FYI: top right is prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib
done by American genociders and murderers.
The prisoner appears to be hooked up to mains power in the high res version of that photo.
I am a US veteran
Nothing makes me cringe harder than someone thanking me for my service
Even though I personally didn’t do anything horrible, it’s still making me remember one of the worst experiences of my life
As a nurse who graduated in the middle of COVID (and was working in hospitals leading up to it), A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher was surprisingly healing read.
“You expect heroes to survive terrible things. If you give them a medal, then you don’t ever have to ask why the terrible thing happened in the first place. Or try to fix it.”
It only seems to be a US only thing. I assume it’s because the military is such a big thing for the US where other countries just see having a military almost as a chore.
gotta thank something, can’t just let a stranger go about their day in peace
Thank you.
There are many truths. All those pictures are true so are fighting Nazis, imperialism, and famine. See the whole picture not just the part that supports your bias and political position.
Remember that good thing we did once? That means we can now ransack other 3rd world countries for profit, and fight in every country we can make a profit.
The ONLY reason they temporarily (and royally late) fought nazis was to stop the Soviets from liberating the whole of western Europe.
European competition nicely destroyed after which these vultures made us their vasals.
If anything they helped plenty nazis escape or rehabilitated them.
And I’m sure they caused more amines than solved them.The US fights for Imperialism and famine, though. It doesn’t engage in war for moral reasons, but for profit, and as the world Hegemon, that directly incentivizes US Imperialism.
The U.S doesn’t give a fuck about their people. Women are being charged when they have a miscarriage. Seriously. WTF is wrong with you people???
The US is founded on settler-colonialism and genocide, and is currently the world’s largest Empire.
You dont know much about the military. Maybe look up some information on the topic first.
I have, actually. Want to elaboroate at all?
Do you have… any supporting evidence? Or is this just based off the warm fuzzy feeling you got from doing the pledge of allegiance in school?
My evidence is history. Read a book sometimes.
So, no then. Cool, thanks.
So is there any particular military history in the last 50 years you want to talk about? The invasion of Panama? Granada? Bombing Yugoslavia? Targeting Iraq’s infrastructure during the gulf war, then imposing sanctions estimated to have caused a million excess deaths, mostly of children? Bombing a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan? Iraq II? Arming the groups that would become ISIS and Al Nusra?
Sure, how about Ukraine. If we didnt give them 200 billion in money, weapons, and training they would just be Russian territory by now.
Lets examine the evidence of history:
Do you think the people of Palestine are better off because of the US’s actions? Do you think the people of Syria are better off because of the US’s actions? Do you think the people of Libya are better off because of the US’s actions? Do you think the people of Yemen are better off because of the US’s actions? Do you think the people of Somalia are better off because of the US’s actions? Do you think the people of Afghanistan are better off because of the US’s actions? Do you think the people of Iraq are better off because of the US’s actions?
And that’s just in the last decade, and I know I missed a few. Do you really think Lucy is going to let Charlie Brown kick the football this time?
America is not acting to help the people of Ukraine, we supported the right-wing throughout the coup so we could have a hostile state on Russia’s border so the vultures can eat their fill as both countries are bled dry. Hence why Ukraine was required to sell off state assets to foreigners for pennies on the dollar, accept massive loans, give up mineral rights, lower the draft age, etc. Russia aren’t the good guys, but the US’s actions have resulted in a scenario infinitely worse for the Ukrainian people.
You dont know much about the military. Maybe look up some information on the topic first.
Maybe understand that when an asshole is trying to turn your country into a dictatorship, there’s a time when the military stands for their country. NOT for dictatorship!
they were always a dictatorship for the rest of the world.
They can all go to hell
Maybe the military should think about what the fuck they’re doing??? Are they going to follow fascists?
No u lib
But, Elon is throwing the Nazi salute. Your government is stripping away peoples rights. The whole picture is, the U.S. is stripping people of their constitutional rights.
Not really.
They are just getting rid of any and every liberty that any reasonable society would provide.
Not the rights though. We never had such rights. We just didn’t realise those were needed to be written down because others didn’t violate those expectations.
Even in an anarchy, without any written rights, we would have those liberties, given a reasonable society. Just not here.
Ok what rights have they stripped away?
The right for abortion, healthcare (by the DOGE bullshit), among other rights.
free speach for green card holders
This, too.
There is no such thing as a right to an abortion and that has nothing to do with doge. That was decided by the supreme court years ago. Elon Musk has already said he will step down at the end of May. You say he is taking peoples rights away. What rights is he taking away?
Keep in mind my response may have things added, as I verify and look into what you said, but here it is:
1: The Supreme Court is dominated by Republican Justices, which, if you take Trump’s stance about judges being corrupt and bla bla bla, that also applies for his judges - and Trump never accepted the election loss, so the abortion right removal technically happened in his presidency.
2: I never did imply that abortion has anything to do with DOGE, I separated those two things with something called a comma (which you haven’t used at all - oh, that explains it!). Medicare and Medicaid are, however, likely going to be cut off to save those juicy $1T to then give more money to the wealthy.
3: The rights being removed are not all by DOGE, but all are tied to the Trump administration, which does include DOGE.
This is officially rambling territory, but did you that if 99.99% of Elon Musk’s money (assuming he has between 300 and 400 billion dollars) was evenly split between every US citizen, everyone in the US would get 1000+ dollars, and Elon Musk would still have 30-40 million?
Even if he just lost 99.8% of his money, he’d have an enormous amount of wealth ($800M), and the US citizens would still get a lot of money? Do that but 6 times (to count for every billionaire, making each keep $800M), and uni-statians would get $5K each!
P.S. Poverty only happens because the wealthy want to subjugate the working class, and make rebels not make it through.
Exactly. It’s not a clear black and white issue and there are no easy solutions
It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt. – John Philpot Curran
Yes absolutely. And many soldiers have paid the ultimate sacrifice for those things. Plus decisions regarding war are often made by politicians not soldiers.
There is absolutely no reason to blindly respect someone just because they’ve “served their country.” We don’t know what they’ve done. We have so many examples of soldiers doing horrible things to civilians around the world that blind respect is simply not warranted.
Agreed. A friend of mine is a veteran, and did something that he regrets every day of his life. Guilt’s been eating the guy. He told some people, and they cut off contact with him. Which he understands and agrees with. He told me too, and yet I can’t blame him for doing something objectively wrong.
Particularly the people we were indoctrinated to trust. Cops, military, politicians, businessmen (read as American Dream reachers), preachers…
In my opinion the individual isn’t respected but they’re a stand in to show respect for the people who sacrificed their lives.
