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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (204730)	9/30/2006 12:16:26 AM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

MQ, re: "There are shades of grey too. If I remember rightly, NZ troops who went to Vietnam volunteered to go. They had already volunteered to join the army, but they separately volunteered to go. I don't know what the incentives were and how much being "the chicken who stayed behind" would push one to go. I guess that would be a strong push." Yes, there are many shades of grey. A lot of young men just can't resist the adventure of a war. I was one of them. I seriously questioned the war in Vietnam but wasn't doing much with my life and signed up for two years. In that sense I was a volunteer. There were other "volunteers" with me. Some of them didn't make it. In my view the waste of their lives was no greater, and no less, than the waste of the lives of those who were conscripted and those who sent them as volunteers had the same implicit duty to assure that the war was "just." They died, some very hard, and their families and loved ones were left with a gap that will never be filled. The only comfort that can found in such a death is that it was for a good cause that meriting killing and dying, that it was in pursuit of a goal that was realistically doable and that there was no other way to accomplish the mission. In Vietnam and in Iraq NONE of those three critical thresholds can reasonably be said to have been met. That's a cause for national shame and a breech of the sacred obligation we owe those who put their lives on the line in our name. "I was in favour of the war against Saddam, but it wasn't worth my life. My "in favour" was that if some people wanted to attack Saddam's gang, I didn't see it as an ethical, or legal problem. I didn't think it was the best idea, but if they thought it was, then good luck to them. I don't think that makes me a hypocrite. I certainly wouldn't have ordered anyone to go." There is an important distinction between your perspective and that of the war wimps in this country. You're not an American cheer leading the Iraqi war effort, attacking the courage and patriotism of the critics while men and women are killing and dying in your name. Unless those passionate "supporters" would have been willing to put themselves in the line of fire and die for that silly cause then I think the cheer leading and promotion is hypocritical. Ed