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Author Topic: Where are our Soldier Hero's?
Dan_raven
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Today there are thousands of good soldiers doing quite heroic things every day. Yet there has been practically no emphasis placed on this, either in the media, from the administration, or from the armed forces themselves.

Sure we get a lot of generic "heroic men and women" talk from all of the above, but there has been no Private York, no Doolittle or Davy Crocket, no inspiring Teddy Roosevelt or Patrick Henry. Except for the one woman who was captured at the begining of the war, and the one football player who gave his life for his country instead of playing for the money, nobody seems to promote the hero anymore.

I know that there are many who are worthy of adulation and I know that given hero's, support for the troops will blossom like never before. There would be no lack of volunteers if we had the hero stories. Heck, we pay money to watch fake hero's at the Movies, we would be proud of real hero's when they are presented to us.

Historically, one of the prime motivators of going into battle has been the quest for glory (see Davy Crockett, Alexander, Achilles, etc) yet we don't offer Glory anymore?

Why? I have some ideas for later, but I want to hear from some of the others first, and especially our Jatraquero's in Uniform.

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Scott R
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Because war is no longer glorious.

I mean, you can't even pillage any longer.

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Jim-Me
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They are there and getting play in armed forces news outlets... I don't know why they aren't getting play.

I know of a Marine who volunteered for another guy's spot on a house-clearing patrol, was severely wounded by insurgent's fire, and with his last breath, threw himself on a grenade to save his squad.

I also know of a guy, Army, I think, who, when his column was ambushed, singlehandedly charged the ambush, and fired upon the enemy until he was out of ammunition, then grabbed a gun from someone he had hit and kept firing, pretty much taking the ambush out by himself (somewhat like Alvin York).

I'm sure there have been others...

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Olivet
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*headdesk*

I'm having a relapse, because my first urge was to post "Soldier Hero's what?"

Ithink they aren't getting play because folks who decide what is news think that isn't as newsworthy as how much everyone hates Americans.

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Enigmatic
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I don't think the lack of "Hero" coverage can be blamed entirely on the media, because as Dan said we* aren't hearing this from the administration or from the armed forces, either. If politicians or top pentagon people were releasing statements about a Hero or mentioning a Hero in speeches, there would be news coverage of it. Even the extremely liberal outlets would mention it, though it would be spun as "Republicans exploit war hero story for own gain."

* "we" in this sense refers to us civilians, since Jim-me said these stories are getting play in military news outlets.

So why aren't the pro-war people telling the stories of individual war heroes (instead of the general "heroic men and women" that is)? Here is sort of a half-formed theory, so bear with me. It's possible that the Lone Hero soldier doesn't fit well with the image of the US military and how its operations are going that they want to promote. We like to think of our military as smoothly run and very high-tech, with precise combat strikes that take out the enemy according to plan and while there may have been some risks involved the good guys were in control of the situation. A good War Hero story, like the guy single-handedly taking out an ambush Rambo-style, pokes holes in that image. For a Hero Story to be compelling there has to be a lot of danger involved, and I think the pro-war talking points want to minimize that aspect of it.

Hmmm, I'm not sure if I articulated that as well as I'd like. It may sound more like a conspiracy theory than the idle speculation it is.

--Enigmatic

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Jim-Me
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I actually think a lot more has to do with the fact that heroism is actually one of the uglier sides of war... the second guy I mentioned is primarily heroic for single-handedly killing or wounding 20-30 people. I'm not sure how well that would play... but I am sure that you won't see him at the next state-of-the-union address with President Bush saying how great it was that he effectively took out a platoon on his own. I don;t think the administration has the courage of it's convictions enough to stand on dead insurgents being a positive development.
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ifmyheartcouldbeat
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I wish we would hear more about the heros also. My really good friend just got back from iraq and hes seen some of his closet friends perform extremely heroic acts, but i know about them because of him.
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Dan_raven
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There are other kinds of hero's. I agree that "Private Rambo Blew Away 52 Iraqi's" is not the headline that would sell the best aspects of the US Military.

But the soldier who dove on the grenade to save his buddies would.

Or the soldier who risked his life to save some civilians.

Or the doctor soldier who performed life saving care while under fire.

I believe the problem lies in the pentagon, where true soldiers have been outnumbered by beurocrats since the 1960's. CYA has replaced bravery in their hearts.

