Why do people hate the army?

[emeraldrafael]

i dont hate the army. I dont particularly agree with the wars they fight in but thats not them thats the government. I dont particularly enjoy the individuals in it but dicks will be dicks. I understand the need for an army and sincerely appreciate what tehy do for their county.

 

[flames09]

I don't get it, do you hate the modern 1945 -> U.S military or are you just throwing hate at all ages, nations and peoples?

 

[Total LOLige]

patriotism is bad because it means you hate everyone that isn't from your country.

That is really really really... dumb. To say the very least. I'm a patriot, I love my country but I'm friends with a kid from Kenya who was in my class last year. I had a friend in middle school from the Dominican Republic. So I guess either I'm misinterpreting my own beliefs or opinions on people I know or your an idiot who goes on the internet and and bitches about shit just to get attention.

You sir are an idiot. It's like you read the first sentence of my post and then quoted me to tell me I'm a total dipshit. If you had bothered to read all of the replies in this thread you would have seen that I clarified what I meant by my post after I got quoted a number of times and told that my definition of patriotism is wrong you wouldn't have needed to quote me. Read between the lines of my post and the general tone and you'd have seen I wasn't attacking patriots.



Here is what I meant when I was talking about patriotism. There is absolutely no need to be such an arse about it. The other three people that quoted me about it were polite not asshats like you. You very post is why people associate patriotism with hatred.

I know the difference between patriotism and nationalism, what I meant was that people that hate the army tend to view patriotism as nationalism. I should have been clearer.

My original post so you can read ALL of it and not the first fucking sentence.

It seems if you respect the army you're a patriot, and patriotism is bad because it means you hate everyone that isn't from your country. I've had a few 'debates' with escapist members about 'patriotism' every time I say I respect soldiers people rag on me and tell me that I'm a terrible person that should die in a hole.

 

[M-E-D The Poet]

I suppose the entire drunken soldiers/marines raping people and starting fights has nothing to do with it?

Or the ludicrous crimes some people go to in wartime

Or maybe the fact that the military always is a power capable of taking over the country

Or maintaining a military force costs lots of money




can I stop now?

Edit : just a heads-up , I respect the soldiers as people, I don't respect the army in general the acts or the wars.

I think I may be biased because I've known several girls who'm I was really close to to be beaten and abused by marines/soldiers (on leave) and then raped.

But still there's plenty of reasons to hate the army, there are no more reasons to hate soldiers then there are to hate muslims americans germans british or any

It's either a bias based on shit, or a personal situation afflicting your views of the general group

 

[sonofliber]

well in our country, the "army" that suppostly protected us, killed around 30.000 civilians(because their leaders told them to (and said leaders where train in usa(funny that)), and also started an useless war, which we had no hope of winning.)

so yeah,i have a lot more respects for mercs than from "profesional" military personal.(conscrips i respect a lot)

that and they tend to hide the shit they do with excuses ("we helped them", "we where send there", etc, etc (which most of the time the extremely shitty situation there was cause by their own country or a really close allie)

 

[Sarge034]

Weak defense. I never visited the site either, don't need to to know. And before you started pretending you knew anything you ought to have at least looked them up elsewhere. Like... on Wikipedia.

Just because I don't visit or look for the site does not constitute a weak defense. I know wikileaks was founded by a hacker and endeavors to distribute any classified, sensitive, and confidential information they can get their hands on. Just because I don't give a shit about where Hitler grew up does not mean I am ignorant of his actions.

Of all things wikileaks? Something you apparently don't know much about?

I know what they do, not who backs them. And yes, of all things wikileaks. An organization known to have a particular bias. So a biased soldier took classified material to a biased organization and now I'm supposed to just believe them when they tell me the information is correct? If I did that when the government told me the same thing I would be called a sheep.

Really, you're trying to cast doubt on it without evidence. You even take it on yourself to declare them enemies of the state. Lol. Like I said, poisoning the well. That bit doesn't change.

No, by definition the law dictates they be enemies of the state.

