huzza

Indeed. Let us remember those who went before us.

Thanks to all of you who've served, or are serving in the military. Happy Veteran's Day.

Respect.

Interesting. Someone starts a thread saying peace is something we aspire to, and it morphs into a thread about thanking and respecting the government's armed enforcers, without whom war would not be possible. What is wrong with this picture?

Don't think of it as respecting armed forces, but rather respecting those who put themselves in harm's way to protect the rights and freedoms of others. Also, I'd say that this comment is in bad taste considering today is a day to honour the fallen soldiers who fought against oppression to liberate those people in countries who were less fortunate in their rights than we are today.

Sorry, but serving in the armed forces and putting oneself in harm's way doesn't protect the rights and freedoms of others. That's just nationalist/propogandistic bullshit. It's really about serving The State and those who control it. Smedley Butler said it best - "War is a Racket":

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

Anyone who wants to lecture me about disrespect or lack of patriotism needs to read this first or STFU (and if you don't know who Smedley Butler was, wiki him).

Our government sold out hundreds of millions of East Europeans - including some second cousins of mine - to Communist Domination at Yalta and Tehran. It has also supported the most tyrannical and despotic regimes in the Muslim world while lecturing the rest about 'freedom' and 'democracy'. In Vietnam, 58,000 Americans died propping up a series of dictators and - entirely by coincidence, of course - making a pile of money for a series of influential manufacturing companies who produced war weapons. In 1991, over 300 American service members died restoring the house of al-Sabah - an absolute monarchy - to the rule of Kuwait, much to the chagrin of many Kuwaitis who found more freedom under Saddam's secular socialist regime. In Afghanistan, our government replaced the Taliban with the brutal and corrupt warlords against whom the Afghan people welcomed the Taliban as liberators just a few years before. Don't talk to me about "protecting the rights and freedoms of others". Anyone who thinks this has been a real foreign policy concern of our government in the last 120 years is an idiot.

The last time the American military fought for freedom, the year was 1815 and Andrew Jackson's hillbilly militia was gunning down redcoats outside of New Orleans in a war that had already ended. Every American who has died or been maimed in a war since then has made their sacrifice primarily to make the wealthy people who control this country wealthier (with the arguable exception of the Civil War being fought by some to end slavery - but that was at best a fringe benefit for the policymakers, who were pawns of the real beneficiaries of the Civil War - the northern industrialists.).

The real point of Armistice Day (as it was once known) was to celebrate the end of war. Not to celebrate those who fight them - which has the psychological effect of legitimizing the wars they fought in, no matter how despicable they were.

Saying there would be no war if everyone refused to fight is like saying there would be no AIDS if everyone had protected sex, or there would be no world hunger if we grew more food.

Hey Tolstoy was the USA to surrender on Dec 8 1941? And as for the sell out at Yalta, would you have had WW3 right after WW2? Do you think South Koreans would rather be ruled by Kim Jong-il?

I should also point out that I'm a Canadian, and that your rant (misguided or not) about the tyranny and infamy of the United States Armed forces and United States government is not technically applicable to my conscience. However, I would tend to concur with abgemacht and Otto

I agree with Tolstoy, his rant can be applied to almost every, if not all, governments ever. Otto, friend, look at American attitudes to Japan before WW2. And look at South Korea around the War, I'm sure Syngman Rhee was a great man.

@abgemacht - I'm confused. Are you sarcastically agreeing with me? Or am I just too tired to grasp a cleverly hidden anti-peace argument?

@Otto - it was American eagerness for war that put the fleet in Pearl Harbor to begin with. A better question would be "would the Japanese have attacked if the fleet was still anchored in San Diego?" And no, I would not have preferred a Third World War to Yalta. But don't tell me that freedom for all was the chief concern - it obviously wasn't. If it had been, Patton would've been given the green light to try and shoot his way to Moscow instead of being assassinated. I also don't think Yalta or WWIII were the only two alternatives. And as for Korea (and China going Red before it), the whole thing likely could've been avoided by agreeing to a negotiated peace with Japan in late '44/early '45 instead of demanding an unconditional surrender after over a million civilians - including a substantial portion of Japan's Christian population - were incinerated through aerial bombing.

@Ireland - as a cheerleader in an international forum where your words may influence many (or at least some) Americans, it is as much on your conscience (whether you choose to realize it or not) as it is on mine as an American taxpayer.