Historically, when wars were paid for not by deficit spending, but by war bonds, you needed hero's to convince the public to buy the bonds, buy the war.

In Korea, that was not a problem. Instead you had McArthur who may have wanted to be the only hero of that little war. So he curtailed the practice of turning an average heroic soldier into front page news.

In Vietnam the pentagon was too busy trying to hide a rampaging war. They didn't want hero's showing off how much of a sacrifice they had to give.

Grenada, Panama, The Gulf War all were to short and too small for the need of a public hero.

Iraq was too short too. However the reconstruction of Iraq promises to be a long and demoralizing project. Now would be a great time to revive the practice of war heros.

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tern
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I wish I knew why we didn't hear more about our military heroes as well. I take it as given that the media is biased against the military, but even given that, why hasn't the Administration or even the military put on a full court press to honor these people?

I mean, for example, Rafael Peralta. That's the outstanding Devil Dog who kept volunteering for missions and taking the point, and with his last dying action, threw himself on a grenade. He deserves the Medal of Honor. But we hear very little.

I usually go to Blackfive so I actually get to hear about some heroes. But really, it seems that on all sides, there is a failure to publicize these heroes. And they are heroes. Today, people idolize athletes who are largely thugs with big paychecks, brainless actors and actresses (yes, I realize the brainless is redundant), and moronic musicians. Heroes? Hah. Give me Alvin York, give me John Basilone, give me Rafael Peralta.

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James Tiberius Kirk
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I believe that Pat Tillman was intended to be the War Hero, until the details surrounding his death came to light. Paul Ray Smith would probably be another. Those are the only two whose names I can remember.

Then there's the medic who was shot, but still managed to care for the wounded in his group, and then went to care for the guy who shot him.

But you're right, many aren't recognized. I suppose that part of this may be because of the type of war that's being fought here. (A guy can jump on a grenade to save his friends for example, but he can't jump on an IED with any degree of effectiveness.)

--j_k

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Sergeant
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While my perspective is somewhat different than that of Tern, I had personal heros that I knew while serving in the Army.

One, for example, was a SSG who was a 98G KP (Korean linguist) who, while on assignment to Fort Cambell, was deployed to both Iraq and Afganistan. A korean linguist in those areas is not very usefull but this soldier made the effort to make himself useful. More impressive, I rarely heard him complain about his lot. In his 6 or 7 years in the Army he had spend 2 in training, 2 in Korea and 2 deployed. And yet he was ready to go back. He also received awards for Valor while deployed.

Sergeant

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Tresopax
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You can receive "glory" without being glorified by the media. When you see a uniformed military officer, how do you treat them? I think most give them more respect than your average person.

The media's job is to give us news - information that we need to know. I think the job of glorifying soldiers is ours, not theirs, if we decide they deserve that glory.

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Sopwith
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Still, there is a huge shortage of stories anywhere on the individual efforts of our servicemen and women. Combat heroics can be so easily turned around (and many times the heroic effort came about because of a tactical or strategic mistake that had to be overcome by someone's superhuman efforts), but there are so very many opportunities for our government to shine a positive light on what they are doing.

What about the people who help provide medical aid to citizens in Iraq? Or who give out immunizations in the Afghani villages?

Or the engineers who brave sniper fire to restore electrical services to an area, and then come back out the next day to fix it once again?

Nada, nothing, zip. That's what we hear. Heck, we've even quit hearing about entertainers going to perform for the troops with the USO. And in our celebrity hungry environment, you'd think that would be an easy home run.

Maybe someone's ashamed of this war?

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Zarex
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I think the story of the war hero largely died with the Vietnam war.

I currently take ROTC at VMI. An interesting custom that you may not know about is that every time a VMI alumni is killed in action, the school flags are lowered to half mast for the day and there is a memorial service where that soldier's citations are read. I've heard the citations of plenty of heros in the past few semesters.

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Black Fox
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I think the greatest problem with war heroes is the difficult of encompassing what it is to be a hero in our generation. If I kill so many of the enemy, single handedly or not am I hero or simply doing an excellent job. That and honestly if anyone tried to revive the war hero concept in our culture it would just be bashed by one group or another for being somet kind of political machine for the Republican party etc.

Plus I honestly believe that there is more valour in a scared man fighting then the brave who flinches from no bullet. Soldiers like that are not the ones you want around you at times. They are the kind of leaders who generally do not mind sending men into the grinder with little purpose.