Yea, but neither is blind DISrespect. There’s a lot of examples of bad and there’s a lot of examples of good. Kinda fucked up to lump an entire group into one side or the other… Don’t ya think?
Bet I get blasted for this take.
You spend your whole life doing exercises and hauling supplies, but you massacre one village and suddenly everyone hates you.
So you’re going to disrespect and blame the individual that had nothing to do with it because of the actions of others?
I’m not saying that you should let the organization as a whole off the hook, but should we really be putting the individual in the cross hairs without knowing what their story is?
Are you going to put the medic that helped the injured innocent in front of the firing line because other people bombed the area?
The big issue I have with your statements, and those of the OP are that they are extremist. It’s possible to have a nuanced conversation about it without resorting to the extremes. No wonder the pot keeps calling the kettle black
but should we really be putting the individual in the cross hairs without knowing what their story is
Hey so this serial killer who boiled his victims alive had a really sad upbringing. We should just call it a wash and let him back out on the streets right?
Learning what their story is might be good to do for a common thief, and maybe you’ll choose to be sympathetic as opposed to angry at the loss of your material possessions, but at a certain level of depravity, I don’t care what their story is. The victims of their atrocities don’t care what their story is. They can tell their story to the devil before getting thrown in the lake of fire.
While I agree with your sentiment, I disagree with the overreaching arc of it.
I’d also like to note that you’re taking about the person who actually committed the crime rather than someone who is only connected to the crime by the uniform they wear, regrdless of their hand in the action.
A cook or nurse or on the other side of the planet from the atrocity can hardly be blamed for what the infantryman did on the individual level, or what the military has done on an organizational level. Furthermore, you don’t even know if they oppose those actions or are fighting against it in their own way until you talk to them. That’s the point I’m trying to make that others
If you fail to see and acknowledge this, then we have nothing more to discuss.
That said, extremism should be fought, no matter who it’s coming from. I have plenty of right wing friends I’ve cut contact with due to their extremism. And if I had friends from the left that were as crazy as some of the people I’ve seen here, I’d do the same.
Extremism only leads to more extremism and more fighting and more death. I’d prefer to avoid that if possible.
The big issue I have with your statements, and those of the OP are that they are extremist.
Of course they’re “extremist.” Putting the lives of Afghans and Iraqis on the same level as Americans is an extreme position. That’s just the world we live in. But just because it’s “extreme” relative to generally accepted discourse in the West doesn’t make it any less correct.
Not every cop has shot an innocent person. But people still have no problem saying All Cops Are Bastards. Because even those who aren’t directly involved support and cover for those who do. Likewise, not a single troop at Abu Ghraib blew the whistle on what was happening there. If you’re fine with ACAB, you should also be fine with ATAB, and the only reason I can see why someone wouldn’t is that they value the cops’ victims more than those of the troops.
No I absolutely do have a problem with the ‘All’ part. Don’t presume that everyone agrees with that rhetoric.
Hey man, I just fill deliver fuel for the orphan-crushing machine company. Don’t hold me responsible for the monsters who actually crush the orphans!
“Protecting freedom” by torturing and bombing people halfway across the world
This might get a lot of down votes but I want to say I don’t think it’s fair to blame the soldiers in the field for the choices of the decision makers in the office. Those horrible events were unwanted ‘byproducts’ of the goal of men with evil plans, they were not veterans going off-book. In other words, these veterans did what was asked of them. I’m not saying they didn’t do some very bad things, but they aren’t the people that should be ‘thanked’.
imagine saying this about 9/11 hijackers – they’re just fighting for their country, don’t blame them, blame Bin Laden!
I’m not saying don’t blame the hijackers, I’m saying blame the hijackers for the hijacking (which in turn killed thousands) and blame Bin Laden for planning it and getting those hijackers to do the hijacking. They’re both guilty, but without Bin Laden ordering 9/11 those hijackers wouldn’t have done it. I’m not saying they wouldn’t have something else bad. I’m not saying they’re innocent. But Bin Laden did something worse than those individual hijackers.
You are literally arguing the same as all Nazis did. “I was just following orders”. US military decided to join an organisation that constantly attacks other countries.
This was exactly the take I was looking for. “I was just following orders” is, and has always been, a bad take. Grow a pair and accept the consequences of your poor decision making.
Ahh, yes, the mindless drone argument.
In German penal law there were discussions on how to treat those that act under orders. Many Germans did act under orders and even in accordance to law in WW2 but also in regard to the Mauerschützen (the soldiers that shot dissidents at the inner German border)- meaning that there were difficulties persecuting them as it was technically legal. There were way too few persecutions, however something called the Radebrechtsche formula was developed. Paraphrasing it says, something that is morally wrong to every morally thinking being cannot be legalized or excused. It is simply illegal to act on orders that are naturally wrong.
Sure, but how many 18 year old boys were convicted for being conscripted into the Wehrmacht?
The US uses economic coercion to force poor kids into joining. They give veterans a massive priority bump for public sector jobs and the GI Bill is often the only way poor kids can afford college.
Also, the US military uses far more obfuscation than the Nazis used. When I was in the Air Force, I worked in geo-spatial intelligence which was mostly extracting heat signatures from satellite collected data. They kept us in the dark on what our intel was being used for. All I knew was that our intel was helping to save the lives of our fellow soldiers somehow and that the government would pay for my college when I was done.
It’s a tricky fucking game they play. More communication amongst ourselves is the only way that could ever be undone.
I believe the word you want is “prosecute/prosecution” rather than “persecute”, but thanks for this.
I fully agree.
Ah, the Nuremberg defense. 😶
No that would be saying they didn’t do anything bad because doing what is asked of you is always good.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders
Superior orders, also known as just following orders or the Nuremberg defense, is a plea in a court of law that a person, whether civilian, military or police, should not be considered guilty of committing crimes ordered by a superior officer or official.[1][2] It is regarded as a complement to command responsibility.[3]
I’m saying we shouldn’t blame the soldiers on the choices of their leaders, I’m not saying we shouldn’t blame the soldiers for their own choice. I totally agree they could’ve chosen to not to follow orders. I’m not saying they are innocent. But their role is not comparable to the role of the people giving orders.
Nuance matters. You think a 18 year old boy that was brainwashed into nationalisl his entire life should be executed for being forced to serve as a cook in the military? The Nazis used conscription while the US uses economic coercion (gate keeping jobs, healthcare, and college for vets)
should be executed for being forced to serve as a cook in the military?
Sorry, which user was it exactly who said, “Kill every troop?”
