A Note on America's "Heroic Troops"

This is going to be short but I really must say this at some point.

Sorry, you "Support the Troops no matter what" people don't get to use the excuse that everything bad the US Military does is the fault of the generals and the White House.

America has a volunteer military. You sign up for this (*)(*)(*)(*). Ergo, they must accept the responsibility for following the orders they agreed to follow when they joined.

If they (*)(*)(*)(*) up, raid a house and kill a bunch of people they thought were Taliban who were actually just civilians, yes, I consider them the bad guys. If the disgruntled man of the house (not Taliban - if he was Taliban what I'm saying doesn't apply) whose wife and kids have just been killed by "accident" decides to take his revenge by suicide bombing a checkpoint and killing American soldiers, you know what? I'm cheering him on. Those soldiers can go (*)(*)(*)(*) themselves.

No doubt this has now pissed off a lot of people but that's kind of the point: America paints their soldiers as being able to do no wrong, and any repercusions they face as a result of their actions are unfairly directed at them, they're the innocent victims of bad orders or whatever. You know what though? They're not. They are complicit. Get over yourselves.

All I'm waiting for now is a first person shooter where the US Military is the enemy and you go about slaughtering them like you do enemies form other countries in any other game...oh boy the hypocrisy on display when something like that finally happens will be hilarious to behold.

 

You appear to have a problem with soldiers in general. Is there some other group of soldiers that US soldiers should be emulating so as not to be hypocritical?

 

War is hell, so I have been told

 

I think you missed my point. I am well aware that in reality this kind of thing is unavoidable - war is hell and all that. And certainly the US is still the "good guys" compared to the Islamists they fight. My problem is that people don't admit that their soldiers are responsible for doing terrible things - no one wants to believe their son who's putting his life on the line for his job did something bad. It's understandable, but it doesn't make it true.

 

Maybe you can get a Canadian company to work on that video game project.....possibly the same one that wrote the software for Obamacare.

 

I'm sorry was there a point to this or are you just trying to make any possible "US superiority" claims you can wiggle in?

 

It's hard to tell who is doing what. It's hard to distinguish between civilians and military. That's because our enemies drag their dead children into the streets after we bomb them, but they certainly don't show you the weapons cache they decided to put in their home, next to their children. Imo, collateral damage by the US is way overblown. These lies and ridiculous casualty numbers are part of the enemy strategy to break our will to fight, and increase their will.

 

The only thing I don't like much is the drones, some guy in a Nevada with a joy stick, assasinating some guy 8, 000 miles away, 20, 000 feet up in the air

How do they know who they are killing?

And the admitting part? I heard the story's.. who is not admitting it?

 

If the guy is in the left seat of a B-1 20,000 feet overhead, how does he know who he is killing?

 

'Significant operations involving 6 Group included raids on U-boat bases in Lorient and Saint-Nazaire, France and night bombing raids on industrial complexes and urban centres in Germany.'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No._6_Group_RCAF

How many of these war criminals were court martialed?

 

Cool story bro.

 

There is an axiom developed by the Prussian General and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, that deals with the nonlinear nature and unpredictability of war. It is known as the fog of war. Although his 3 volume treatise, "On War," was written largely unfinished over 180 years ago. The fog of war remains as viable a concept today as it did when it was written just after the Napoleonic wars. Basically, as defined...the fog of war is the uncertainty in situational awareness experienced by participants in military operations.

It is very easy to sit in an armchair, after the fact, and with the gift of hindsight...to point out errors in how a particular military operation, large or small, was conducted. However the fog of war limits the decision making abilities during the actual military operation. Decisions are made in a constantly changing, fluid environment, without the gift of hindsight and before the fact.

I have little patience for armchair generals that are quick to point a finger having never experienced the fog of war firsthand.

