Trump Demands Biden Remove Ad of Him Calling Dead Soldiers ‘Suckers’ and ‘Losers’ - The former president said only a “psycho” or a “very stupid person” would’ve made such statements.
Trump Demands Biden Remove Ad of Him Calling Dead Soldiers ‘Suckers’ and ‘Losers’ - The former president said only a “psycho” or a “very stupid person” would’ve made such statements.
Sounds like a perfectly reasonable question to me… far more reasonable than simply assuming the people who perpetrated the US’s colonialist mass-murder campaigns in the third world was simply “good men” (supposedly) “doing the right thing.”
Good job making Trump sound more rational than you, hero.
This take just baffles me… you can disapprove of a war, and still respect people willing to put their life on the line for something they believe is right. Even in war, opposing sides have a long history of showing their enemy a certain amount of personal respect, even though they clearly disagree about something to the point of killing each other over it.
Your take is just condescending and unempathetic. You can respect someone for sacrificing themselves without agreeing with them about what they’re sacrificing themselves for. Regardless, it shouldn’t be hard to see how someone fighting to depose an infamously brutal dictator (Iraq) or a fundamentalist regime that stones women for wanting a divorce (Afghanistan) can believe that they are doing something good.
Masquenox is a troll. Don’t take their bait.
Can confirm, they’re a disingenuous idiot troll.
After reviewing their comment history, I think Masquenox has strong controversial opinions and a bellicose attitude, but is not a troll.
After reviewing their modlog history, I think Masquenox displays a level of emotional incontinence that is effectively the same as trolling.
lol putting that up on the shelf with ‘verbal incontinence’, I like it.
I do set a line between ‘cantankerous’ and ‘troll’ more leniently along the annoyance scale than others. I say let the dork be a dork, not everyone has social skills.
I do see what you mean. I think when a dork engages in repeated personal attacks they cross the line for me regardless of their intent.
It’s a philosophical question akin to Baudrillard’s “simulate a robbery” idea.
‘Repeated personal attacks’ – oh, well I missed that, that’s different from clumsy or cranky.
Thanks. Now I have to go ask the duck what “bellicose” means…
It means you’re looking for a fight, which usually involves bouncers and shit.
I should have listened to you… I took the bait, but got out now :P
A Toast to the Troops… All the troops. Both Sides.
RIP to Sgt. Rufus “Baby Ears” McGuffin. He died doing what he loved. Ripping the ears of babies and putting them on a big necklace that he would wear around camp.
“All the troops, both sides” is half my point when pointing out that enemy combatants historically have often held respect for each other.
Yes, I respect a combatant fighting for something they believe in that’s bigger than themselves, people not fighting for personal gain, but because they want to give someone else a better life. That’s regardless of what side they’re on- even if they’re on the side I’m actively trying to kill.
Torturing POWs to death as a form of respect
Just another “All American Hero,” eh?
Apply your bullshit logic to the Waffen-SS or the KKK, then. Go on… I’ll be waiting for you right here.
Really, genius? I guess this must be the first time you’ve ever confronted the idea that not all people who experience warfare are mindless zombies willing to die for whatever cause the rich people (or you) told them they should die for? You and the rest of the shitlib hive mind on here are hysterically cramming onto the jingoism train simply to own Trump without realizing what a self-own that is turning out to be.
Are you talking about the “infamously brutal dictator” in Iraq that the US helped into power? That the US helped to deploy chemical weapons in his war with Iran? That one?
Are you talking about the “fundamentalist regime” that only exists thanks to the massive support the US provided to these very same fundamentalists back in the 80s together with their fundamentalist allies in Pakistan? That “fundamentalist regime?”
Good job, hero - you’ve highlighted why we should all be asking, “What was in it for them?”
tl;dr
Good. It’s far too spicy for you, liberal.
lol spicy
also: bwahaha! you think “liberal” is a put down of some kind? like caring about other people is something to be ashamed of? What kind of egocentric narcissistic psychopath are you?
Did you liberals suddenly start caring about anything except preserving your precious status quo? When?
since always, since you’ve literally described conservatives.
You don’t know what “liberal” means, do you?
Listen closely, as I am about to do the job your history teachers obviously failed to do, and I’m about to do it for free.
There is no such thing as a cohesive “conservative” ideology.
The world you exist in? It’s liberalism all the way down.
You want to check, liberal? Easy.
Do you believe in private property? Funny that - so do the (so-called) “conservatives.”
Do you fetishize rule of law? Funny that - so do the (so-called) “conservatives.”
Do you absolutely worship the concept of the liberal nation state?
And so forth and so forth…
They are you, liberal - they worship the same absurdities you do. It’s just the operational details you actually disagree upon.
Ok, I’ll try to make this simple for you: I can hold respect for a combatant that puts their life on the line in an effort to do something they believe is making the world a better place, rather than for personal gain.
The KKK is immediately excluded, because there was/is little to no sacrifice being made by those lynching others. The same goes for SS soldiers running a concentration camp. I was quite clear in pointing out that what demands respect is the act of putting your life on the line to protect or help others.
As for who put those regimes in place: That is completely irrelevant as to whether you can have respect for an individual who sees the atrocities committed by the regime, and believes they are doing good by fighting it. I have a hard time thinking that a soldier in Afghanistan is thinking a lot about who put the Taliban in power, or what they personally stand to gain from the fight when they decide to go there.
You already have - you will happily endorse some of the world’s most vilest people as long as they saluted a piece of colored fabric (preferably the one you worship) before doing so.
There is absolutely no further simplification required.