I didn’t get the feeling this is what the meme is about, maybe it is. I think your discomfort is good, in that it has you questioning what you may have not questioned, before. On one level, we can’t decide what’s okay for you, internally. The bigger question is, if external forces would compel suffering and death for your beliefs and convictions, are you prepared to accept that? Many of us who think we are may not be, when put into that position, just as many of us who think we aren’t may end up being more certain than we knew. And at that end neither really matters, at all. I think deep introspection will have to be both journey and destination, multiple times in our lifetimes. The questioning is the reward.
In the aftermath of World War II, Carl Jaspers formulated in Die Schuldfrage that there are four types of guilt (/responsibility). Criminal guilt, political guilt, moral guilt, and metaphysical guilt. It is a great distinction in general. Yes, political leaders bear a different kind of guilt for the actions than the soldiers, but acting on clearly morally wrong commands do not obliterate guilt from the soldiers. Just like everyone who basically didn’t give their life in pursuit of the good and the right bears some metaphysical guilt for what is happening in the world.
Edit: I realized that, since I am neither an English native, nor very articulate in philosophy or politics, I would rather ask perplexity for a summary. So here it is: Karl Jaspers, in his work The Question of German Guilt, distinguishes four categories of guilt and assigns specific instances to each:
-
Criminal Guilt:
Definition: Violations of objectively provable laws that are legally considered crimes.
Instance: The court, which determines the facts and applies the laws in formal proceedings.
-
Political Guilt:
Definition: Arises from the actions of statesmen and the shared responsibility of every citizen for the government of their state.
Instance: The power and will of the victor, especially after a lost war, as in the case of Germany after World War II.
-
Moral Guilt:
Definition: Refers to individual actions for which every person is morally responsible, even if carried out under orders.
Instance: One’s own conscience and dialogue with others.
-
Metaphysical Guilt:
Definition: A shared responsibility for all injustice in the world, based on human solidarity. It arises when one does not do everything possible to prevent injustice.
Instance: God or transcendence.
Jaspers emphasizes that this differentiation is meant to avoid simplistic or generalized accusations of guilt. He rejects the idea of collective criminal or moral guilt for an entire people, arguing that guilt is always individual.
Yes. I wonder what the outcomes of centering the soldiers gult is?
Do we want the solution to be that soldiers have to consider every order given within the historical context of the time to decide the morally correct actions and do them even if it means court martial or death?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m okay for soldiers to do this in extreme examples. But I don’t think this should be the norm.
I think we should shift the focus to the leaders instead of the soldiers. They are better positioned to make these decisions and have the time to do so.
And it’s their job.
Very honestly - I’ve still not read the book entirely and I have started because I felt some feeling of guilt myself for being a Russian living outside Russia. I think that’s actually exactly what Jaspers, along with his students (the book is basically a dialectic lecture written down with results of work of his class from one semester), was trying to figure out. So I am not the best person to lecture you about that.
From as far as I have read these distinctions are exactly what allow people to talk about guilt, responsibility, trauma, the past, etc, without judging everyone by the same standards. Like, a criminal is judged by the court who defines for a crime they committed. A politician who took part in ordering crimes will be judged by the victor of a war. A soldier (just like a secretary) will be judged in dialogue with others and by his conscience for their individual actions, even if they were following orders. And a normal person who looked away or didn’t actively do their best to stop the atrocities that happen in the world, well, this person’s metaphysical guilt can basically only be judged by a metaphysical instance itself, be it God or another undefined transcendence. Basically all of us bear the latter.
They are very distinct and do not have the same repercussions. It is without doubt that political leaders have a much different, much more facetted responsibility for crimes committed. And we should focus on that. But this does not clean the people who followed their orders from all guilt, and their responsibility and crimes (against humanity) will be judged, just in a different way.
Edit: I’ve added a better phrased summary in my original comment above, since I have realized that translating German political philosophy isn’t my strength exactly.
Thanks, for your summary. I think he’s right about different kinds of guilt being judged in different ways. If someone commits a crime and gets away with it, that doesn’t mean that person will never feel the guilt. It sounds like a good read.
It’s basically impossible not to be a PoS. Wish I was just not born now.
The idea is to consistently work toward being better than yesterday and making restitution, where possible, not where comfortable. It’s not always going to be easy. It’s called character development. If we’ve worked hard for a number of years being of bad character, it’s generally going to take an equal or greater number of years of hard work and restitution to be of great character; but with diligence, I would say perhaps the number of exceptions would be greater than the general rule. It doesn’t mean there will actually be external validation of it, though.
That’s the thing. I will always owe something, and I’m always guilty of something just because I am alive.
I actually was so bothered by this, that I spent years trying to develop a system to get around it.
Lol. I feel that to the core. We all do and all are. And I certainly did try to escape too. I think the main thing is doing our best to minimize any harm and maximize any service to our fellow living beings, understanding that everything is a living being.
Thank you. 18 year old kids who were never given a sufficient education in history, civics, political science, and basic morality can’t be blamed for working as a cook, secretary, nurse, electrician, intel analyst, etc in the military so that they can afford college.
Again - there is and must be a distinction between the blame, responsibility and guilt of an 18 year old uneducated soldier, nurse etc and a political leader. But this does not automatically absolve the former from all responsibility and guilt. You should and hopefully do focus on the latter’s guilt and responsibility, as it is much larger than the others’. Focussing on the people who follow orders is not what I would advertise for and this isn’t the intent, it is actually the exact opposite. By differentiating different aspects and kinds of guilt you have tools and language at hand to talk about it without putting everyone in the same boat.
It is not a black and white issue. Everyone got blood on their hands - you and me included - just in different amounts, in different ways.
Never heard of this, thanks
-
I would much rather see a concerted effort to like not do wars, instead of this overtly obvious attempt to stir the pot.
In other words, these veterans did what was asked of them.
They could just have not.
I’m not going to go refind the examples, but there have been stories about things soldiers do that are definitely not ordered by anyone else. There can be a level of cruelty at times that is completely on the individual and they cannot always hide behind “I was told to”.
O i totally agree, this is exactly why i started with ‘this is might get a lot of downvotes’. But the crimes on the pictures where not crimes by individual soldiers. These things were done by individuals who were told to. I’m not saying that makes them innocent, I’m saying they weren’t the most guilty. The most guilty in my opinion are the men who scheme and think up of plans like this, and then order others to execute it.
Abu Ghraib was done by individual soldiers. At least as far as we know, they were not explicitly ordered to do all the things that they did, and when it came to light, several were charged with crimes over it. Furthermore, not a single person at the base blew the whistle on it, it was only because of independent journalists that it came to light.