The soldier who stole the classified information is a traitor because of "18 USC Chapter 115 - TREASON, SEDITION, AND SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITIES".

>18 USC § 2381 - Treason

>Many many others.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-115


Wikileaks is an enemy of the state because of "18 USC Chapter 37 - ESPIONAGE AND CENSORSHIP".

>18 U.S.C. § 793 : US Code - Section 793: Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information

>18 USC § 794 - Gathering or delivering defense information to aid foreign government

>18 USC § 797 - Publication and sale of photographs of defense installations

>18 USC § 798 - Disclosure of classified information

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-37


I don't think I could poison this well if I tried. Thanks for playing though!

 

[manic_depressive13]

So closer to the point you group the military and the police in the same category. People who go out with the basic guidelines to follow lawful orders and protect you while putting themselves in harm's way and you dislike them. Would you enjoy living in a world without anyone risking their neck to protect you? I wouldn't.

I don't like any group with state sanctioned authority to use violence and reduced accountability for their actions.

Ah yes, wikileaks. First evaluate your source. A disgruntled soldier steals classified materials and hands the material to, of all things, wikileaks. It is unknown if any of the information was doctored by the traitor or by anyone at wikileaks. There was no secondary conformation or sources.

I'm not saying that some, or all, of these things didn't happen. I am saying we must be wary and try to fact check the stories before we take it as fact. As such I must speak to each example separately.

I'm talking about a perfectly clear video of a helicopter pilot who opened fire- just watch it. It's quite clear that the pilots were never at risk and they killed children.

Spoiler

I forget was Haditha the incident where the chopper fired on the crowd and the reporter because the crowd was firing in the air in the chopper's general direction (which I feel was justified) or was it one of the many house /village clearings that have gone wrong for one reason or another?

You could have just googled it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haditha_killings

Correction, that worthless waste of space murdered 16 people. And how long does it take for someone to get tried for murder in the US? Answer, 2-10 years. You are taking this guy's court schedule out of context because you want to see a cover up or conspiracy.

I am observing the precedents and making a prediction based on that. If he gets off lightly I want you to remember that I fucking called it.

Ok, the ROE at the beginning of the invasion was that of open warfare. Anyone who posed, or seemed to pose, a threat to the troops were considered combatants and if they failed to stop posing a threat to the troops they were neutralized. The ROE then went to peacekeeping mode that you can only fire when fired upon. Clearer for you now?

Sure, but still not good enough.

If we have no justification for being in their country what justification did they have to come into ours? If retaliation is not a justification I don't know what is.

If retaliation IS justification, then the twin tower bombings ought to be justified in your eyes.

You compared them all to drunk drivers. So either you are saying all soldiers are bad or you are saying that all drunk drivers are good. Either one is a pretty damning statement.

What. Drunk drivers are neither bad nor good. They're just people who made a stupid decision.

A straw man is a type of argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

1: a weak or imaginary opposition (as an argument or adversary) set up only to be easily confuted http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/straw%20man

2. strawman - a weak or sham argument set up to be easily refuted http://www.thefreedictionary.com/strawman

Problem?

In both cases that I called you out on you misrepresented my position in your analogies so you could vilify my position and easily look like your side was the obvious right answer. i.e. straw man.

Yes, I have a problem. Creating a straw man would be taking YOUR argument, misrepresenting it, then refuting it. How could I possibly make a straw man argument when I wasn't arguing with anyone? The post you demonstrated was my first post on this thread. I merely gave an analogy to illustrate my opinion of military personnel. It was quite clearly my own opinion. I wasn't claiming that it was anyone else's, nor that it was fact.

A straw man argument IS NOT an inaccurate analogy.

 

[ROTMASTER]

here a simple yet effective way to deal with it a SGT of mine told me when he was at a wal mart of all places an elderly woman walks up to him called him a baby killer and spit in his face his responce to this was a calm "it is my pleasure to risk my life so that you may say such a thing with out being executed"

 

[Saxnot]

To sum it up: I despise the Army, but I pity the soldiers.

