![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
awmperryThere's a thread on Alt.Fan.Pratchett at the moment which has me slightly riled. Here's my latest reply, and the post I'm replying to:
James wrote:
>
> Granted, it might be a rational financial choice to join the US military in
> some situations, but this does not make it any less dumb. At least in the
> terms that Hicks was talking about.
>
> "Aren't y'all fucking hired killers? SHUT UP! You are thugs and when we
> need you to go blow the fuck out of a nation of little brown people we'll
> let you know."
He's talking bollocks, though, at least with the proviso that I know very little about the US armed forces' culture in that context.
During our first month of military service, we were drilled on the rules of war. We were also taught that we were to challenge any orders that we thought were unlawful under those rules, and to ignore them if we weren't given a satisfactory explanation. I can only speak for those I know and those I served with, of course, but we certainly weren't hired killers. We served to defend our country against attack, to help the civilian population in case of need (flooding, whatever), and to help form a line between Developing Country A and Developing Country B next time they start throwing lead at each other about What They Said About Our Brenda Six Hundred Years Ago.
Oh, and have you seen the rules of engagement for peacekeeping? Only fire if you're being shot at. You can't go out looking for trouble, you can't open fire just because someone's waving a machete about. The ROE are geared specifically towards making sure that there can be no accusations of imperialism or oppression or whatnot.
I'm sorry to go off on one like this, particularly since I don't know whether or not you agree with that Hicks character, but I really do get very irritated when people tar all armed forces with the Rumsfeld brush and assume that all soldiers must be violent, bloodthirsty, trigger-happy, trouble-making thugs. The vast majority of soldiers join up to do what they can to help people, even if that means shooting someone before they have a chance to shoot someone else.
It's unfortunate that it's the nutjobs that show up in the media. The ones who enjoy killing, those who see their opponents as intrinsically inferior[1], and so on. It's just the same as why immigrants get a bad rap; nobody ever notices Mr Hamid down the road who's run a shop on the corner for twenty years and speaks English like Boris Johnson, they just notice young Ahmed who beats up old ladies because a vicious little bastard, even though there are at least two hundred Hamids for every Ahmed. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if it's exactly the same as the ratio between Mr Boggis the newsagent and young Ned Chavscum...
...not to mention the ratio between the good soldiers and the bad eggs that make the whole batch smell bad.
So I'm sorry, and there aren't a lot of things that really offend me, but I do take a great deal of offence at hearing people who put their lives on the line to protect others described as "hired killers" and "thugs", whether directly or indirectly.
[1] - Easily recognised by their use of terms like "Skinnies", "Ragheads" and "Gooks".
James wrote:
>
> Granted, it might be a rational financial choice to join the US military in
> some situations, but this does not make it any less dumb. At least in the
> terms that Hicks was talking about.
>
> "Aren't y'all fucking hired killers? SHUT UP! You are thugs and when we
> need you to go blow the fuck out of a nation of little brown people we'll
> let you know."
He's talking bollocks, though, at least with the proviso that I know very little about the US armed forces' culture in that context.
During our first month of military service, we were drilled on the rules of war. We were also taught that we were to challenge any orders that we thought were unlawful under those rules, and to ignore them if we weren't given a satisfactory explanation. I can only speak for those I know and those I served with, of course, but we certainly weren't hired killers. We served to defend our country against attack, to help the civilian population in case of need (flooding, whatever), and to help form a line between Developing Country A and Developing Country B next time they start throwing lead at each other about What They Said About Our Brenda Six Hundred Years Ago.
Oh, and have you seen the rules of engagement for peacekeeping? Only fire if you're being shot at. You can't go out looking for trouble, you can't open fire just because someone's waving a machete about. The ROE are geared specifically towards making sure that there can be no accusations of imperialism or oppression or whatnot.
I'm sorry to go off on one like this, particularly since I don't know whether or not you agree with that Hicks character, but I really do get very irritated when people tar all armed forces with the Rumsfeld brush and assume that all soldiers must be violent, bloodthirsty, trigger-happy, trouble-making thugs. The vast majority of soldiers join up to do what they can to help people, even if that means shooting someone before they have a chance to shoot someone else.
It's unfortunate that it's the nutjobs that show up in the media. The ones who enjoy killing, those who see their opponents as intrinsically inferior[1], and so on. It's just the same as why immigrants get a bad rap; nobody ever notices Mr Hamid down the road who's run a shop on the corner for twenty years and speaks English like Boris Johnson, they just notice young Ahmed who beats up old ladies because a vicious little bastard, even though there are at least two hundred Hamids for every Ahmed. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if it's exactly the same as the ratio between Mr Boggis the newsagent and young Ned Chavscum...
...not to mention the ratio between the good soldiers and the bad eggs that make the whole batch smell bad.
So I'm sorry, and there aren't a lot of things that really offend me, but I do take a great deal of offence at hearing people who put their lives on the line to protect others described as "hired killers" and "thugs", whether directly or indirectly.
[1] - Easily recognised by their use of terms like "Skinnies", "Ragheads" and "Gooks".
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-09-19 01:24 am (UTC)But Bill Hicks was a comedian with a valid point. On one level you do have a collection of people who are given money to do violent things. He was really talking about the tendancy of the US to use its army in such a heavy handed and unfair manner rather than any individual soldier.
I'd say it would be stupid to join the armed forces in the States right now too. You'd quite clearly be put into harm's war in a war that (from my point of view) shouldn't be being fought as it is.
Obviously in any large group there are extremes.