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Originally Posted by Rdr4evr
Do not feel bad for me because I am against war and murder of innocent people while you blindly bow to your "commander and chief". If anything you should feel bad for yourself for the very fact that you have the capability to take another human beings life without hesitation and remorse.
The war in Iraq is not "fighting for my freedom". Iraq was never a threat to neither my freedom nor my life. I will NEVER fight any war because I personally do not have the capability to kill someone as it goes against everything I believe in.
You can believe you are fighting for "freedom" all you like, but in reality you are putting your life at risk for a individual who wouldn't give a shit less whether you live or die.
As for your comment about praising soldiers had it been another war, you are wrong. I will never praise any soldier (murderer) for any excuse they use to kill for. I personally would rather die myself than kill another...at least that way I know my soul wont be in for eternal suffering.
Go ahead and consider them heroic or consider them courageous, but I don’t believe murder constitutes any of those qualities. Being heroic or courageous would be to resist war and have the will power and wisdom to understand killing is wrong.
EDIT: As a side note: I am not religious at all, as I believe ultimately, religion is the root of all evil...but I do know the difference between right and wrong.
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First of all, I do not "bow blindly" to our Commander-in-Chief. I follow orders that are laid out above me in the chain of command, as do hundred of thousands of other soldiers in our fine United States military. And though I may have to take a life without hesitation (and only to save my own, or my battle buddies), why would you think it would be without remorse? Do you know any war vets? Have you ever talked to them about the war? Remorse is often felt very strongly by those who encountered fire fights and know that a soldier, friendly OR enemy, died because of it.
I do not put my life at risk for any individual. I put my life at risk for ALL individuals in this country and as far as I can tell, even by the sentiment of this thread, the great many of them do care. Just because you are callous against soldiers does not mean that everyone is. And just because I fight does not mean I do it for the President.
As for your soul suffering eternally (and also not being religious), being spiritual is religious. Religion doesn't have to take the form of some half-baked (or fully-baked) organized church. If you have a soul, and you worry about it, you're religious, whether you believe in god, the ethereal realm, or any other type of afterlife. I'm not "religious", by your sense of the definition either, but I believe that what I do in good conscience will not harm my soul in the afterlife. I believe that nazi soldiers are just as likely to be in heaven as any other human being, save those who tortured and killed prisoners in death camps by cruel and unusual means. *shrug* There's a line... a pretty broad, ugly, big one.
Overall, it's obvious we won't ever agree on this topic. It seems the two of us are about as polar as opposites can get. However, I respect your right to have your opinion, and I'm saddened slightly that any would think of me or others like me as murderers. C'est la vie!
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Originally Posted by JumpinJesus
I'm reading through this post and I'm getting kinda angry about what I read. I feel like I'm about to piss everyone off, but I feel this needs to be said and I hope that someone can agree with me. I don't want to be a cynical asshole but I'm afraid that's where I am.
First of all, isn't the whole, "My friend is more patriotic than your friend" schtick a little uncouth? It wouldn't make a bit of difference if I had 1,000 friends in the Army in Iraq and every last 1,000 of them thought the war was shit; there are tens of thousands of soldiers over there. I was in the military during Gulf War I and I can assure you that some were thrilled to go and some thought the war was bullshit. This whole my-pro-war-soldier-friends-in-Iraq-outnumber-your-anti-war-soldier-friends spiel is tiresome and vice versa. To use this as some sort of patriotic score-keeping is vulgar.
Second, our 1,000 dead pale in comparison to the tens of thousands of Iraqis who have died. If we fancy ourselves members of the human race, then every war death is devastating, especially non-combatant deaths. Remember, Saddam was the supposed to be the bad guy, not the entire nation of Iraq, yet we ignore Iraqi deaths as if we have somehow relegated all Iraqis to the realm of enemy. If we only value American deaths as noteworthy, then our place in this world is unjustified.
We are talking about war, yet we used cliched political sound bites and call it dialogue or debate. Unless we are willing to inflict and endure some verbal wounds and do so intelligently, then we are going to be stuck in intellectual quicksand with no one to blame but ourselves, and the deaths will continue to mount while we arrogantly deride the "other" side as immature, ignorant, or unpatriotic. This elementary bickering dishonors everyone who has died in this conflict, and we're all guilty of it.
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JJ, I'm sorry you felt the debate had come down to that. I agree that having petty arguments as such is counter-productive. I don't believe any "patriotic score-keeping" has been had though. I don't believe such an event could even occur for anyone who is truly patriotic.
Our thousand soldiers who have died HAVE paled in comparison to Iraqis who have died, including Iraqi military, civilians and militants. I do feel for the Iraqis with the loss of civilians, and I respect greatly the loss of the military members who died in the initial fight. However, I have a hard time respecting those who say they fight for their god, but must hide and be secret about so much. If they at least came out and said, "We're scared and think this is wrong so we'll fight against it" then fine, but to hide and fight in cowardice in the name of your god is just ridiculous. On a side-note, and I've mentioned it either earlier in this thread or in another thread... if you look hard and close, and from various sources (including non-U.S.), the vast majority of non-combatant deaths have been caused BY those same Iraqi militants. Surely it could be argued that our presence led to their deaths. But honestly people... the militants are killing their own countrymen... as per usual. Our presence hasn't changed as much over there as a lot of people would like to believe (for better or for worse). I'm surely not racist. I know a good number of people of Arabic decent, including Muslims and Iraqis. However, the mindset of many of the people over there has fallen into this terrorist suicide-bomber mentality, and it's been that way since long before 2003, or 2001 or 1991. It's been that way for decades, and even centuries in some aspects. We just see it in the news a lot more because sometimes our people are dying there, too. It's sad that American citizens would get so bent out of shape about something without actually knowing much about the history of the people or countries or area of the world that the news is happening in.
If this is elementary bickering, than I apologize. From my perspective it's the truth, and it shows Americans in a terrible light, not for being warmongers or Big Brother, but for being uninformed, ignorant and being lemming and sheep to the media. Try looking at the world through your own eyes, not the eyes of the newscaster on Channel 7.