I don't want your pity. It is borne of ignorance. You know nothing about me, my life, or where I and my colleagues sit on the social ladder.

I get paid well above the national average for someone of my age - and thanks to operational bonuses I recently became a homeowner, and have enough money to pay for a pretty decent wedding, as well as having spent the last 2 years working towards a 2nd degree (having already had one before joining the Army). So yeah, I sit quite well on the Social ladder given that I'm just a poor, ignorant soldier.

As for 'getting sent out to die'. It's a risk, I'll grant you, but I distinctly recall that my tour of Afghanistan mostly centred around providing infrastructure support to the people of Nad-e Ali, who were in dire need of schools, medical clinics, wells, etc. etc. - The reason being that the Taliban had held control of that area for a very long time, and we had only recently moved our troops in. We found that the Taliban had failed to properly maintain the irrigation systems (because they killed half the Mirabs(Engineers responsible for irrigation in Afghanistan, usually local nationals who have had the job passed down father to son)), which led to a pretty shitty harvest.

We were able to fix them up, train up some new Mirabs, and get things back on track.


...

So wait, where was I?

... Oh yeah, I was being a poor soldier, sent to the middle east to die so that David Cameron can have cheap oil.

Despite the fact that 1. Helmand doesn't have oil, 2. It's not in the middle east either. 3. Petrol in the UK is fucking RIDICULOUSLY priced now.

See, all of this is great, and very worthy of respect.
The problem, though, is that this is only part of what you do. The other part is where you volunteered to do a job which involves attempting to kill people. No offense, but that is morally dubious no matter how you slice it.

 

[Mr.PlanetEater]

See, all of this is great, and very worthy of respect.
The problem, though, is that this is only part of what you do. The other part is where you volunteered to do a job which involves attempting to kill people. No offense, but that is morally dubious no matter how you slice it.

But signing up for the military does not mean you are signing up to kill, my Cousin joined the Navy, and not because he wanted to kill, but because he wanted to repair the aircraft (he ended up being a Helicopter mechanic for his entire tour). We seriously need to move away from the old notion that joining the army=joining to kill. :/

 

[HalfTangible]

4) the biggest crime committed in a war is never anything the soldiers do. The worst atrocity in every war is that the war was started in the first place by greedy old men who would never fire a single shot. Yeah, I'm putting blame on politicians that don't give a crap, just like a psychotic doesn't give a crap about his victims. So sue me =P

They carry out the orders of those greedy old men. They are essentially their paid lackeys. They agreed to do whatever it is they told them to do in exchange for money. Like any job, except they knew what kind of people their employers were.

No. The old men who start wars can't even spell war, let alone fight one. (which is a very serious flaw we should all be concerned about, but whatever) Soldiers carry out the orders of their immediate superior officers, who give orders so they and their men will stay alive.

They're still doing what the politicians want, even if they aren't taking direct orders from them on the lowest level. It all goes back to whoever declared the war. It's nonsense to ignore the link.

Frankly, once the war is started, the army doesn't have much choice other than to fight, because otherwise the army they declared war on is going to attack completely unopposed and steamroll them. Then you're right back to square one, just with different greedy old men. Possibly speaking a different language.

Let's look at the modern wars we've been having, shall we? Point out the one where the enemy army would have come over to our country and steam rolled our army. Your country or my country, assuming you live in one that is typical of the first world nations most posters on here are from.

And besides, do you know why they don't have much of a choice? Because they gave up that choice when they signed up. So responsibility for that still falls on them. There's no way to magically sign away your responsibility for the actions you perform when you put yourself into that situation knowing what could happen.

So yeah, still the politi- i mean greedy old men who do the worst.

Not really. People who follow the orders are as bad as the people who give them, even if there is a degree of separation in the orders.

You're an either a complete idiot or idealist to the point of insanity if you sincerely believe that what a soldier does is worse than what politicians do >.>

Wars only end if the two sides make a peace treaty or one side is completely annihilated. That's what a declaration of war means: "I'm gonna attack you until you stay dead."