If we cite war crimes carried out on the initiative of ordinary soldiers, then of course you could claim that it was just those individual soldiers who were responsible. If we cite things that were carried out on a systematic level, then you’ll say it was the leaders who were responsible, not the soldiers. So I have to ask, is there anything that could, theoretically happen that would make it ok to say, “fuck the troops?” What would that have to look like?
If someone did a horrific thing and then told me they weren’t as guilty as their boss I’d be fairly confident saying that if their first priority was to justify their actions then they can also get absolutely fucked.
But not every soldiers’ first priority are justifying their actions. Please note that the title of this post is insinuating that all veterans are to blame, not some or even the majority of them. Also note the title omits the bosses, the people who gave the orders.That is why I replied. We would only disagree if you’d believe the boss isn’t guilty because he didn’t do the execution of his plans.
No no no. None of this should be acknowledged, because Whataboutism.
reminds me of how they always try to justify the nuking of japan cities that had hundreds of thousands of civillians (twice even)
Yup, the mental gymnastics they use to justify war crimes. No other country has nuked a civilian population. They’ve nuked 2
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Flat out wrong, the Japanese were preparing to surrender prior to the nuclear bombs being used. The USSR had entered the Pacific front and was rolling through Manchuria to hit Japan, and the Japanese empire knew they were finished then and there. The nukes were nothing more than a US stunt to demonstrate the weapons and intimidate the socialist and imperialized countries away from resistance as the US started the Cold War.
Objectively they were used to prevent the Soviets from gaining influence, and forcing Japan into an unconditional surrender, instead of conditional. They didn’t save anyone but US Imperialism.
This is the lie we’re indoctrinated to believe, yes
People got mad at this one streamer for saying American soldiers deserve PTSD. When you consider that most interventions by the US are not justified or just imperial power plays, and that many soldiers commit war crimes, you realize she has a point.
Every US soldier signed up for killing, they deserve whatever they get.
There are definitely some like that. The American system has a number of tricks to try to force people to do what they like as well though. Poverty, over policing of minorities, lack of social safety nets etc can cause people who grew up barely avoiding prison choosing military thinking the only choices they have are death or military, shoved at them when they’re too young to really know the world. Add education that specifically avoids or lies about what US actually does overseas, plus a bunch of jingoistic propaganda making being a soldier appear to be a respectable profession.
I grew up in a cult that avoided military so I never had those feelings myself, so I got to watch it from the outside, and even the pledge of allegiance every morning was weird jingoistic programming from early ages. It can be difficult to see past that at 17. I’m not saying they don’t deserve any punishment, but I do disagree with the idea that every single one wanted to kill people.
Exactly. When I signed up for the military, it was because I wanted to kill people, and not because I had no other good choices
12 year US Army vet, deployed to Iraq 2007-2008.
Number of people I killed: 0
Why? I was a surgical tech. I helped save lives, including local nationals.
But sure. I deserve “whatever I get” for literally signing up to help people.
Cool, you can be a civil doctor too. Glad you fixed up the people who killed for a living.
I mean. Jimmy just wanted to go to college. But was forced to go to Iraq. The soldiers don’t have much choice. Especially the boys in trailer parks. They have no opportunity and the military gives them that.
Ooh poow widdwe Jimmy … you know who didn’t have a choice? the kids whose heads he blew off. I don’t care if he had a choice in going there or not, Jimmy doesn’t deserve a blink of sleep for the rest of his miserable cunting life if he didn’t knowingly miss every single shot.
Nobody was “forced” to go to Iraq.
For some reason, people think it’s ok to pull others down to get ahead but only in the context of the military. There are other ways to escape poverty, like selling crack or scamming the elderly. I wonder if you condone those approaches as well because “they didn’t have another choice if they wanted to escape poverty.” I doubt it. But if the victims aren’t people in our own neighborhoods who you can actually see, if it’s dead children on another continent who the news doesn’t talk about, then somehow it’s perfectly fine.
Everyone in that position who chooses to work at McDonald’s or Walmart or Amazon instead of signing up to murder foreigners is a better person than every troop, they are braver, more ethical, more heroic, and more enlightened. The cowards who pull others down to get ahead deserve no respect and no sympathy.
Just so you are aware. Soldiers were forced. They were by the rule of their contracts forced to redeploy after they found out how terrible the situation in Iraq was. I know this because friends were forced to go back to Iraq because there were not enough replacements. They had little to no choice. The POTUS was able to force this upon them.
Now sure, they could just go awol or force their resignation and go to jail. But some of them have families that rely on base housing or medical coverage.
Nobody forced them to sign up.
I can’t really agree with that. Social economic factors make it impossible for some people to get out of their communities. The military during peacetime. Is a great upward mobility tool for folks in gang lands. We don’t invest in their schools. The jobs left in these regions are pitiful. And the only choice they have to get out is to serve.
It’s how the rich make America such a shit hole to force people to fight in wars for their benefit. It’s so much deeper than just blaming the soldiers.
The same is true of selling crack but I’ll criticize that too.
“though your path may be set, you can gain as much speed down that path as you would like”
means, even if they had to go to war, they could have missed shots on purpose.
If the choice is “be an acomplice to the destruction of an entier country and it’s people” and “don’t get a discount code for college”, like, surely we can see that’s not really a good excuse.
Yeah, you are not getting it nor are you trying to. You are ignoring the poverty and indoctrination of children aspects of this in order to jerk off.
Some folks really have no other choices. Like Flynt Michigan. Industry has collapsed. Gangs have taken over and life expectancy is shorter than any where else in the world. Those children are told by their parents. Their only choice to get out of this is to serve.
Trading brown people overseas’ lives for your own comfort and livelihood is still- believe it or not- wrong.
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The amount of cope in this thread is astonishing. I never thought I’d see an actual person justifying killing hundreds of thousands of civilians with a straight face. But here we are
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Iirc, FBI or some USA government entity convinced? coerced? Hollywood into being the propaganda department of our government sometime during WW2.
While I understand the frustration toward those critiquing military personnel, I believe we should consider the broader context of responsibility in our society. Emergency responders who assist during natural disasters deserve our appreciation, even as we examine complex institutional issues.
If we’re discussing responsibility, those in technology fields must also reflect on their contributions. Many STEM professionals work for profit-driven companies developing technologies with significant societal impacts—from military applications to automation that displaces workers.
Throughout history, scientific advancement has brought both progress and devastation. The development of nuclear weapons, chemical agents, and military technology has often proceeded without adequate ethical consideration. When we examine figures like Oppenheimer or Einstein, we must acknowledge both their brilliance and the consequences of their work.
The irony isn’t lost on me that many who quickly assign blame may themselves contribute to systems that concentrate power and wealth. Rather than dividing ourselves through targeted blame, perhaps we should recognize our collective responsibility for the current state of our nation.
