It’s ingrained in their culture. From very young, the education system has indoctrinated the belief that their wars were justified and have romanticized the means because the ends promised a better future. They just left out the relevant parts that they eventually manipulate because if they told people the real reasoning, people wouldn’t “fight” for the causes.
The instinctively blind and gullible, short-sighted “patriots” follow the orders they are given because they refuse to see beyond their cult. They buy into the promise and because the story they were told was nice and pretty, they conflate everything and are manipulated into serving the corrupt evil they should be destroying. It’s ironic.
I can understand how people in those circles want to pay respect and may even find some attachment to the idea because someone they were close to got involved in the same cult, but at some point you need to have some kind of moral compass that tells you what you’re doing is wrong. You need to separate the idea from the reality. They don’t.
ranting
To these people, they live their lives as sheep, blindly trusting the patriotic stories being told to them and repeating the same mistakes as those before them. Patriotism is a dangerous mindset. The west likes to romanticize war in every fashion. War is not just and war is not pretty. No matter what. People see the headlines and want to believe “they’re just defending themselves” but that doesn’t justify what happens afterwards.
The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.
-Stalin
Why would I direct my anger at the every day people who decided to sacrifice to serve our country and not the people that sent them to fight in an unjust and unnecessary conflict?
Can I fault a teenager for believing their country is worth fighting for? No
Honest question: do people really think that attacking a third world country, thousands of kilometres away from your home, that hasn’t attacked you, is “serving their country”?
We’re not talking about defending yourself from an invading attack, but going far away to invade a foreign country.
The soldiers duty to refuse to carry out illegal orders such as slaughtering civilians notwithstanding, yes I think volunteering to fight for your country, even in an unjust war, is service.
The saying goes that the fish rots from the head down. There are stops all down the chain of command that could prevent soldiers from fighting unjust wars, and that’s where the blame should lie.
Sadly the US military has a lot of corruption and pushing back on a CO or refusing an illegal order can end your career in the military or worse. That doesn’t mean I blame the people at the end of the chain, I blame the people at the head. This includes Obama’s illegal drone strikes on targets in Syria and Yemen and various other atrocities and not just Trumps latests
There is enough blame for everyone who collaborated to murder foreign babies. There is no reason some should be spared responsibility.
You think soldiers ar absolved of responsibility just because their superiors are corrupt? Ultimately they’re the ones pulling the trigger, so a massive chunk of the blame with America’s crimes lie with precisely them. They are not innocent, they are murderers.
If the soldier is pulling the trigger on civilians then yes they are responsible. If they are pulling the trigger against enemy warfighters in an unjust war, then the buck stops at the CiC. It should not be up to individual soldiers on whether a certain operation is just or not.
Sorry, I can not agree given how the USA systematically engages in unjust wars. The USA has bombed almost 500 schools in Iran this year. Even if you’re just the cook at a US air base, you’re complicit. The whole machinery depends on people signing up and dedicating lots of effort into making it work. You can’t claim ignorance in this day and age, and you can’t say you’re just following orders when you’re there voluntarily.
How do you mean “country is worth fighting for”?
Other than 9/11, when was the last time we worried about being attacked?
It’s simple: Americans are a kind of fascists
“I pledge allegiance to the flag…”
Same reason why you care more about friends and family deaths than random other people. Basic tribalism.
Because Americans live inside a special reality where they are never wrong, so if someone kills one of American who was trying to kill them. The soldier is a martyr and the person who killed in self defense is a murderer.
It’s unclear “Americans view this”. Government’s Zionazi permawar must dress up all defeats as mandate for escalating permawar. US establishment only recognizes Zionazi supremacist genocide, and always will justify amplifying it.
Soldiers deaths are always tragic. What is even more tragic is the reason they are dying this time around. To protect the trump-epstein class. For God and Country? No, for Don and Jeff.
I don’t. Anyone still participating in the U.S. military is a fascist puppet, terrorist, and a fool.
In-group vs outgroup.
But also,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBF3K1J9wHI
Donovan - Universal Soldier
You obviously haven’t heard of the Westboro Baptist church. Louis Theroux has a couple of good documentaries on them.
It’s not soldiers who start wars. There is some cognitive dissonance, but one can be angry at corrupt politicians sending troops to unnecessary wars, and respect those same troops as heroes risking their lives for the country.
Honest question: do people really think that attacking a third world country, thousands of kilometres away from your home, that hasn’t attacked you, is “risking your life for the country”?
We’re not talking about defending yourself from an invading attack, but going far away to invade a foreign country
GI Joe did not join the military to attack a third world country. Members of the armed forces, once signed up, have to go wherever they are deployed. So yes, many service members are brave folks who are willing to risk their lives to defend their country. But likely the majority are completely average people who enlisted because they didn’t see many other career opportunities available to them. Either way, they agreed to follow orders.
And then they are sent to stupid wars where they are traumatized (and they traumatize civilians of the hostile country) for no good reason. That doesn’t mean they are inherently evil or aggressive people, or even that they want to be at war.If you don’t want to be at war, signing up for the military is probably the wrong career choice.
Sure, some of the teenagers are just plain stupid, but at this point, America has been attacking third would countries for their whole lives without justification. Either they’re fucking idiots, or they’re complicit. Either way, when one of them dies in their invasion, it’s just a win for the invaded.
The question was, how can Americans view the death of their soldiers a tragic event. I think it’s trivial that the attacked enemy views the invading soldiers’ deaths as win.
It also doesn’t mean that they are heroes or even worthy of respect.
I actually don’t think the death of any soldier is tragic. It’s tragic, that they existed as soldiers in the first place. Other than that, if every soldier in the world dropped dead, I would be happy about it.
That’s easy. I have had a friend die in a previous war, a war i didn’t approve of either. All human death is tragic. Most wars are unnecessary and perpetrated by a minority in power, a minority who would never be first to a battlefield. Show me someone in power willing to die for their cause and I’ll consider it a candidate for a worthy cause.
Why do they always send the poor?
People are gambling with their lives when they sign up. I feel sorry for the poor who have little other choice, but that’s about it