 

So where is your rage against Canadian, British, French and other NATO forces in Afghanistan? Why do you solely target the US military? Civilian casualties are inevitable, especially when your enemy hides behind civilians. Considering that over 75% of civilian casualties are cause by the Taliban and Al Qaeda. If you are put into a urban situation, where the enemy could be around the corner, it is difficult for our soldiers to stay disciplined on the trigger. Luckily a massive majority do. NATO forces, especially US forces, make every attempt to avoid civilian casualties, as it would hurt the mission and would be morally wrong. It is impossible for an army to be perfect, there are always nuts in every society and every military.

 

The fact that you don't like it is meaningless and your disdain for the men and women who have to carry out those orders is ignorant. Obviously you've never served or you'd understand. Carrying out the orders of others is often difficult, sometimes in error, but is necessary for a military to retain order in combat. You assume it's like some pansy-assed video game that is as close as you'll ever get to defending your country's freedom. Fortunately, Canada has great military members to protect your country while you arm-chair quarterback what the military members should do (since Canadians also fight side-by-side with US military members).

Since you don't get it, here's the oath they take verbatim. It EXPLICITLY states who is responsible by the mere oath to follow the orders of the officers appointed over them. They don't have to like it. They just have to do it. If the orders are lawful, they're duty bound to obey them.

Enlistment Oath.— Each person enlisting in an armed force shall take the following oath:
"I, XXXXXXXXXX, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Armed_Forces_oath_of_enlistment

 

Okie dokey. I'd love to tackle this one from a systems perspective.

First of all, atrocity is avoidable. If it wasn't, you'd stable rates of atrocity across various conflicts. The fact you don't means that some environmental agents can suppress the act. Which ones those are is up for debate, and I don't intend to debate them here. I only propose it is avoidable if the system evolves to do it less. Our military has. We used to be much, much worse. Worse than history books care to mention. We have quite a dark past in secret wars already, and are a young nation.

The military training, deployment, and support systems take civilians and turn them into soldiers. Whether or not the humans entering the system are volunteering, voluntold, or drafted, they are processed by the system and modified for wartime operation. You can chart this to take out a lot of the emotion. Call the Military system MS. Call untrained humans H. And call soldiers D.

In words: MS catalyzes the transformation of H to D. The rate of H->D via MS is dependent on the concentration of input, or number of humans clustered around training centers, [H] = concentration of humans available for training. If you increase [H], you make soldiers faster to a limit. This also speaks to the volunteer versus draft bit. The draft is only required if [H] is too low to sustain a population of soldiers [D]. The draft is a process in itself that acts on the civilian population to process more civilians into [H].

I'm sorry if this is hard to follow, but I truly believe it's a better framework for this kind of debate. MS, the military complex, like any process, is inefficient. There are universal limits on efficiency that I won't go into here. Inefficiency comes off as waste, as chaotic action not intended by MS. What is behavior in this framework? Behaviors can be measured as rates. Wanted behaviors (noble bits) are signs of adaptive structure in MS and unwanted behaviors are signs of inefficiency. Simple as that. There are a lot of reasons why any soldier modification system would have a hard time preparing large groups for perfect combat everywhere; minimized collateral, maximized damage, the whole bit. It doesn't happen. Never will. Simply can't. The best we can do is modify MS to be less inefficient.

This is not nihilistic! This isn't even mean. Please also understand that there is probably INFINITE room to grow between where we are and whatever perfect looks like, and probably infinite ways to be just as good or just as bad as we are. What this model says is if you don't like the soldiers MS produces. Use a different software. Different hardware.

Evolutionary theory is also fun to apply. So MS, the military training system, has a monopoly in the United States. There's only one federally funded soldier training program, MS. What this means is, no matter how hardcore the reform, all you can do is explore the potential of MS. So, if big, great, MS ( our current military framework, leaders, bases, equipment, substaff, recruiting, and surrounding culture and everything else in MS) doesn't have the potential to deliver, than it's subsets and clones can not either. If the military were to split into two factions MS1 and MS2, one would be more efficient than the other at H->D for whatever behavior measured. Another cool thing about complex systems is they will have overlapping but unique potential no matter what. If money and support were reallocated continuously at reasonable pace to the more efficient complex (say eMS2>eMS1), and when MS1 was about to collapse, you split MS2 into MS2b MS3 and repeated the process, you get better soldiers. Every time. You don't even have to worry about the details.