I believe that fostering division only benefits those who already hold power. Perhaps approaching these issues with understanding rather than hate might offer a more productive path forward—even if that perspective seems idealistic in today’s polarized climate.
It’s almost like people, places, things, ideas and acts have good and bad consequences, foreseen and unforseen, isn’t it?
Amerikkka!
I wish I could post this here in Australia without getting rocks from every white Australian. You can search my post history to see their reaction to questioning this.
Australia was involved in every one of those crimes. And the celebration for those meaningless murders are everywhere. Questioning this is questioning the sacrifice of Jesus.
Though by order of our north american overlords the US should not be alone in that title.
❌Lest we forget
✅Best we forget
Text Publishing — Best We Forget: The War for White Australia, - https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/best-we-forget-the-war-for-white-australia-1914-18
Thanks for the link. And this should be the new motto.
Or I came up with a different one. Lest we forget how some struggled to kill many for the profit of few.
And that includes the sacrosanct anzac. But that opinion can get me killed here.
We really need to separate the trauma that formed the ANZAC legend from the fuckos of any warfare since.
My great-grandfather was an ANZAC - actual, WWI, 23rd Battalion, 16 year old. I knew him extremely well, I was sixteen when he passed. I had a front row seat to what happened to those kids for the rest of their lives.
I don’t fucking venerate servicemen.
Seeing the public reaction to some of the military adjacent cases over the past few years has been incredibly disheartening (e.g. McBride)
Knew exactly what scene this was before I’d even taken a good look, let alone read the text. One of my favourites, along with “I will not carry a gun, Frank”.
A lot of excusing going on on that last panel
This was also said in a context that included a military draft
“Just following orders” etc etc.
How’d that work out in nuremburg?
I’m not defending that defence.
The mods at non credible defence aren’t going to like this.
What even is the purpose of that sub?
It’s just shitposting but defense themed
Defense, in the same way the pictures in OP were defense.
Of course from a russian POV it musst look like that to a .ml enjoyer.
Russians are the only ones who don’t like it when we drop bombs on kids. Idk why they wanna spoil everyone else’s fun! The kids are fine with it, it’s just those mean ol’ Russians going on about “human rights” or whatever. The million dollar bombs that we build instead of paying for healthcare, education, or functional bridges are so damn cool that the only reason anyone would possibly have a problem with them is if they just hate America.
This is what y’all actually believe, but the even crazier part is that you’ve somehow managed to convince yourselves you’re leftists!
Oof, more .ml talk, I’m not gonna read that shit lmao
ja wear a black armband when they shot the man who said peace could last forever?
Par for the course.
hurrr ml 🙈
The first picture is an apartment block getting leveled.
The third is a child who managed to tear her clothes off after the US dropped napalm on them as they fled their village, but was burnt badly enough she had to spend 14 months in the hospital. She was one of the lucky ones.
The fourth is the second atomic bomb the US dropped on a civilian population.
From what perspective is murdering hundreds (hundreds of thousands in the case of Nagasaki) of civilians just trying to live their lives on the other side of the planet acts of self-defense?
Nice spin. The point is that NCD is defense themed and Nato themed, not that the pictures aren’t of atrocities.
NATO “defence” 🍆 ✊
- The Intercept, 2021: Meet NATO, the Dangerous “Defensive” Alliance Trying to Run the World
- CounterPunch, 2022: NATO is Not a Defensive Alliance
- Noam Chomsky, 2023: NATO “most violent, aggressive alliance in the world”
- Thomas Fazi, 2024: NATO: 75 years of war, unprovoked aggressions and state-sponsored terrorism
- Gabriel Rockhill, 2020: The U.S. Did Not Defeat Fascism in WWII, It Discretely Internationalized It
NCD is not about “defence” it’s about war and the glorification of weapons used to murder children. At best it’s ironic and incredibly tasteless, more realistically, they’re just a bunch of bloodthirsty fascists hiding behind irony for plausible deniability.
In OP are images of what NATO, an organization that has never fought a defensive war in its entire existence, calls defense.
NATO is the largest Imperialist millitary coalition in the world, NCD being NATO focused directly means that it’s focused on celebrating Imperialist atrocities.
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Like bear arms?
Literally what the founders wanted.
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Fetishizing NATO, basically.
Spreading war propaganda
a place for chuds to cope
The same as NAFO: shilling for the MIC
They might still cum from the top left one
Being an outsider I thought non credible defence was just memes about military things, are they specifically pro US imperialism?
ACAB includes the troops. Going to foreign countries to shoot brown kids doesn’t make you any less of a bastard than doing it at home.
Military and police are the two arms of the state that enforce the will of the ruling class. Police do it internally, and military externally.
I don’t think any cops have been drafted into police service. They also don’t go to jail if they quit their job. And I haven’t heard of police recruiters using predatory tactics and targeting disadvantaged groups. The military does, or has done, all of those things to recruit troops.
I don’t think any cops have been drafted into police service.
The US (which is what this meme is focusing on) has an all-volunteer force.
They also don’t go to jail if they quit their job. And I haven’t heard of police recruiters using predatory tactics and targeting disadvantaged groups. The military does, or has done, all of those things to recruit troops.
There’s plenty of pro-cop propaganda and plenty of people who join the police thinking they’re going to do good. I’m sorry but at some point people have to be held accountable for their actions. Any troop that’s not a bastard and who’s actively trying to leave should understand why I call troops bastards. It was bastards who recruited them, after all, and it’s bastards keeping them there.
In any case, people make way too many excuses for these people, and all it does is reinforce the idea that it’s ok, which leads to more people falling for that propaganda and those predatory tactics.
Leave it to a .ml user to ignore all context…
The US currently employs “volunteer” troops, but also requires all male citizens to register for a future draft. Many living veterans were drafted. And many others were in vulnerable situations that recruiters recognized and preyed upon. Once you join the US military, it’s a crime to quit.
There is clearly some nuance needed when taking about US war veterans.
Shitlibs like you: Context matters, nuance is important! Think of those poor soldiers! You don’t truly understand what they were going through that led them to join the Kolonial Konquest and Side-Kuests “Defense” Force. The choice between them ending up in the streets or families 12000 km away ending up displaced, starved, tortured, or murdered by their own accord must’ve been real difficult!
literally anyone else: mentions Palestine, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Sudan, etc…
Shitlibs like you: SHOOT THEM ALL! LOCK THEM UP! NO MERCY FOR TERRORISTS! THEY ARE THE REAL IMPERIALISTS SPREADING THEIR ICKY ISLAM! KEEP ISLAMISM CONTAINED IN THEIR TERRORIST SAND TERRITORIES! THEY’RE ALL ANTISEMANTIC FANATICS!
