Saturday, August 23, 2008
"Why I Don't Support the Troops"
This letter from a reader of the Berkeley Planet newspaper got me to thinking about how I feel about the military. I see all the time those yellow ribbon things saying "support the troops" and remember even peace activists saying "support our troops by bringing them home." I have never felt that way. I just realized that the reason that I didn't like the strategy of saying that you can support the people in the military and at the same time not support war is that I think that anyone who is in the military has signed up to participate in war. How is this any better than becoming a gang member and shooting other gang members? I know that there are people who feel that the military is a way out of poverty, but there are other, more constructive ways. I support anyone who is willing to work for peace, and that does not include soldiers. If you want to use a gun, take up target shooting or something.
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3 comments:
There never will be a time when we don't need military power. The only reason the cold war was a cold war was that both sides had the threat of retaliation. We need to be able to use military power as a threat to hopefully get people to back down before starting anything, and if they do so anyway, retaliate with trained troops.....there's never going to be a time that we don't need to use force. It just has to be done wisely.
Most of the time, our country uses the threat of military action to further the goals of the corporations that have a political and financial stranglehold on the government. This is true for the Middle East as well as other regions.
yeah, true.
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