That and what does it matter how many shiny medals we give our soldiers, how much merit we lay about their shoulders, when we do not support their base. It is much like saying, bad boy but how about a bone. A man does not need to be told that he is good, he simply needs to have his work appreciated.

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Dan_raven
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If war hero's are not popular than why do we line up to see Harry Potter, Darth Vader, The Lion-Witch-&-Wardrobe? Are they not flawed people fighting battles in their own way? Who is the favorite--the Klingon or the Vulcan? Worf or Spock? The Samurai or the Accountant?

We can not know of their heroic stories unless some one tells us them. What we need is not more Sgt Yorks, they are common in our Army. What we need are more Ernie Pyles telling us their stories.

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Black Fox
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The problem is that most people do not want to read the stories of the honest to goodness average soldier in our army today. I work with them every day and I can assure you of that. Most of my men all come from troubled families, pasts, poor upbringing, or simple whimsy.

We are noble mostly based on the relationship that we have. That is that we as soldiers honestly take care of ourselves, even the soldier unkown to us but by the fact that he too is a soldier. Be it in the regular world or on the battle field.

That and believe me when I say no movie, how graphic it may be, rivals what reality throws at us. Some people stand around and say "cool" when they see what their soul fights against the poison so to speak. That and simply if people do not want a war which none of them are forced to fight in, well then why would they honestly want to hear about its heros.

I do not want to become more fodder for the manipulation of my society to think one view point or another. It is tiring that people are swayed on one side or another of an important issue, any issue involving human life is important, by the news or some other kind of broadcast. We as a society are too busy with our chosen proffesions and entertainment to bother with becoming citizens . Why would someone want to honestly research an issue.

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MrSquicky
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I think it's at least partially due to the information saturation age. It looked like Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch were being groomed to be heroes, but being killed by friendly fire and being highly critical of the Bush administration and the Iraq War stopped one case and the person directly refuting the stories being told about them stopped the other. Everyone has some dirt in their past and in the age we live in, it's going to come out. The shining, spotless heroes of the past benefited greatly from that fact that very little was actually known about them.

We live in an age when people want to know when a celebrity changes cat food and other people will let nothing stop them from finding this information out. Reality, even when it doesn't involve fighting a war, is messy. I think people are afraid to advance heroes who may have spots that others are going to pick at until they find.

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Sopwith
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Because we, as the American people, have the need to know. We need to know the human side of the conflict and we need especially to know that our brothers, friends, neighbors are part of that human equation.

Ernie Pyle wrote about the average joe and his stories struck a huge chord with the people back home in World War II. He wrote the small stories, he lived with the grunts, he died with them, too.

His work brought home what war really means. His war kept our soldiers in the civilians' hearts and minds well past the point where they set off in ships to Europe or the Pacific Theater. He let us see heroism and hardship in the small, and he let us share in that, in some small way.

Now, we are told to support the troops, but they are a faceless mass of men and women to us if we don't have a loved one in harm's way. We distrust our government and our national motivations, we need to not just see, but recognize faces in the crowd. We need to see, so desperately, our own faces in that crowd. We need to feel as if we are shouldering the burden of this job that we ask our servicemen and women to do.

We may not need heroes, but we need the humans, we need the story that strikes home and strikes our hearts. Otherwise our soldiers will come home to parades and some pats on the back, but their legacy will soon be forgotten. It was Ernie Pyle and his ilk that trained us, for generations, to sit down and ask our grandfathers what they did during the war and hold them as heroes, no matter how small the job they did was.

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Mintieman
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I figured that it was because people did not wish to glorify war. Even by showing that it is possible to achieve glory in war, it is seen as encouraging war.

and we dont want war, do we?

