We are the police for the world...

Werd!! Everyone knows that Nixon is the one most like a dictator!!

 

I would have expected better from you. That's Napoleon's style. Y'all have opinions on what Iraq "needs" and feel they're relevant. Not to mention that a pivotal event in US history would affect Canada one way or another. Can we all just get along?

 

The first sentence is just nasty and wrong. But MTK, the rest makes good sense. BTW, what is the evidence to show that "US troops may have more loyalty to their neighbors than to their commanders". My gut tells me that is true. but i don't know of any real evidence.

 

I think that is a common assumption within the military. Has to be considered. Military bases have plans for attacks... and not just by foreign enemies. All military personnel go through varying levels of psychological screening and they can deem some of this from those screenings. Having to face a relative with a gun gets mentioned in the scenarios... at least it did in my training and I wasn't exactly trained to kill.

I was in for my knoxledge of math and physics plus an amazing grasp of a Texas Instruments calculator... not my killing ability.

It's hard enough to train a marine to run straight into live fire or charge a grenade bunker knowing he is likely to die... now put his brother or cousin behind that gun and throwing those grenades. He's going to be more reluctant.

Try to tell a sailor to do it against anyone and he's going to say, "fuck you kill the light, turn up the damn air conditioning and get the hell out of here... I'm trying to sleep!"

 

Sorry you think it's nasty and wrong, Roger, but I don't. I don't give a good dump about a Canadian's opinions about my rights or the need for them.

As for the bit about US troops versus US citizens, I've read that the military has studied this on occasion before. My recollection was that it was a study done by an officer attending the War College or something like that. He surveyed troops and asked if they would take part in an operation against US citizens (I don't remember if the example was door-to-door gun confiscation or what example they gave) but they found that a large percentage of troops wouldn't carry out those orders. I think they inferred from it that there would also be a large number of troops who would take their weapons and equipment and bail on the military to support their neighbors.

 

Are you perhaps thinking of the infamous "29 Palms Survey?" It was a survey conducted in 1994 by a Marine officer, in which he asked troops various questions, such as whether US troops should be regularly used as the UN Police Force, whether they would pledge allegience to the UN over the US, and whether they would be willing to fire upon US Citizens who refused to surrender guns if they were banned by the government.

 

That's pretty interesting.

I always thought a good solidier does what they're told, not what they think/feel.

 

Quite a few Nazi prison guards were convicted of war crimes for their part in the Holocaust. "I was just following orders" was not accepted as an excuse by the War Crimes Tribunal.

 

When the guy in your rifle sites is some foreigner you don't know, sure. But when it's you next-door neighbor, that's a different story.

And yes, the "29 Palms Survey" was what I was thinking of.

 

Read my last post and you will get the answer. It is hard enough to teach good men to kill... much harder to convince them to kill friends and family. Marines, Airmen, Soldiers and most of the Navy were taught to follow orders from their superiors without question.

I was in the nuclear engineering part of the Navy where we were specifically taught to maintain a questioning attitude regardless of who the orders came from. Had to be done in a respectful manor but did not blindly follow orders.

Submariners(like myself) underwent significant psych evaluation because of the job we might have been asked to do... kill millions with the push of a button(well it took a few buttons actually ). Living in a pipe underwater for months was a concern too but the eval took care of both issues.

 

And the fact that you went from the Underwater Canoe Club to Motorcycle Roadracing is supposed to give us faith in that psych eval?

 

Perpetual Punishment

I was talking earlier in this thread about the concept of "perpetual punishment," whereby someone who committed criminal acts is never allowed to "pay his debt to society."

Here's a rather extreme example that just popped up:

Smith & Wesson's New Chairman Resigns

Seems pretty clear that he had attempted to repudiate his past and turn his life around, but society neither forgives nor forgets.

 

Re: Perpetual Punishment

To be realistic here, yes it is still affecting him, but he seems to have become pretty successful for someone who engaged in some serious criminal activity.

It's naive to think that anything you do in life won't have some effect, negative or positive, in later life. People judge you on your past actions, regardless of what society as a whole may desire or what you think is fair. Some mistakes change things forever. Sometimes you just have to accept that and make the best of what you have left. That's just reality, lofty ideals don't affect reality.

 

Haiti anyone?

2k Marines and a couple of ships? Wow! Do we get these things from Mattel, like the old M16s?