew that there WOULD be consequences for fabricating evidence or for speaking lies into a microphone, then Iraq may never have happened. On the other hand, if you had given the soldiers the ability to say “No.. I’m not going to fight this war.” I don’t think it would have made a damned bit of difference. We had just come out of 9/11 and our soldiers were all gung-ho to find those responsible and kick their asses. President Bush pointed a finger and said “Those people are responsible.” and we went. It was that simple.

Iraq was a very popular war to begin with, regardless of the debacle it turned into. The only thing that would have prevented it was stopping the people at the top.

Will – “to market wars like soft drinks? to create pitch men for Iraq?” But isn’t that exactly what happened? With all the talk about Weapons of Mass Destruction and “Openly supporting terrorism” When no evidence of either was ever found. When the Secretary of State resigned because he couldn’t stomach the lies and deceit?

Despite the rhetoric of “Making America safer” exactly how has either of the wars in Iraq and Pakistan accomplished anything other than being a recruiting ground for terrorists groups? Well there are the thousands of Americans killed and countless civilians. Was that the purpose of beating the war drums?

BTW, I do agree with your points.

decrepidoldfool: Where’s the moral justification in joining the military when you can’t fight? Even the National Guard trains you how to use a rifle. You think they’re doing that so you can shoot cans and scare the enemy?

We should be concentrating on the people who start the wars, not the soldiers who fight them. THAT’s how you make wars less practical, not allowing the soldiers to pick their fights. I’m for giving the soldiers the right to choose, but if you don’t want to fight because you’re a pacifist, then NO war is acceptable to you and you shouldn’t be joining the military in the first place. If you’re giving the soldier the right to pick and chose his wars, then you’re only effectively fighting the popular wars, not necessarily the wars that need fighting. That’s a little too whacked… even for me, to market wars like soft drinks? to create pitch men for Iraq? Because you know that’s what will happen. Popularity has never been a good indicator of value, but that hasn’t stopped people from believing the exact opposite.

Go to the top. Make the people who start the wars start suffering some of the consequences for their actions. That’s how you make wars less desirable, and that’s pretty much the only way.

“It shouldn’t provide an “out” in a volunteer military.”

I’ve come to believe that it should, because of the thousands of National Guard troops sent to Iraq. Not all wars are created equal, and the suits keep sending committed soldiers into wars that just don’t make sense (which is most of them).

But mostly, I’m repelled by the notion that moral agency is forfeited when putting on a uniform. It has allowed leaders to pursue wars for reasons other than national security, of which Iraq is only one example.

Of course, if soldiers retain a semi-normal sense of moral agency, they will be more responsible when they do kill. They’ll need a damn good reason. If it makes wars less practical, then I guess we’ll have to live with fewer wars. Darn.