"Soldiers are heroes."

Aaron wrote:

Well I didn't mean to, sorry.

It's just you hear here on the news every fucking day about somebody who's died in Afghanistan and yet the innocents that died in the explosion aren't mentioned whatsoever. Also, nobody had posted in this section of the forum for maybe two weeks, so I figured this would make for some fruitful discussion.

And my first post was blunt because I hate writing huge posts incase nobody replies, so I just put my opinion real bluntly and got everyone else to start the conversation, instead of there just being replies to my first post when I obviously know jackshit about the American situation, especially.

were cool.
Idk how it is over in the UK but over here they mention civilian deaths a lot. Its a good way to turn public opinion against the war i suppose.

Where do they mention civilian deaths a lot?
Maybe you've heard or read something I haven't but that certainly has not been my experience.

Because whenever Wikileaks released those like, bajillion documents the media focused almost entirely on the Pakistan intelligence agency's dealings with Al quaeda as opposed to the killng of civilians..and also in my experience the only time I hear anyone talk about civilian deaths is when people on the news are complaining that having to worry about not killing civilians makes it harder for the soldiers to do their jobs.
In Iraq we didn't even count the number of Iraqis we killed.

i should've been more clear. I get all my news form Yahoo and i deff. remember Yahoo news always talking about civilian deaths b/c i skipped over those stories. Depressing and they were all the same. as far as 24 hr stations idk i don't watch them and NBC evening news and all them may have not gone into great detail b/c those shows are only a half hr long.

and i thought the Iraqi civilian count was something like 600,000. That was mentioned many times. I'm pretty sure civilian deaths were used as one of the many reasons to get out of there.

Well I guess you could say I support the troops as in I don't want them getting their limbs blown off.
There are a lot of bumper stickers that say shit like, "Support the troops-bring them home" and by that they mean that really by sending people to wars like Iraq in Afghanistan we're really fucking them over because these are unwinnable wars (occupations) and its taking advantage of the willingness of someone to sacrifice themselves for their country and/or their ignorance of what is actually going on which is pretty despicable.
But also it's important to note that here, at least where I'm from and in my experience, if you say anything that can be perceived as negative about people in the armed forces you will get some serious shit. It is pretty socially unacceptable to be perceived as not supporting the troops. You get responses like this

pintsofgin wrote:

go to hell, all of you... you dont know shit. i come from a military family and i have nothing but respect for them. their not like 'yeah lets kill fucking Arabs' their ppl like you and me. If you ever met a military person you'd know none of them glorify it or think its cool. All i've ever heard is 'go to to school.' a big finger to you Aaron and this bull shit thread

Therefore when criticizing the war, especially at the beginning of the war in Iraq in 03 you would hear people preface all of their antiwar statements with "I support the troops but..."

pintsofgin wrote:

I'm pretty sure civilian deaths were used as one of the many reasons to get out of there.

I have never heard anything like that and I read a lot of news sites...Maybe it comes up in arguments by hardcore antiwar people, but the real reason why combat operations in Iraq have "ended" is it has become an expensive and unpopular war that was very clearly started for fraudulent reasons, while people still support Afghanistan, or at least the reasons they don't support it aren't as clear cut as the war in Iraq. The unpopularity came more from the cost than anything and maybe the geopolitical consequences..not that most Americans really seem to grasp those..(and we're not really out of there).

like i said before Aarons first post was pretty opened ended and could be interpenetrated in many ways, the fact that i was drunk from the Menzingers did not help. Even when im sober i still feel that everyone should support our soldiers.
What can i say? I specifically remember seeing a lot about civilian deaths. You apparently didn't see much.

pintsogin wrote:

go to hell, all of you... you dont know shit. i come from a military family and i have nothing but respect for them. their not like 'yeah lets kill fucking Arabs' their ppl like you and me. If you ever met a military person you'd know none of them glorify it or think its cool. All i've ever heard is 'go to to school.' a big finger to you Aaron and this bull shit thread

I stand by this, just because you don't agree with the military doesn't mean anything these are people who put thier lives on the line for thier country and the first post of this thread is insulting and that's bullshit, whether you are pro war or pro peace.

pintsogin wrote:

Even when im sober i still feel that everyone should support our soldiers.