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MrSquicky
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I was stretching for the words to say that, Sopwith, but I doubt I would have done so good a job. I especially like this bit:
quote:
We may not need heroes, but we need the humans
The tragedy is that what we need and what we want are often two very different things. In this case, I don't know that the Bush administration, the media, or the American public particularly wants the humans.
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tern
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I would say that Michael Yon is the new Ernie Pyle. Not that he's the same, but he does the same sort of thing. Can't wait for the movie. [Smile]
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Jim-Me
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There were stories like that coming from thre imbedded reporters but they got so much flack for losing their [supposed] impartiality that I think all the media outlets stopped it.
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boogashaga
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I feel that it is important for you to understand that inspite of the fact that soldiers enjoy the "glory," as a writer above put it, they are not really looking for it. The problem, you see, is that in order to achieve this "glory," you have to do things that can (and generally do) get you killed or severly wounded. I have a few fancy, shiny things that tell of my valor, call it "glory" if you will. Mr. Miyagi (recently passed on--good luck Pat)said it best: your heart says if you are brave (valorous, glorious), or not. The medals just show that you were lucky. Ask any "hero" you meet if they were "glorious" or "lucky" and see what kind of response you get.

As to modern day "heros," thsy are most definitely there. Trust me on this one. The liberally-biased media doesn't want you to know about such things as these, so they simply do not report it--they are deciding what you should know instead of just objectively reporting the truth and letting you decide what you will. Please remember that the media wants the troops to give up and come home. They will adjust the news to help achieve their already intrenched objective: the absolute, total humiliation of the current administration.

As a former soldier myself, I find that the way the troops are being denigrated, humiliated, and ignored totally shameful. I was spit upon by civilians when I got home. At least we do not do too much of that anymore.

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JTruant711
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This thread is particularly revolting to me. Talking about heroes like it is an advertising campaign or whatnot. No matter which way you look at it; these are the truths of it:

-War is necessary.
-People get killed.
-People die saving their buddies.
-People die by friendly fire.
-People die of accidents. (ie. drown in a canal)
-People kill.

I'd rather kill '52' people saving my buddies from a hail of gunfire, RPG, ect.; than die hopping on a grenade. Self-preservation is the key that saves more lives in combat than selflessness.

Anyone remember what Patton said?

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Scott R
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I don't agree that war is necessary at all.
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JTruant711
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Good for you, I think time and history and nature and life and humanity would disagree.
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Jim-Me
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Truant, the simple fact is that one of the things heros do, and have done since the time of Hector and Achilles, is boost the morale of the country for which they fight. I'm sorry if you find it distasteful, but it is as least as true as your assertion that war is necessary. (Which I don't quite agree with... I'd say "war is inevitable", which is not quite the same thing).
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Rakeesh
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quote:
Good for you, I think time and history and nature and life and humanity would disagree.
Not all the weight of human history, piled on a plastic card table, could prove that war is necessary.

All that it proves is that we think it's necessary. Granted, I think it's necessary sometimes, but I realize that it's only necessary because of the reality of the way human beings behave right now.

But people can change, and if behavior changed, perhaps war would no longer be necessary.

Incidentally, there are no wars in nature. There is killing for food, and killing for self-defense, and killing for territory. Although possibly the animal kingdom's closest relatives to man, primates, have unnecessary killing.

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Black Fox
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I know a great deal of men who I would consider heros. Would politically correct Americans like them so much, probably not.

One Great man I've had the pleasure to serve with is Sergeant First Class Gilmer, now First sergeant Gilmer ( still in the 101st and in Baghdad at the moment I believe). He had the kind of presence that could make a man shake in his boots, but in the same turn no matter what kind of situation was thrust at you if SFC Gilmer was there things would work out. He would yell, scream, kick, and fight for the welfare of his men. One thing that hurts me is that of all the platoon's in my company his took the most KIA/WIA. Which is a shame, because it was honestly the best led.

My opinion of men and heros can be summed up by a late night I had with him. We had a fairly worthless soldier by the name of Hvarre. The man always seemed to do the wrong thing, and was so amazingly stupid that I believe he was playing at it ( I still believe that he was playing at it). I was in the company TOC being my specialist self ( trying to stay out of the way of anyone high ranking). An officer and a few higher ranking NCOs were making fun of him when he interjected. He asked them how they could make fun of a man who volunteered to serve with them, to put his life on the line. Be he a bad soldier, or a good one, he still deserved more respect than anyone not willing to do the same.

He is also the same man who asked me the day of my promotion board why in the world I thought I should be a Sergeant in the Infantry. I replied , a little shakily to be honest, that the best way I could serve my fellow brothers was by taking care of them. That the only way I could do that was by training them and keeping my eyes over them in combat. After that he just gave me a big smile and told me that I would make a good NCO, and that if I didn't he would come beat my ( well to say the least I've left some profanity out here).

That and remember that medals are bestowed by the officers and leaders over a man. True valour and glory can only be given by his equals and subordinates.