Thanks Tolstoy, Its difficult to fight ignorance and the lies we are brought up with.I agree with your post more heartily.
I salute you:)

I suppose you're correct in that case, we should be celebrating the peace brought about by the fallen, rather than the soldiers themselves on Armistice (Remembrance in Canada) Day, my apologies for making an ignorant and misinformed argument.

I think the finger pointing should definitely be done towards the bureaucracy making the decisions the army follows. Governments do need to be held accountable for their actions (as people who make comments in this forum should be held accountable for their posts, as you so clearly pointed out to me!). And of course, I suppose the righteousness of a country's actions in a shooting war is a matter of perspective dictated by the people who write the history books (who are usually the victors of said shooting war).

Once again my apologies for the ignorant comment, apparently my brain was out to lunch when I typed that one...

“They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.”

Armistace day (also known as rememberance day) is to remember the war dead, the millions of soldiers, many of them who were conscripted, who died in war, whatever the underlying political motives of war millions and millions of soldiers and civilians have died in war and the primary aim of armistace day (or remembrance day in the UK) is to remember the dead and make sure that their sacrafice is not forgotten. It is not to celebrate the armed forces or to support any conflict in any way. But simply to remember the sons and daughters, mothers and fathers who were needlessly slaughtered in the two biggest wars in history.

In europe it absolutely is NOT a celebration of war or the armed forces but it is a very important day of remembrance.

@Tolstoy - "the whole thing could have been avoided by agreeing to a negotiated peace with"?
You play diplomacy? Why do you agree a peace?
To give you time to reposition your forces so that you can complete the job properly next time!!
Governments require power & wealth & rescources to prosper.
If another nation has got them & another nation wants them & are big enough to take them, they will.
The only people who want peace are the populations of the nations that have to fight for the desires of their nation.
About 99.9999% of the population of this world. The small % that control the direction our lives take to achieve their ambitions for power & wealth will continue to prosper regardless of the outcome of conflict, because they never risk their lives or their wealth in conflict, they mearly enhance it by the level of success the conflict achieves for their aims.
The rich get richer & more powerful by the day.
We the human rescource of their ambitions will continue to live & die as per their whim or fancy.

Don't we celebrate Memorial Day for the soldier who have fallen? Sure, Veterans Day was called Armistice Day first and was intended to be the day where we were reminded of the horrors of war, but does that mean now we shouldn't thank those who serve now, in just or unjust wars? Many who have never seen war can't understand the toll it takes on those who have fought it and draw up these super patriotic reasons to support Vets or spread fear of conspiracies about governments and politicians who just want more money. You might be right about these conspiracies or the fight for freedom or whatever, but disrespecting those who did choose to serve, for any reason, is cold-hearted, cowardly, and downright rude. I'm not going to argue all this crap Tolstoy and Otto are saying about war and the reasons for conflict, but for fucks sake, have some respect for those who took one of the most tortured paths a man can take in his life.

agreed, you can rant all you like 364 days of the year, but on armistance day the decent thing todo is STFU if you cant say something constructive.

I agree.

Tolstoy, Otto, 363 days out of the year this would be an interesting philosophical discussion that I'd love to have.

But on Veterans' Day and Memorial Day...

You shut up and salute.

You don't have to salute the militaries, or the wars they fought, or the nations they fought for.

But you DO have to salute the men for having the courage and convicition to fight at all.




This day always reminds me of my grandfather...I loved him great guy, a big jokester, liked the Yankees since liking the Yankees meant liking Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio...he grew up in a Jewish, Austrian-speaking household in New York, and met my grandmotehr just before he went off to serve in WWII...he told me all his war stories more than 60 years later, things he never even told his own children--he served in the 9th Artillery in the US Army and went from England to France, across the Bridge at Remagen and all the way into Munich and Nazi Headquarters itself...VERY satisfying for him, a Jew capturing that place, he and the other men took a ton of things home, and he passed one on to me:

A book detailing different German buildings he took from the desk of Hitler...and in it were notes he wrote all those years ago...

And I never noticed the notes until after he passed away, then I looked at the book closely and found the notes, giving me more stories, the kind I loved when I was a kid...I also have the folded flag from his funeral.

RIP Private Edward Roth, my grandfather.

And blessed be all those who serve and protect.

@realpauldec "Veterans Day was called Armistace day" It is still armistace day in Europe, the reason being it marks the ceasefire, the end of fighting during the first world war on "the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" in 1918. Quite why anyone would choose to mark this day by anything other than remberance is beyond me.

The point I was trying to make was that despite how screwed up things get, everybody should aspire to peace.