It's cool to know this would work. In practice, it means telling all the Generals they are competing against their friends and there is no longer a guarantee that they will have a job in ten years. It means turning the working unemployment the military is, into a co-evolutionary arms race between whatever we had and whatever we're making. It'd be akin to creating a cold war in our country. It'd be incredibly disruptive. No one would know how much the evolution in our fighting force would cost the nation. Unless, you measure cost along with efficient transformation H->D. Then you get cheaper and better. Still get the disruption, though. Just because it costs less, and gives us better soldiers, don't think the hoard of unemployed veterans, now noncompetitive in their old career, will be easily integrated into civil society. Again, not defeatist. Not fatalistic. Realistic. TINSTAAFL. Never forget it. There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

 

So, one or more American soldiers kill innocent civilians "by accident" and you think it's a good thing for a survivor to kill another bunch of Americans who had nothing to do with the crime? And you're going to cheer him on? Really?

Was wondering, it must have been a good day for you when Major Hasan killed and wounded so many soldiers at Ft Hood a few years back. Seriously, what makes you think most people in the US absolve their soldiers of guilt for commiting war crimes? Most of us were appalled and disgusting by the Graib prison story about 10 years back, when US soldiers were humiliating Iraqi prisoners. Most of us are shocked and saddened when we hear a story about some soldier(s) shooting up a family by accident or otherwise. Where did you get the idea that most of us believe our soldiers can do no wrong? I suppose there are a few wingnuts out there that believe it, but let's not condemn everybody for the words and actions of a few, and certainly not the service people who are doing their best under very trying circumstances. Do we have a few bad apples in uniform? Of course, they are after all representatives of the society they come from.

 

I'm curious about where this idea of a war with rules comes from.

We Americans practically invented the modern idea that there are no innocents, in Sherman's march that was stated policy. Churchill and Roosevelt declared war on all Germans, not just their troops. Al Qaeda targets all Americans. Now people want to pretend otherwise, I just don't get it.

 

Here's the thing:
In that situation, think of it from his perspective. He never asked for you to come there, he had nothing to do with what you wanted, and now after killing all his family in an accident this foreign invader's response is "Sorry. Deal with it." Would you accept that? Would you just let foreigners run around accidentally killing civilians in the process of hunting for a few people?

No, I would find it perfectly understandable for him to want to fight back.

 

(1) Wanting to fight back and (2) killing others who were not involved with your family's murders are two different things. You are attempting to justify the 2nd murder of innocents based on the injustice of the 1st.

I don't think the US response is "Sorry, deal with it." If there is wrong doing, somebody should pay for it. Most of us in this country expect justice to be done, even for the military in a war zone.

" Would you just let foreigners run around accidentally killing civilians " - the Afghan war is not exactly a walk in the park. Accidents and mistakes do happen, regrettable as they are. But the tenor of your posts suggest you believe the US military is killing civilians on a regular basis, which I don't think is the case. It ain't like the Taliban are wearing clothes or badges that identify them from the general populace.

 

'Allied land forces that saw combat in Normandy on D-Day itself came from the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada.'

'During the course of the liberation of Normandy between 13,632 and 19,890 French civilians were killed.'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Overlord#Civilians_and_French_heritage

I'd say there's some pretty damned impressive hypocrisy on display right here.

 

The point is they shouldn't be occupying the country in the first place.

Also, I've never heard of someone going out and tracking down the exact enemy soldiers that attacked them - typically, people just attack any members of the opposing force.

 

No, not at all. I just thought I'd take the time to commend you for coming up the most incredibly stupid suggestion I've yet seen on this forum.....and that's saying a lot. It also says a lot about the author.

 

We could apparently fill volumes with things you know nothing about.

 

Your comment here may sound smart but you did not disprove what I said.

 

Well I can already tell 2 things about you.

1. If you think this is the stupidest, you clearly don't come here often enough
2. You clearly have far too much faith in the goodwill of the US Military