Military Matters

This post here is the topic that I actually intended to do today until the Michelle Bachmann incursion.

Today I wanted to give my two cents on the United States Military, which in my admittedly biased opinion is AWESOME, but from my non-perspective ROTC mind,  I still am forced to support that the U.S. Armed Forces are pretty damned good.

But my goal here isn’t to simply give the Army props but I want to go into the course of anti-military American protesters and radicals. Please do note, not antiwar activists but anti-military activist. As crazy as that may seem (actually in this day and age I suppose it doesn’t) but there are quite a score if American citizens that hold a large amount of contempt and disdain for the U.S. Military.

Which to these batch of individuals, most wonder why and for what? Well, there are two prongs to this fork: one is that many directly correlate the brutality of war as being the military itself, and also they fail to recognize that the military doesn’t choose to go to war, but instead Congress does.

The best example of these aforementioned statements would definitely have to be in accordance to the Vietnam War era and post-era and the War in Iraq.  Now there is about a half-century time span between these things so it might raise how those two are remotely related to each other, but honestly keep reading and you’ll see how this is one of the best examples  of the axiom “history repeats itself”. What I’m getting at is the following.

The Vietnam War, it can only be described as a mess. Simply because the whole instance was to combat the IDEA of communism as a branch of the amorphous Cold War. But right now I’m not getting in the whole history of the war, that quite frankly is somewhat irrelevant. The major point is that during the era, strong upheaval against the war effort soon evolved into riotous behavior against the military. Information explained, (from a video I watched in my H1302 class concerning new-age trends of the Vietnam War-era) many began to slander them by calling them baby killers, signs saying “thou shalt not murder” and things like the sort.

Keep that in mind, now we move on to the next example, the ‘current’ war in Iraq, it too started in order to fight terrorism, which alike is not a concrete force to fight militarily. So that is a historical repeat, second, this war also evoked large number of distaste. Here, is what the best example of radicalism: The Westboro Baptist ”Church” and if you don’t know what they are, I encourage you to google it and be shocked. But a quick dissertation, they are a group of crazed people who literally hate America and the military, and somehow claim to be prophets. They walk around with signs that say stuff like “God hates America”, “Thank God for 9-11” and other really messed up stuff of the sort.

Many appeal to agree that these people obviously don’t need to live in America if that is how they really feel, but again AMERICA is a free country that gives us the luxury to disrespect it if we so choose. And here is where I begin my point. History obviously repeated in theory, but this is the quandary. American freedoms from the start of the nation were made possible by the U.S. military. The military provides freedoms that otherwise U.S. civilians would not be able to enjoy without their sacrifices. For example, had any of these protesters been residents of Russia or perhaps China, the movements would never have been started or entertained from being quelled by federal censorship, and furthermore, the U.S. is one of the few countries that does not mandate military service foe every person.

It seems utterly appalling at the outright contempt that some of these people have to call the military men and women ‘murderers‘. Now this is the case. Well, is war really the same thing that breaks moral and religious orthodoxy of taking lives? Socially, it is perceived that murder is a vicious crime against humanity. Religiously, of course — I feel safe to say– all religions state that actual murder is wrong. Scientifically, there are medical conditions that obscure an unstable mental state that can lead to violent actions thus making them unaware of their actions in the moment–thus providing the grey area. None of these three yet however answer our question, so to ask again, are military actions considered murder in cases of war.

Merriam-Webster defines murder as: [killing] (a human being) unlawfully and with premeditated malice.

Note, the word premeditated and malice.

Next, on a similar note–speaking from a Biblical standpoint because I have not done extensive research into other religions on this matter– many of times throughout the Bible did God authorize war amongst groups of people and so forth.(If you don’t believe me, it’s true look it up)

Back to the dictionary definition, which falls under the science category. Premeditated and Malice, are the key. War mindset is totally different from feeling hatred towards a person and wanting to kill them out of self-will as opposed to being in a kill-or-be-killed environment. On an added note and bonus, many of times, war happens for just causes such as freedom and liberation.

Here is an interesting take, society –as a general whole– seems to be the most intuitive on the topic. Social opinion is formulated by  religious and scientific and logical input. Which discerns that war combat is not the same as a gang fight shoot out over red or blue and drug debt.

Therefore by that analysis, war combat does not equal cold-blooded murder THE MAJORITY  of the time. I’m sure there are instances when soldiers on either force does in fact murder, but as a whole war is not meant for murder. As a ping-back, to a previous comment I made, the military does not choose to go to war, Congress does, and the general public elect these congressmen and representative, so by that token, the people themselves are ”choosing” to be in war. It can be safely and indisputably said that nobody likes war, and war is not fun or entertaining–in real life.

In conclusion, if one feels the need to express discontent, don’t attack the military men and women who are protecting the country, attack the war itself and support an ending to it. That’s all, remember to respect the brave men and women of the armed forces.

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