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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: unclewest who wrote (107912)	8/31/2005 1:29:03 AM
From: Grainne	Respond to of 108807

The phrase "Army of One" is a marketing ploy, an attempt to glamorize serving the Unites States. In fact, one of the things I found most interesting lately is that the U.S. government is going to pay either 250 or 350 million dollars(please excuse me for forgetting which because it is late and I'm tired) this year to an advertising agency for ads to try to get more gullible young people to join the army. And Iraq isn't going to be mentioned in the ads at all. I cannot help it if you don't acknowledge the brainwashing necessary to take a raw recruit and turn him or her into a soldier. The discussion here has been scholarly, in the sense that tracts have been posted from people who have been through this training and from psychologists describing the brainwashing techniques. This is not a discussion about criticizing people in the military--the people who were discussing it agree that brainwashing it probably a necessary technique to turn individuals into trained troops. Perhaps if you moved back a bit from your emotions and tried to understand it as a different kind of discussion, you might understand it better. Perhaps if you read the scholarly articles and personal experiences recounted you would understand that it is a different kind of discussion, and that you need not heatedly take offense. You are correct that defending oneself is instinctual. However, killing others, raiding houses in the middle of the night when you know there will be women crying and terrified children screaming, is not really instinctual in civilized countries like America. Most children here are trained from birth to be polite and nonviolent. It takes quite a lot of brainwashing techniques to totally overcome that and make people into trained killers. If you cannot see how threatening to off someone for their opinion is not a good way to represent the fine men and women of the special forces, I cannot help you.