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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Hardly. The whole point of a professional military is that it can be sent off to fight and die so that the ordinary citizen doesn't have to. Most democratic nations are founded on this principle; those that are not face some kind of persistent existential threat.
edited 28th Mar '16 1:19:57 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"There's something very morally rotten in sending other people to die without giving your part, I think.
That's OT, however.
EDIT: Well, look where I live. I'll be the first to admit that it's colouring the way I look at things.
edited 28th Mar '16 1:20:48 PM by desdendelle
On empty crossroads, seek the eclipse -- for when Sol and Lua align, the lost shall find their way home.More details on the Capitol shooting.
The gunman attempted to enter the building with concealed weapons but was stopped by the metal detector. Earlier reports that he shot a Capitol police officer may have been in error as the story is now saying that he pulled a gun after Capitol police stopped him, prompting them to shoot him.
EDIT: No, wait, this one clarifies
that he did shoot an officer while being taken down, but not seriously.
edited 28th Mar '16 1:22:13 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.You do your part by maintaining your economic, cultural, and political institutions so that the soldiers have something worth fighting for and worth coming home to. That's the implicit contract involved in a volunteer military.
edited 28th Mar '16 1:22:12 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Elites having contempt for the military that they send off to die is not the same thing as society as a whole having that contempt. I don't know anyone personally who isn't vehemently patriotic when it comes to supporting our soldiers and giving them credit for their self-sacrifice in defending us. It's mainly Republicans in government who hold them in contempt.
edited 28th Mar '16 1:24:34 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"![]()
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I guess that makes sense in a volunteer army scenario. Here, though? It's like I said, you're sending somebody else instead. Even I, weak and lazy as I may be, gave my three years.
edited 28th Mar '16 1:24:08 PM by desdendelle
On empty crossroads, seek the eclipse -- for when Sol and Lua align, the lost shall find their way home.![]()
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You gotta remember, you being in Israel and all you're in a pretty unique scenario.
The United States hasn't faced an existential threat since the Soviet Union and even then it was with MAD, not with anything a common conscript could deal with.
edited 28th Mar '16 1:26:37 PM by LeGarcon
Oh really when?On a less volatile note:
"Supreme Court rejects Illinois ex-governor's corruption appeal" - http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0WU12W
We've also never faced an external invasion in the entire history of our country. The closest we've been is the American Revolutionary War. Even our Civil War took place mostly in the South.
When we go to war, it's in someone else's backyard.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.To be clear, I don't really have a problem with the idea of soldiers necessarily. I respect the fact that people are willing to go through that tough regimen and put their lives at risk to defend something. I'm personally just scared of the idea of going into combat (I know it's not very likely these days considering where I live, I'm just talking about in principle) and I'm not sure if I'd really have what it takes to be a soldier in the first place. I have nothing in principle against soldiers at all and respect them as I would anyone else, I just don't support the idea of a mandatory conscription at least in peace time unless there are special circumstances like the country bordering a dangerous neighbor or something
. It's not really about sending someone else in my place so much as "why can't let you let the people who want to serve, serve, and the rest go about their lives if there's no need for things to be any different?".
edited 28th Mar '16 1:38:47 PM by wehrmacht
Come to think of it, the lack of a war on American soil might be why foreign invasion is such a bogeyman around some parts. We can conspire in hushed whispers about how only our guns can protect us from China or Korea sending troops to our shores or the government attempting to declare martial law because we have no idea what that would actually be like.
Frankly, a super-sized Big Mac Value Meal is a bigger threat to the safety of American citizens than vaguely Asian people with guns have ever been.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.The Brits invaded us in 1812, remember? And the Spanish-American War, while never an existential threat to the United States, was a skirmish on our physical borders.
edited 28th Mar '16 1:34:32 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"War of 1812. The Brittish still ruled Canada at that point. They burned the first White House and there were naval battles on the Great Lakes.
Spanish American and Mexican American wars are "kinda-sorta but not really" examples since they took place mostly on territory that was part of America but didn't belong to the US at the time.
After that, the last time an actual nation-state hit American soil was Pearl Harbor.
edited 28th Mar '16 1:42:12 PM by Elle
...I had actually forgotten about the War of 1812. My history classes never talked about it, so I tend to forget it was a thing.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.So yeah, on Google all the results I'm getting for "Sanders negative ad" and "Sanders attack ad" (no quotes on the searches) are from back in January, and deal almost solely with his oft-repeated bit regarding Clinton's speeches to Wall Street. I know he's also criticized her for asking for 1/3 of a Million dollars to sit at a table with her, Bill, and George Clooney (and his wife) at a fundraiser, but that's not exactly an "attack ad".
"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"The United States is not Israel. We only have Canada and Mexico as our neighbors. Every war the U.S. is in is, effectively, oversees since neither Canada or Mexico are hostile to us or even desire to be hostile to us and wouldn't even survive being hostile to us. Our last true military rival was the Soviet Union which the United States outlived. Even with the US's purely volunteer military, the nation still has the most powerful military in the world by far. Nothing can threaten the United States in regards to warfare.
Wizard Needs Food Badly

@wehrmacht: sending other people to soldier instead of you is morally repugnant. It's grunt work (pun unintended), so someone else should do it?
On empty crossroads, seek the eclipse -- for when Sol and Lua align, the lost shall find their way home.