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Scott R
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:points at Rakeesh:

What he said.

Thinking that there is NO ALTERNATIVE to war is a sad, unimaginitive road. I'm sorry that we're on it today.

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JTruant711
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Unimaginitive. Maybe, cause it has always been that way. Like equality, it's something you will never achieve.

I love the effort though.

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tern
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quote:
Thinking that there is NO ALTERNATIVE to war is a sad, unimaginitive road. I'm sorry that we're on it today.
Thinking that war isn't a viable and often best alternative (out of a bunch of sucky alternatives) is a sad, unimaginative road. I'm sorry that we're on it today. [Smile]
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Black Fox
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War is not neccesary, neither is life. Those are two things to keep in mind.
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Yank
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quote:
But people can change, and if behavior changed, perhaps war would no longer be necessary.

No, they cannot. Not "people" in the general sense you're using here. Individuals can change, but "people" in the "humanity" sense have yet to show any capacity for it. The Utopian attempts to make a society wherein "people have changed" have spawned some of the bloodiest and most vicious regimes in History, the most recent and notable being the Communists, who assumed that people would be nice and share and that the state would wither away.

There's always the hope that we can somehow genetically-engineer ourselves out of it, a la Serenity. That makes me shudder. There was a movement for that in the early nineteenth century called Eugenics, and we should all know how *that* panned out.

Humanity is, in short, too corrupt to entrust with purging its own corruption. To purge it you have to trust a great deal of power to a group of people, and groups of people are corrupted by power. Always. Sooner or later, to a greater or lesser degree, but always.

I agree that war is a great evil, but to absolutely reject it is to simply let evil run roughshod, because it will. Ghandi's tactics would never have worked on the Nazis or the Imperial Japanese, who would simply have laughed and killed them all until people started obeying. The quote, "All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing" is pithy but still absolutely true.

War isn't strictly necessary, but very little is. It *is* often necessary if you want to keep your freedom, or another's freedom, or to save innocent lives. As long as humans are humans this will be true, and there's no getting around it no matter how nasty war is or how much we might wish otherwise. Reality does *not* bend even a little to conform to how we *wish* it was.

And anyone who thinks war is limited to us nasty nasty primates and frowned upon by wonderfully warm and fuzzy Nature has never seen two ant colonies go at it. They're called "soldier" ants for good reason.

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tern
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Some things are worth killing for in order to protect. I question the motives of anyone who argues otherwise, that their desire might be to attack those things.
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Rakeesh
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Yank,

quote:
No, they cannot. Not "people" in the general sense you're using here. Individuals can change, but "people" in the "humanity" sense have yet to show any capacity for it.
You must be using a very strange definition of the word "change", Yank. If you looked at the world three thousand years ago and asked everyone, "Is it OK to kill this guy and rape his wife and take his children as slaves because his livestock is grazing too much and drinking too much?" and asked that question TODAY, what do you think the percentages would be?

I think they've changed, obviously. That is at least one constant. People change. America has certainly changed from what it was fifty years ago. A whole whopping lot of people, hundreds of millions.

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Yank
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quote:
You must be using a very strange definition of the word "change", Yank. If you looked at the world three thousand years ago and asked everyone, "Is it OK to kill this guy and rape his wife and take his children as slaves because his livestock is grazing too much and drinking too much?" and asked that question TODAY, what do you think the percentages would be?

Ask this in the Third World and you may be surprised. We don't get much headline news out of Africa, for example, but look closely and you'll see that this mindset is a long way from dead. Ditto much of Asia and the Middle East.

The real problem here is the definition of "people", which is overvague. I mean humanity in general, not culture, and I apologize for being opaque. Human nature will not change. Cultures may change so that we no longer tolerate the aforementioned rapist, but we often replace his crimes with newly tolerated ones. I think the state of the world's culture has, in the West at least, changed for the better. For now. Will it last? I've no idea, but little in history ever has. The Romans built what was, for their time, a remarkably advanced and tolerant culture (the very idea of granting subjugated peoples ANY cultural and religious autonomy was shocking), but it didn't last, and Europe regressed a couple thousand years in everything but ways to kill each other.

I don't think war or violence will ever go away, because I don't believe a perfect culture that will program violence out of everyone will ever exist. And if it did, it would be an abomination. If you give people choices, they will inevitably make some bad ones, and that will invariably include violence, which will invariably lead to war on one scale or another. I believe in the free will of the human soul, and that as long as it exists, some of us will abuse it.

