Christian Democrats in the United States
Conceptual Issues - Military ResponsibilityIf an American should choose to fight, he or she should fight with honor. Since the People delegate resources, weapons and authority, the military should be held to a higher standard of conduct, not granted immunities, and the institutions should not waste our money. The U.S. military should seek and promote truth. That's how we would win, as long as "winning" is defined as meaningful and specific objectives by leadership. If an American should choose not to fight, that should be honored. Either way, we aim toward a world free of war. We recognize the reality that many poor Americans see themselves with only a choice only between crime and the military. It is a testament to the principles of the founding fathers that our military does as a good job forging respectable soldiers as it does, and they must be educated on those principles. We owe it to the common soldiers to embrace them when they return from war, to heal their wounds, to attempt to understand their experiences, and to listen.
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]only disciplined soldiers win wars
This WikiLeaks video shows U.S. helicopter pilots joking about the innocent people they slaughtered in Iraq, with all the same cruelty the Soviets had for the Afghans.Ten thousand idiots say Mr. Obama is a bad commander-in-chief. He's only a bad commander-in-chief if he does not discipline these soldiers with life in prison for murder. (Just as Jerry Brown doesn't have the guts to charge the BART police officer who murdered restrained man Oscar Grant on video.)
No one can "win" any war anymore. But even in the mindset of military strategy, an army cannot win a war if the command allows soldiers to devolve into brutes and beasts.
I have heard people on the radio making all kinds of lame excuses, like, the soldiers are afraid, so they are justified in doing anything in response to fear. Why is it good for morale or strategy to excuse soldiers for giving into fear?
Or that they radioed base, and base gave the okay, so they were just following orders. A person smart enough to fly an Apache helicopter should be smart enough to know that if they can't tell if a camera is a gun or not, the gun probably cannot hurt them in an Apache helicopter. They are smart enough to know the orders are illegal.
YES, when patrolling a city of civilized people, they have to wait to retaliate until a clear and present danger of an aimed RPG or engagement of active small arms fire. If I were afraid of getting gunned down at random by helicopters while minding my own business, I might be temped to keep an RPG handy. But it wouldn't make sense to aim it at any helicopter, unless maybe if the helicopter started gunning down innocent people without provocation.
There doesn't seem like there's any way for Jesus to work anything out in that scenario, but there is - the helicopter could have landed and thrown a party... these people would have enjoyed that, and everyone would have gone home happy. Instead, they gunned them down.
Perhaps the most disgusting excuse is that they have to distance themselves with sick humor so they are able to carry out the orders of war. Besides being irrelevant to the fact these victims were doing nothing wrong, that is not so.
The Korea and Vietnam wars didn't end the Soviet state. Nuclear deterrence didn't do it. Economics didn't do it. The genuine good spirit of regular American people did it, because enough Russians figured out that they could never value family and God above country if they were not free.
Because we are free to value God and family above the authority and law of country, we are able to refashion our country in the image of what we love the most as human beings.
If we train our soldiers to forget they are human beings just like the people in the sights of their guns and bombs, then they will kill without regard for family or country. They will use the lives of their fellow soldiers as an excuse to destroy all of the values that make their families at home possible. We might win a few battles, but America would wither and die.
> detail, links and comments >>
Archives May 2007 / November 2009 / January 2010 / February 2010 / April 2010 /