Casting sweeping judgments about an entire group you’ve never personally engaged with demonstrates remarkable presumption. There’s a specific term for making such broad generalizations without firsthand knowledge, isn’t there?
I’m curious—what profession grants you the authority to condemn others for circumstances largely outside their control? What position of moral superiority do you occupy that allows you to evaluate the character and choices of people whose lives and constraints you’ve never experienced?
Perhaps before passing judgment so confidently, it would be worth considering the complex realities and limited options many face within larger systems not of their making.
what profession grants you the authority to condemn others for circumstances largely outside their control?
You keep bringing up this point and it’s entirely ad hominem and also makes bizarre, unfounded assumptions about what everyone else does.
I’m an unemployed warehouse worker with a BS in physics, I could’ve joined the military as an officer and made several times what I’ve made instead, but I didn’t. But no doubt, no matter what my story was, you’d find a way to dismiss my perspective. Perhaps the fact that I had enough support from my family to afford college in the first place, even though my degree was never useful and I left burdened with loans.
But it doesn’t fucking matter because regardless of my experiences, how about the experiences of people living in the countries we’ve invaded and bombed? You don’t hear shit from those people, do you? Isn’t their perspective just as valid? Have you sought out their perspectives, or even tried to consider what they might be? It’s so fucking stupid to dismiss critiques of the troops just because the person saying it doesn’t meet your standards of moral purity, it is, again, literally a textbook example of ad hominem. The truth is still the truth regardless of who says it. And the truth is that the troops suck.
The audacity of this argument is infuriating. It deliberately dumps the entire weight of America’s foreign policy disasters onto those with the least say in the matter. This perspective serves no purpose except to create convenient scapegoats so privileged individuals can feel morally superior without doing anything to change the system.
Dividing the working class against itself is exactly what the ruling elite want. We’re all trapped under the control of the same oppressors, yet somehow soldiers—many who enlisted because of economic necessity—are supposed to shoulder the blame for decisions made by politicians WE elected? It’s shortsighted, cruel, and completely ignores how power actually works.
What entitled nonsense expects people who often joined the military because of limited economic options to just disobey orders and risk court martial? Easy to make these moral judgments from behind a keyboard when you’re not the one facing those consequences.
The stench of moral superiority in this argument is overwhelming. If you want to criticize something, direct that energy toward the people actually calling the shots instead of those with the least amount of control. The politicians, defense contractors, and corporate interests profiting from war don’t care about your philosophical arguments—they just want us fighting each other instead of them.
This whole “blame the troops” mentality accomplishes nothing except further dividing those who should be united in demanding better from our leaders and our system. It’s not just wrong—it’s counterproductive.
🤓☝️
Is that the best argument you can come up with? No wonder we lost the election.
I have a question for you. If they made it a crime to leave the police until you finished a set term, would that make you object to anyone saying “ACAB?”
When we discuss responsibility, we should consider it comprehensively. Scientists and engineers who developed chemical weapons and nuclear bombs made conscious choices about their work, yet they rarely face the same scrutiny as soldiers who carry out orders. Is this because educational privilege somehow absolves responsibility? Why do we focus our criticism on those with fewer options rather than those who designed the systems?
The hypocrisy evident in some IT professionals’ comments deserves acknowledgment. Many work for profit-driven corporations that extract wealth, exploit resources, or develop technologies with questionable impacts. Before casting judgment on others, perhaps we should examine our own contributions to systems we criticize.
Every professional should consider their role in larger structures of power. The soldier following orders and the programmer writing code for a corporation that avoids taxes or exploits workers both operate within systems larger than themselves. The difference often lies in who society chooses to blame, not in who bears actual responsibility.
Rather than directing our frustration toward individuals with limited choices, perhaps we should focus on the institutions and power structures that create these ethical dilemmas in the first place.
Someone else mentioned in this thread that after WWII, Carl Jaspers wrote Die Schuldfrage (The Question of German Guilt) which discussed and categorized guilt broadly into 4 types. In terms of the people carrying out these orders, moral guilt applies: to act on clearly morally wrong orders does not absolve you of guilt.
I think your comments are obfuscating the role of each of these professions in their proximity to power.
Above all the jobs you mention, soldiers are the closest to power mainly because they hold a device designed for only 1 purpose: to end life. They may be performing this role out of financial necessity, but many still have the ability to avoid killing. In Vietnam, if one couldn’t dodge the draft, there were still many ways to avoid killing. Sure, they may be in a difficult position, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have agency every day to find ways to not kill.
Regarding critique, we can do 2 things at once. We can both be critical of the systems that perpetuate violence and also critical of people who choose to make a career out of taking people’s lives. Sustained pressure (including negative social pressure) applied to both areas can be important. I’d argue that stigmatizing a profession is a necessary step in critiquing and eventually dismantling power.
The classification of guilt into rigid categories overlooks the complexity of human experience in war. While Jaspers’ framework offers conceptual clarity, it fails to account for the layered psychological, socioeconomic, and institutional factors that shape individual choice.
Regarding proximity to power, soldiers are often the furthest from decision-making authority, not the closest. They execute policies determined by civilian leadership and high-ranking officials who rarely face the same moral hazards. The weapon a soldier carries represents their vulnerability to those power structures rather than their proximity to power itself.
The assertion that soldiers “make a career out of taking lives” fundamentally mischaracterizes military service. Most service members never fire their weapons in combat, instead performing logistics, medical care, engineering, and humanitarian functions. This reductive view erases the complex motivations that lead people to service, including family tradition, educational opportunity, and genuine belief in protecting others.
The argument about agency overlooks how military indoctrination, threat of court martial, and combat stress systematically work to eliminate meaningful choice. The social psychology of unit cohesion and institutional pressure create conditions where theoretical agency bears little resemblance to practical freedom of action.
Rather than stigmatizing individuals who often come from marginalized communities with limited economic options, meaningful critique should focus on the systems that create conditions for war and the civilian leadership that authorizes it. Targeting those with the least power in the system perpetuates class divisions while protecting those truly responsible for military action.
True systemic change requires recognizing that moral responsibility increases with power and freedom of choice, not decreasing it as one moves down the chain of command.