Well I feel I shouldn't be told what to think or feel.
And I feel that the statement "soldiers are heroes" is a false statement in that not all soldiers are heroes. That doesn't mean I don't 'support' the soldiers (whatever that's supposed to mean anyway).

like i said once or twice already his statement was open for lots of interpretation. It wasn't so much the 'heroes' aspect of his short, blunt post (most soldiers disdain the term heroes to begin with) as much as it was the sense of disrespect that i got from it. That's what i had a problem with.

i didnt tell you to do anything. Grant it my first post i was a bit more emotional but now that i'm in a better state of mind... and you support the soldiers anyways.

By saying "No they fucking aren't" is the insult, it was meant to be overly defensive. They aren't all heroes, a lot of soldiers don't do much. But starting this thread was just for the sake of being a dick.

What does that mean?

Whatever, I'm going to bed. I only posted it to revive this board and because I saw a news report on Sky News saying 'Soldiers are heroes.'

It's really fucking weird of a channel like Sky News to do that, so I posted it, cos it seemed kinda profound.

But whatever, I don't have to explain myself to you, and you seem to be being pedantic toward pints, for the sake of it, as you're aware that you know what you're talking about.

I didn't post it to be a dick.

soldiers have a job like everyone else.

that job doesnt make them hero's, what you do at your job gets you rememebered.

To people calling it just a job, it's true but at the same time it's a dangerous job. And I respect the hell out of anyone doing it because it protects a way of life, even if we don't agree with the actions.

And that doesn't just go for soldiers. You may have to be fucking crazy to do some of the jobs that need to be done, but they need to be done and a lot of them prey on the lower class because they're dangerous and it's a job and better money then working the local gas station.


I don't know, maybe I've been warped by living in a super small town for a long time, but a lot of the people I grew up with signed up and while some of them were complete douchbags I have always respected them for doing that, minus the ones that were 'we're going to kill arabs!' but they seemed to come back completely changed.

Also, it's fairly easy to be anti-war and still support the troops. I don't agree with why we went to war, but I respect the the troops and I don't go around spitting on them. I think in America it's because of how soldiers were treated during Vietnam.


Also, I know CNN has posted the deaths of American Soldiers next to Civilians. They seem to do it everyonce in awhile but I don't remember it being a huge thing since America's opinion of the war changed.

i understand why Aaron made the thread. Solider s aren't that popular amongst this particular crowd and would've made for good discussion. he could have just worded it differently. he actually apologized early on which was real cool. I thought the little thing i had with SpokeYourFace was going to happen with Aaron. Were all still friends

pintsogin wrote:

like i said once or twice already his statement was open for lots of interpretation. It wasn't so much the 'heroes' aspect of his short, blunt post (most soldiers disdain the term heroes to begin with) as much as it was the sense of disrespect that i got from it. That's what i had a problem with.

i didnt tell you to do anything. Grant it my first post i was a bit more emotional but now that i'm in a better state of mind... and you support the soldiers anyways.

You're right, you didn't directly tell me to do anything but your initial response and your statement that "I feel everyone should support the troops" comes off that way, and the prevailing attitude in the US (I don't know about the UK) is pretty fucking ridiculous when it comes to the whole "Support our troops" issue. I don't think there's anything wrong with having a discussion about the way that the military is viewed here but when you get into a discussion like that inevitably there's someone who is just like, 'fuck you RA Ra America, freedom blah blah blah" (not that you specifically sound that way but its the same kind of attitude).

I guess I could understand how Aaron's post comes off to you initially but I can also understand where he's coming from. I don't see how you can deny that in this country everyone is expected to have some sort of unconditional reverance for the military and that seems a little unhealthy for a society to me. Its one thing to respect people who do a dangerous job that someone has to do, but it's another thing entirely to put them up on a pedestal and that definitely is the case here. I mean, no one acts that way about cops. One disparaging remark about the military can get you a lot of shit (and I'm not referring to here on this board I'm talking about in real life).

This response is pre-coffee by the way, so sorry if it's a little incoherent.

...For your Bday I'm giving you the last post. Don't say i never did anything for you

I'm so touched.