President Bush

[flawofhumanity]

Originally Posted by devonin

You know, you're right. I keep getting drawn back in here like anything I say is capable of making a difference, but I really don't think it is.

Not completely true; you in junction with a few others in this thread have at least expanded my view on the current war and even somewhat altered my perception of the war and it's usefulness/how necessary it is/was. By the way, I thanks you and the others for that, so don't think all your time was wasted =P.

Now, there's not a lot about the subject that hasn't been said, but I would like to take a moment to discuss the mentality of the U.S. soldiers going overseas. Now, not to generalize, so I will state that this probably isn't widespread but this is what I've seen/heard from my room mate (who is in the army) and his friends/recruiters that I've met while at the armory, where I have been more than a few times.

I really liked the point you made about the difference between willing to die and willing to kill devonin, because it's true. I hear my room mate proclaim quite a bit that "I'm willing to die for my country," but I've called him out on a few times due to a few occurrences. For one, when he was meeting with his recruiters for the first time, I was with him (as I was his ride and wanted to listen to what they had to say) and they were actually discussing which MOS (or specialty) he could be, and he actually chose the one he chose solely based on the fact that his recruiters and him deduced that he was least likely to have to go overseas/get into actual battle due to this MOS. And this isn't a isolated occurrence, I've heard it from the majority of soldiers/potential soldiers that I've met, including officers.

Another thing that worries me about the army is the training. Now I realize, they aren't trained to be peace keepers or Gandhi or anything, but I think some things have exceeded the limit for propaganda even. For example, my town's army branch's slogan or chant is this:

"HOO AH, I WANNA HURT SOMEBODY, HOO AH, I WANNA KILL SOMEBODY, HOOOOO AAAAAAH."

Now maybe I'm taking too much out of it, but somebody is a pretty vague term, and I'm not quite sure the goal of the army is hurting and killing as many somebodies as possible.

Another thing that bothers me is every soldier pretending to be a cultural anthropologist as far as the middle east is concerned. I've seen way too many people pretend that they know everything about the Muslim religion, yet don't know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite.

PS. I realize that I don't have any real sources, thus this not holding a lot of weight in the CT, but I wanted to at least throw my experiences out there for discussion at the very least. Also, I am not anti-army, I'm just questioning the mentality that some of our troops are going over there with.