Your labyrinthine prose coils around the heart of the matter like ivy choking a statue—ornate, suffocating, yet failing to obscure the inscription beneath. Let us parse this carefully. You speak of soldiers as vessels of vulnerability, mere marionettes twitching to the whims of distant civilian oligarchs. But does the rifle in their hands not pulse with a kind of power? A power distilled, singular, terminal? To claim they are ‘furthest from decision-making’ is to conflate authority with action. The janitor who sweeps the floor of a death camp does not design the gas chambers, but his broom still enables the machinery. The soldier, even the one stitching wounds or calibrating drones, is a node in the network of violence. Their labor, however benign in isolation, sustains the engine. To absolve them by citing ‘marginalized origins’ is to infantilize them—to deny their capacity for moral reckoning amid the storm.
You invoke complexity as a shield, as if the interplay of socioeconomic forces renders individuals ethereal, weightless. But history is littered with those who, amid greater oppression, clawed at their agency. The Vietnam draft dodger who feigned madness, the conscientious objector who chose prison over complicity—were these not choices carved from the same granite of systemic cruelty you describe? To say ‘they had no meaningful freedom’ is to erase their humanity, to reduce them to thermodynamic particles in a fatalistic universe.
And your deflection—‘most never fire a weapon’—is a syllogistic sleight-of-hand. The medic who stabilizes a soldier for redeployment, the engineer who fortifies a base, the clerk who files the orders: all are cogs in the same Leviathan. The institution’s purpose is domination, and to don its uniform is to be baptized into its logic. You speak of ‘family tradition’ and ‘educational opportunity’ as motivations, but when does a reason become an excuse? The banker laundering cartel money might cite his child’s tuition—does that nullify his guilt?
Ah, but you retreat to abstraction: ‘Moral responsibility increases with power!’ A tidy formula, yet it crumbles under the weight of its own idealism. The CEO’s order is lethal, yes, but only insofar as the warehouse worker packs the drone, the marketer brands it ‘defensive,’ and the soldier pulls the trigger. Responsibility is not a finite resource to be hoarded by the elite; it is a fractal, repeating at every scale. To focus solely on the architects is to ignore the bricklayers who, brick by brick, erect the edifice.
You accuse me of ‘stigmatizing the powerless,’ but power is not a binary. It is a gradient, a spectrum of complicity. The draftee trembling in a trench has more agency than the general, perhaps, but less than the senator—yet all are agents. To critique the soldier is not to exonerate the senator. It is to say that moral gravity bends around every choice, however constrained. To dismiss this is to surrender to nihilism—to say no one is culpable because everyone is a victim.
And let us be clear: stigmatizing the profession is not vilifying the person. It is a refusal to sanctify the mantle they wear. When we strip the uniform of its honor, we do not attack the soul beneath—we attack the lie that the uniform is honorable. This is how systems fracture: when their myths are unmasked, when their foot soldiers begin to question the hymns they’ve been taught to sing.
So no, I will not lobotomize my critique to soothe the conscience of those who fear nuance. The drone pilot in Nevada, the programmer optimizing surveillance algorithms, the corporal raising his rifle—they all dance on the same precipice. Some leap; some hesitate; some shut their eyes. But to pretend they aren’t standing on the edge? That is the true obfuscation.
Your argument collapses under the weight of its own philosophical pretensions. You construct an elegant theoretical framework of distributed responsibility that, while intellectually satisfying, fails to engage with the lived reality of power dynamics in modern military structures.
The comparison between a soldier and “the janitor who sweeps the floor of a death camp” reveals the fundamental flaw in your reasoning. This false equivalence ignores crucial distinctions of contextual awareness, historical understanding, and institutional transparency. Today’s military personnel operate within systems far more ambiguous than your stark metaphor suggests. The moral clarity you demand exists primarily in retrospect, not in the moment of decision.
Your invocation of Vietnam draft dodgers and conscientious objectors as exemplars of moral agency betrays a privileged perspective. These exceptional cases required specific social, economic, and cultural capital that many service members simply do not possess. To elevate these outliers as the standard against which all others should be measured is to fundamentally misunderstand how structural forces constrain genuine choice.
The “fractal” theory of responsibility you propose sounds profound but ultimately atomizes blame to the point of meaninglessness. If everyone bears equal moral weight regardless of their position, then responsibility becomes so diffuse that it loses practical significance. This approach doesn’t enhance accountability—it undermines it by refusing to acknowledge the exponential difference between ordering an airstrike and maintaining the equipment that enables it.
Most problematically, your framework offers no path forward beyond condemnation. What actionable change does your philosophy propose? How does stigmatizing individual service members advance structural reform? Your position satisfies intellectual critique but offers nothing toward practical transformation of the systems you criticize.
The moral purity you demand requires perfect information and perfect agency—neither of which exists in reality. Your argument creates a false binary between complete absolution and total condemnation, leaving no room for the complex terrain where most moral decisions actually occur. This absolutist approach doesn’t elevate discourse; it paralyzes it.
In your zealous pursuit of distributed blame, you’ve constructed a theory that, ironically, serves the very power structures you claim to oppose. By focusing moral scrutiny on those with relatively limited influence rather than concentrating pressure on decision-makers with genuine authority, you effectively diffuse accountability upward while intensifying judgment downward.
Your rebuttal confuses moral ambiguity for moral absolution, mistaking the fog of institutional complexity for a blank check of compliance. Let me illuminate the distinction. The janitor analogy was never about equating modern service members with Holocaust perpetrators—it was about demonstrating how proximity to harm obligates moral reckoning, regardless of institutional remove. A drone pilot operating under today’s bureaucratic veneer may lack the visceral awareness of a death camp worker, but they still choose to participate in systems they know produce civilian casualties. To claim otherwise insults their intelligence. They understand the mission statements, the after-action reports, the veterans’ stories. Ignorance in an age of information is cultivated, not inevitable.
You dismiss draft resistance as a privilege of the few, yet this only underscores how systems weaponize precarity to ensure compliance. That some lacked the means to resist does not render their service morally neutral—it indicts the structures that make dissent a luxury. Shall we absolve all participants in exploitative systems because escape wasn’t universally possible? Then no colonial foot soldier could ever be condemned, no sweatshop overseer held accountable. Your logic collapses into a nihilistic void where only the supremely privileged bear moral burdens—a perverse inversion of justice.
As for your derision of “fractal responsibility”: you fear it dilutes accountability, but in truth, it demands more rigor. The CEO who orders a drone strike and the mechanic who maintains it are both guilty, but not equally. Guilt scales with power, yes—but it does not vanish at the base of the hierarchy. The Nuremberg Trials judged not just politicians but industrialists, physicians, bureaucrats. To focus solely on architects is to ignore that oppression requires laborers—willing or coerced—to function. Your framework would let the architect hide behind the bricklayers, the general behind the privates.