Not saying its going to happen, or that certain people are to blame more than others, or any of that. Just that its something we should aspire to.

tl;dr: Tolstoy, don't shit up my thread, please.

I'm with Tolstoy here, the only one on this thread who seems successfully to have resisted being brainwashed.
All military are hired assassins - they get paid, fed and clothed against the promise to rape, burn, loot and kill others who they have never even ever met before.
What's to respect?

@Pantafool - Rape and pillage are both against the UCMJ. Burning and killing are only intentionally done to enemy equipment and combatants, although civilian casualties and collateral damage occur.

But your two actual crimes better never occur or you will be brought to justice and hard labor is *not* something you want to serve in a military prison.

As far as what else they do, how about the rescue operations and humanitarian aid operations the military does all the time: water systems to villages without fresh water and dams and bridges to provide energy and access to markets. Rescues of hostages from pirates or terrorists and rescues from natural disasters like earthquakes, mud slides, floods, tsunamis and hurricanes.

Get your head out of your ass and face reality you piece of shit. I did my service and I don't give a fuck if you don't thank me. but you better stop disrespecting me, my brother, my father, and both of my grandfathers along with every other man or woman who has served their country with honor, you little fuck.

Wow... methinks the likes of Pantalone have been playing too many of the nastier style of computer games whilst sipping bootleg absinthe. Nobody joins the military with the aim of going on a jolly old rape and pillage holiday, you complete dingbat. The tiny number of evil sods in society who like that sort of thing can do it perfectly well at home, without the disadvantage of jonny foriegner shooting at them.

The people who join the army in this day and age are the people who want to do a job which gives them the feeling that they're making a better positive impact on the world than your average shelf stacker, and quite like the idea of a life that comes with a bit of adventure. The people who fought in the world wars were mostly ordinary people dropped into dreadful circumstances, who still managed to achieve great things.

In the early years remembrance day was about the friends and relatives of people who had died (i.e everyone) remembering those not lucky enough to make it. This has evolved to also include those of us determined to keep alive the memory of the great sacrifices made by those people and to remind us all just how bloody awful war can be.

You, Pantalone, are a buffoon.

Causes of World War I.
For starters, has anyone got through Alberti? Is there a good translation?
The prinicple of this Forum within the Game of Dip. is to negotiate from Year 1900, theGilded Age, or Fin de Siecle, whatever. Grey, Berchtold, the Kaiser and Czar and their familes -- the dynastic set-ups of not just Victoria R. --- fill volumnes. We also have the papers of the foreign ministries of the major and the minor states.
For clarity's sake I recommend Charles Seymour Sr.'s The causes of the War, which came out around 1916. Maybe Wilson, another college pres., urged its publication. In any case it details the Balkan Wars et seq.
- * Remembrance Day * Cannon fodder? I was acquainted with a fighter from the Princess Pat Regiment who the medics said was wounded enuf to be shipped back to Epsom for hospitalization. When he got Leave from Epsom, he went up to London in uniform, so he rode free.
In London's tea dances all the Ladies, their gents being away at the front, romanced him. England was like that during earlier European wars.
Battle scars -- Like German university dueling scars -- were looked on as a mark of Honour then.
Or in the words of the ThreePenny Oper: Beefsteak tartare.

I agree with Tolstoy here...I'm beginning to like him. :)

Smedley Butler put his time in so I don't think anyone can question his dedication or service. And so, I would defer to him as knowing what war is *really* about.

You can read his speech here:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4377.htm

"Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they? It pays high dividends.

But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their children?

What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits?"

Yeah, but... the holiday doesn't celebrate the people who make the decisions to go to war. It honors people who have to suffer through it. Even in the speech linked, the sacrifices are acknowledged:

"This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries."

There's nothing wrong with appreciating the service rendered by other citizens of whatever country you live it. It hardly makes you a warmonger. I understand the impulse to resist jingoism but the passion in the name of not respecting Veterans/Armistice Day at all is a little weird.

*in.

@ darwyn, tolstoy Pantalone et al: so y'all going to call the president and let him know he can fire the military? you sure we will all be safe? Perhaps first call Tibet and ask them how its working for them.

Here's something to think about: about 20 million russian people died and tens of millions of others were maimed or terribly traumitised or made inconcievable sacrifices as result of Hitler invading Russia. Hitler gave orders that no prisoners were to be taken, and thousands of villages were wiped off the map, civilians or not. All these victims of war, including the soldiers defending their country - these people are all "killers and rapists" are they tolstoy?