That's why I think war isn't going away. Nor is greed, or sexism, or racism, or laziness or irresponsibility or cruelty or selfishness or any other evil. Humanity is inherently imperfect.

Heaven help the nation that tries to make a "perfect society". The Puritans made the attempt, the Spanish with their Inquisition, the Nazis tried it, the Imperial Japanese, the Bolsheviks, the Fascists, and my new favorite fictional example, the Alliance in Serenity.

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Rakeesh
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Yank,

quote:
Ask this in the Third World and you may be surprised. We don't get much headline news out of Africa, for example, but look closely and you'll see that this mindset is a long way from dead. Ditto much of Asia and the Middle East.
If a person can change, if a community can change, and if billions of people can change deeply held personal beliefs and behaviors, I don't understand how on Earth anyone can say, "Humanity will never change."

You seem to be operating on the idea that I'm suggesting that one day, humanity will have changed sufficiently that there will be no more wars. I haven't said that. I was simply refuting the idea you presented, that "Human nature doesn't change". I think a cursory examination of history will prove that this is wrong, because even if you do point the finger at Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, you'll still find that a serious portion of the whole of humanity has changed its beliefs and behaviors with regards to war, greed, sexism, racism, laziness, irresponsibility, cruelty, selfishness, and evil.

They haven't changed to the point where they're perfect-that's nothing I ever suggested, either. That's an entirely different question. My beliefs on "People never change" are a bit oxymoronic. On the one hand, I think it's important to remember that when dealing with people in the present. On the other hand, if you adopt it for the long-term, well then I think that's just another form of Predestination, in a way. Because if people are never going to change, well, why try to improve things? Because really, trying won't have a lengthy impact, because people don't change.

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Rakeesh
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Oh, and Tern...question someone else's motives, please. I have not said the things you're saying I've said.

I have not said, "Let's not fight this current war, let's change our ideas about human behavior instead. All I've said is that maybe, just maybe, we should adopt the belief that maybe eliminating war in the very long-term is possible by changing ideas about human behavior, instead of just clinging to the idea, "Wars will always be necessary sometime."

If you're going to question my motives, be more plain about it. What, exactly, am I attacking?

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tern
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I wasn't even referring to you, Rakeesh, or your point that even humanity might even change enough so that war isn't necessary. I didn't say you said anything. [Smile] My point was tangential, and related more to the current state of humanity.
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Tresopax
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quote:
Some things are worth killing for in order to protect. I question the motives of anyone who argues otherwise, that their desire might be to attack those things.
You shouldn't be so suspicious... it's more likely that their desire is to prevent the loss of life.
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tern
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Some things are worth more than life.
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TomDavidson
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quote:

Some things are worth more than life.

Specifically, what you're arguing is that some things are worth more to you than other people's lives.
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Rakeesh
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Well, alright Tern. I misunderstood. It seemed as though you were speaking to Scott and I.
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tern
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quote:
Specifically, what you're arguing is that some things are worth more to you than other people's lives.
Nah. I'm arguing that some things are worth more to me than my life or other people's lives. I believe it reasonable that what is worth dying for, is worth killing for.
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pH
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I think just because person A is willing to kill for something, and person B is willing to die to protect it, that doesn't necessarily mean that person B should be willing to kill for it.

-pH

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MrSquicky
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quote:
Nah. I'm arguing that some things are worth more to me than my life or other people's lives. I believe it reasonable that what is worth dying for, is worth killing for.
I'd figure that the difference between these two things would be very important for someone who is so adamantly a Christian. Odd that.
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TomDavidson
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I have noticed that for some people, the little line in one's brain that makes the distinction between "worth dying for" and "worth killing for" does not seem to exist.
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Rakeesh
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tern,

quote:
I believe it reasonable that what is worth dying for, is worth killing for.
The important part of this quote is the second word. You believe that it is reasonable. Possibly you could change that belief. Incidentally, I share that belief. Now certainly people have changed their minds away from that belief, right? That what is worth dying for is not necessarily worth killing for?

If a sufficient number of people among humanity changed their belief about this idea, then wars would be reduced, wouldn't they? I'm not saying it's likely or that it should happen, but it's possible, isn't it?

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