You demand “actionable solutions” as if critique must birth policy bulletins to be valid. But stigma is action. Dismantling the cultural mythos of military heroism reduces recruitment. Refusing to sanctify uniforms forces societies to confront what those uniforms actually do. Engineers abandoning defense contracts, journalists exposing procurement corruption, soldiers leaking atrocity footage—these ripple from the cultural soil tilled by critique.
And spare me the theatrics about “paralyzing discourse.” Moral clarity is not the enemy of nuance—it is its foundation. You frame my position as a demand for moral purity, but I argue for proportionality. The draftee who surrenders to a broken system bears less blame than the career officer who thrives within it, yet both bear some. To pretend otherwise is to endorse a world where slaughter is licensed so long as enough hands touch the knife.
Finally, your accusation that I “serve power structures” by scrutinizing low-level actors is a breathtaking feat of projection. It is your worldview that protects the powerful by insisting blame pools exclusively at the top. The senator who votes for war appropriations sleeps soundly when society fixates solely on their role. No—pressure must ascend and descend the chain. Guilt is not a finite resource. We can condemn the contractor who builds border wall concrete while also damning the president who ordered it.
Your fear of moral expansiveness is really a fear of true accountability—one that unsettles all strata of complicity. You call it paralysis. I call it coherence.
Your rebuttal constructs an elegant philosophical framework that, while intellectually stimulating, fundamentally misaligns with the practical realities of power, agency, and responsibility in modern military structures.
The janitor analogy fails not because it compares soldiers to Holocaust perpetrators, but because it falsely equates awareness levels across vastly different contexts. Today’s military personnel operate within deliberately opaque systems designed to fragment responsibility and obscure consequences. Many serve without direct exposure to the outcomes of their collective actions—not through willful ignorance, but through institutional compartmentalization that purposefully distances them from the full implications of their roles.
When you dismiss economic necessity as merely “weaponized precarity,” you reveal a profound disconnect from the lived experience of the working class. For many, military service represents not a moral choice but survival—access to healthcare, education, housing stability, and escape from environments with few alternatives. These aren’t abstract considerations; they’re immediate material realities that shape decision-making more powerfully than philosophical ideals ever could.
Your “fractal responsibility” concept sounds profound but ultimately atomizes blame to the point of practical meaninglessness. By insisting everyone bears some measure of guilt, you create a system where accountability becomes so diffuse it loses any practical force. This approach doesn’t enhance justice—it undermines it by refusing to acknowledge the exponential difference between authorizing an intervention and maintaining equipment that enables it.
Most troublingly, your framework offers no path forward beyond condemnation. What concrete change does your philosophy propose? How does stigmatizing service members advance structural reform? You claim “stigma is action,” but history shows otherwise. Cultural rejection of Vietnam veterans didn’t end American militarism—it merely isolated those who served while leaving power structures intact. Real change comes through political organization, policy reform, and coalition-building—not moral gatekeeping.
The moral clarity you champion requires perfect information and perfect agency—neither of which exists in reality. Your position creates a false binary between complete absolution and comprehensive guilt, leaving no room for the complex terrain where most moral decisions actually occur. This absolutist approach doesn’t elevate discourse; it forecloses it.
In your zeal to distribute responsibility downward, you’ve constructed a philosophy that, paradoxically, serves the very power structures you claim to oppose. By disproportionately focusing moral scrutiny on those with relatively limited influence rather than concentrating pressure on decision-makers with genuine authority, you effectively diffuse accountability while intensifying judgment on those least positioned to resist systemic imperatives.
Scientists and engineers who developed chemical weapons and nuclear bombs made conscious choices about their work, yet they rarely face the same scrutiny as soldiers who carry out orders.
They should face the same scrutiny. As a matter of fact, it played a part in me personally giving up on my persuit of physics, even if it meant doing menial labor instead. I used to think that developing new technology would uplift everyone and advance all humanity together, but the more I looked at the world, the more I saw ways in which technology was used irresponsibly, or for the benefit one group at the expense of another. Specifically with climate change, it became apparent to me that we already have the technological means to confront it, the problem is the way our society is structured, and as long as it’s structured that way, no new technology is going to fix anything, and the idea that it might only serves to make people hesitant to confront power and change structures in the ways that are desperately needed. Technological development without social development only creates more advanced forms of oppression.
Heinz Guderian was the developer of Blitzkrieg doctrine and maintained in trials and works afterwards that he had no interest in the Nazis’ “politics,” and that he was “just doing his job.” There’s a good chance he was lying to cover his own ass, but for the sake of argument, let’s assume he was telling the truth. Is developing military theory for Hitler fundamentally different from developing theories of physics for Hitler, which would allow him to construct new weapons and bombs? I say no. There may have been people in Nazi Germany who ignored what was going on in the world and simply focused their attention, as many scientifically minded people do, on the interesting problems of their field, just solving problems without regard for whose problems they are or what they’re going to do with the solutions. If such people existed, they are undeniably culpable - just because you find it more “stimulating” to work on the technical mechanics of a gas chamber than to think about whether the gas chamber should exist does not give you license to design it.
I cannot fully fault everyone involved in the nuclear program in the US, because the US was on the right side of the war and potentially the bomb might have been needed. Nevertheless, a weapon of mass destruction was handed over to the politicians, to use however they see fit. Many of the scientists involved petitioned Truman not to use it (though others, like Oppenheimer, said the opposite), and many high ranking military officials considered it unnecessary. The fact is that there were multiple ways that Truman could’ve ended the war without the bomb, either through better cooperation with the Soviets at Potsdam (but then he’d have to share the spotlight), or by accepting surrender with the sole condition of sparing the emperor (which he planned to do anyway, but he wanted the newspapers to say, “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!”). Once in the hands of politicians, the decisions on whether and how to use it came down to political concerns, things like, “we need to use it to justify all the money we spent on it,” not ethical or even strategic ones.
Anyone involved in weapons development in the US today is certainly culpable in how the US decides to use them. And the US is an aggressive rogue state that has declared jurisdiction over the entire world, that it can and will drone strike wherever it pleases, regardless of soverignty, it routinely invades and oppresses soverign countries, and of all the many, many conflicts it’s been involved in, the last time it was really justified in a conflict was 80 years ago. Anyone involved in weapons development in the US is a monster, and the only reason these sorts of people have been spared of blame historically is that the winning side found their expertise too useful to punish them.
The arguments that you make in no way wash soldiers hands clean of the atrocities they directly commit, it only shows that other people have blood on their hands as well.
You know, you could just make a different phrase for troops.
Cops are cops, whether they be foreign or domestic. Why split hairs?
I support the real troops
“Fuck the troops”
ATAB works too. But troops are essentially just cops we unleash on foreign countries.