Once a war starts, you need a military to fight it. You can't change that. A Military at war is going to do terrible things. You can't change that either. A military officer that orders his men to be nice is just going to get them all slaughtered.

So his choices are thus:
A) Fight, do terrible things, and possibly win and remove an enemy
B) Fight, DON'T do terrible things like shoot a man, and get massacred.
C) Don't fight at all and let whoever the enemy is win and do whatever they please. Call me crazy, but this doesn't seem like an option after declaring war >.>

Nine times out of ten, soldiers are just defending themselves. They kill people out of anger, or fear, or reflex or even (god forbid >.>) out of duty to their country.

Politicians have absolutely nothing to justify their actions save greed. THEY decided to send thousands upon thousands of men to die by the boatload, calm, collected and probably sipping on some wine. THEY look at casualty reports and say 'Not bad' to fifty dead men in a year. THEY would rather send their young men to die than lose an election.

I don't care what a soldier does, he can't be as bad as the monsters who sent him there to kill in the first place.

 

[Saxnot]

See, all of this is great, and very worthy of respect.
The problem, though, is that this is only part of what you do. The other part is where you volunteered to do a job which involves attempting to kill people. No offense, but that is morally dubious no matter how you slice it.

But signing up for the military does not mean you are signing up to kill, my Cousin joined the Navy, and not because he wanted to kill, but because he wanted to repair the aircraft (he ended up being a Helicopter mechanic for his entire tour). We seriously need to move away from the old notion that joining the army=joining to kill. :/

No, i'm not saying everyone who joins the army is out to kill people. But the truth is, if you join the armed forces you are accepting that you may be sent out to fight and kill. Even someone like your cousin, who isn't supposed to end up in direct combat, may be forced to kill by circumstances, and contrubutes to killing people by fixing those helicopters.

now, i want to be clear: i dont see the armed forces as some collection of brainwashed killers. I don't hate the army and i see the need. But it feels like there's something off about joining an organisation whose main (they have others of course, but this is the most basic task) purpose is to kill people who they tell you are our enemies. For all the good work they do, that part of their task remains morally dubious to me....

 

[Stu35]

See, all of this is great, and very worthy of respect.
The problem, though, is that this is only part of what you do. The other part is where you volunteered to do a job which involves attempting to kill people. No offense, but that is morally dubious no matter how you slice it.

Once again, no.

No part of my job involves attempting to kill people - not unless they're trying to kill me first. Yes, that is something the company I work for(The Army) takes part in, and there are people who's jobs it is to kill - but if we're going to hold each employee accountable for the actions of the company they work for, then there are more morally bankrupt people in the world than I thought.

Lets say, hypothetically, you work at Starbucks serving coffee - Would it be, in any way, fair of me to say it's morally dubious for you to do a job which involves the exploitation of coffee growing countries for billions of dollars profit? Just because you work for a company that does that, does not make you some kind of devil for serving coffee.

edit -

now, i want to be clear: i dont see the armed forces as some collection of brainwashed killers. I don't hate the army and i see the need. But it feels like there's something off about joining an organisation whose main (they have others of course, but this is the most basic task) purpose is to kill people who they tell you are our enemies. For all the good work they do, that part of their task remains morally dubious to me....

Well I can understand why you might feel that way. I don't agree with it, but you've accepted we're not just a bunch of brainwashed killers, which is more than some people have managed in this thread.

A good reason to dislike him. He has an inflated sense of self worth, thinking that somehow he is protecting our freedom of speech. There's no moustache twirling villain who is plotting to take away our freedom of speech.

Perhaps not moustache twirling... But, yes, there are people out there who's goal is to take away our freedom of speech [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_fundamentalism#Human_rights_controversy].

Now, obviously the military is not the only way to fight them, but if we forget the lessons of history, we're doomed to repeat them - and one of the lessons I learned in history was that World War 2 became more and more inevitable with every single pacifist decision made by people like Neville Chamberlain, who were so desperate to avoid any kind of conflict that they failed to see the really, really big one they were allowing to create.