So you are perfectly ok with them as long as their their victims was free-range? I wonder what excuses you will come up with to glorify your vaunted drone operators who perpetrate terrorism while drinking Starbucks or your CIA operatives who pay proxies to do all the rape, murder and torture for them?
It fucking absolutely isn’t - you want to wax lyrically about people dying (supposedly) to “defend their country” from the very same people said country created and helped into power. Asking questions like, “what’s in it for them?” is a far more rational response to that than appealing to propagandistic Hollywood Heroism tropes… as you are doing at the moment.
Now you’re just coming off as disingenuous. So that I won’t need to repeat myself, just read my comments and try to figure out for yourself where you can find backing for what your accusing me of instead of putting words in my mouth and purposefully misinterpreting my comments or taking individual phrases out of context.
Take your time, I won’t be waiting up.
You coming face to face with the true implications of your own beliefs does not equate to any disingenuity on my part.
War is not “honorable” combatants facing off against each other in a sterile environment as a lot of military historians try to purport - it’s slaughter. The vast majority of it’s victims aren’t even combatants. When you pretend that your preferred group of war criminals “respecting” the “other side” actually matters, are you including all the dead people that couldn’t fight back and therefore do not deserve any of this rarified “respect” of yours? Or are they just uninteresting externalities and “collateral damage” that doesn’t fit into the militaristic tropes your head has obviously been filled with?
Nah, you’re still just making up opinions you want me to have so that you can think I’m an ass. Then you’re twisting my words in order to convince yourself I’m saying something I’m not.
It’s honestly kind of impressive that you’re able to go from “I respect people who are willing to risk their own well being in order to protect others, without care for personal gain.” to what you just wrote. Like… that requires some pretty heavy handed misinterpretation.
I don’t think you’re an ass.
Nope. Not impressive at all. Merely the result of not putting people on a pedestal simply because the narratives you have spun in your own head about them conforms to the tenets of militarism and nationalism that you have been feeding yourself.
It requires a minimum of interrogation to come apart and it’s implications laid bare.
Trump doesn’t understand the question because he doesn’t understand doing things for the betterment of anyone but himself.
For most of history, you didn’t ask “what’s in it for me” when the king/prime minister/ The Church/ or President came asking (country irrelevant). That’s a relatively new luxury due to perspective of the digital age and disagreements with (the US) Government due to transparency.
For most of history “what’s in it for you” was actually getting fed and clothed better than the average peasant. Serving the king was what was in it because you didn’t have to sleep in pig shit and milk the cows every morning. You’d actually get fed for mealtimes instead of playing the barter game all summer and fall just to have enough food to store in salt barrels for winter. And even better, if you tickled enough enemy hearts with your pointy stick there WAS some land and money for you, provided you survived.
Some countries through history also revere their veterans (with actual respect and benefits) so military service itself was the honor. While I understand it’s a dramatization -the beginning of Disney’s Mulan is a great display of it. Her father is it is '60s or '70s and has already served once and has a bad leg. The emperor sends out a call for war and the guards show up in town. When they call his name he sets aside his cane and picks up the summons because that’s what you did. It is what was expected of him and he did it without complaint.
You’re arguing for both sides of the argument.
First you argue that people obeyed rulers because they didn’t question authority.
Then you argue people obeyed rulers for their own benefit and material gain.
Perhaps so, perhaps not. But that doesn’t make the question any less valid.
Yeah… that’s not really true at all. Peasant and/or commoner soldiers in both ancient and medieval wars expected to be rewarded with loot and, of course, rapine - that’s the whole reason sackings was such a common thing in those days. Any king or emperor who didn’t provide that was gambling with his own life.
The story of Mulan you mentioned has more to do with Confucian morality than reality - wars in China, by and large, worked on the same rules as those everywhere else. Medieval Japan is a good example - those samurai expected. One of the big reasons for the civil war that racked Japan shortly after the Mongol invasions was driven off was that there simply wasn’t any newly-conquered land to hand out to all the retainers - the war was a defensive one.
No… the institutionalized expectation that a lowly prole should sacrifice “selflessly” for an abstract and immaterial notion such as the nation state is a pretty modern thing - it’s a product of the Enlightenment.
The Taliban took over Afghanistan as soon as the Americans left.
Did you know why that happened? Because the Afghan military did nothing. They didn’t fight. They retreated.
Imagine if a foreign force invaded the U.S. and the army did nothing and the foreign forces took over the government and controlled your life. Do tell, would you feel safe in those circumstances? Do you know why that doesn’t happen? Because of the people you and your piece of shit dear leader are disparaging.
So, fuck you.
And fuck off, troll.
FTFY.
You absolutely failed to defeat the Taliban with your billion dollar drones, your billion dollar air-fuel bombs, your billion dollar cluster munitions, your billion dollar airplanes, your billion dollar satellites, your billion dollar “special forces,” your cheaply-bought death squads and your two-cents’ worth “free market capitalism” - and then you ran off and left a cardboard cutout of a puppet-state military to fix the mess that you and only you caused.
No. Fuck you.
The Taliban does appreciate those death squads your “special forces” created, though… those well-trained torturers, rapists and murderers will sure prove useful to a regime like the Taliban, eh?
Stupid. What you just wrote is so easy to disprove.
Goodbye.
Bring it, apologist.
Bring it.
Lol!
Not going to argue for the most cowardly empire since the Enlightenment, eh?
Should I be surprised?
Lol!
More nothing?
Why am I unsurprised that the red fascist finds “Why should I oppose the Nazis?” to be a reasonable question
Oh look… Lemmy’s current “White Liberal Of The Month” is using terms again that they don’t seem to know the meaning of.
Shouldn’t you be running interference for Israel somewhere else?