Military Views
I know you probably think its horseshit, but the fact is, we in the military take it as a sign of failure if we actually have to fight. We've done our job if we keep some psycho from mischief by threat of highly competent ability to do bodily harm. I've known at least three people who are no longer with us just due to the hazards of day-to-day naval aviation mishaps. It would be cool if that was not required in today's world, but that's not real life.
Granted, I've never been called upon to directly harm anyone, but I've definitely been in a role directly supporting potential combat ops (****), and I'm mature enough to know that even if you aren't the one pulling the trigger, you are part of the machine. I'm fully aware that we wouldn't have given a flying #%#!^%@ about Kuwait if they weren't in the major oil producing region of the world. We sure as shit didn't intervene in the whole infinitely more horrific **** in just about any post-colonial East-African country you care to name.
Please continue to freely express your opinions. It's your right, and one which at least half of the world's population doesn't fully enjoy.
But if they did, maybe we wouldn't be having this conversation. I wish that the military wasn't necessary in this day and age. I wish we would stop playing these damn games with people's lives and become one planet with out any borders to fight over. It's not helping anyone this way. It never has (well except for making a few politicians rich). They say "If it's not broke, don't fix it", well its broke damn it, let's fix it, but instead we just keep doing it over and over and over and all we're left with is every day fear and a number of dead, including peoples relatives and friends (my own included).
Maybe the Internet will bridge the gaps someday. I know I don't know any Arabs, and I didn't know any Russians, but I never personally hated a one. Especially not enough to want one dead. It's all a power struggle between governments, not between the peoples of those places, but there the ones to die for them. All for pieces of one planet.
Unfortunately, there are many many people who are full of aggression and hatred and do not want to live in peace with their neighbors. This applies both on an individual level, so that we need police forces to control antisocial individuals, and on a national level, where we need armed forces to control larger-scale aggression.
Yeah, to bad it's not all police force action though. Police don't go around shooting your neighbors if you do something wrong now do they?
I know it's a little idealistic, but damn it, the systems we have been using since the dawn of time aren't working. The saying goes "If it's not broke, don't fix it." Well it's broke. It always has been. Why do we keep doing the same thing over and over. Is the human race so dogmatic that it cant improve. We as a people have fallen into a rut. We hope bad things don't happen, but we don't do anything to change things so it doesn't. It's a tale as old as time. A song as old as rhyme.
But what you said reminded me of what happened when John Lennon was shot. When they announced his death on the British TV news, they showed the video of his song Imagine.
Imagine there's no heaven
Imagine there's no countries
Imagine no possessions
You may say I'm a dreamer
It's easy if you try
No hell beneath us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one.
It's hard to describe the effect that caused. The whole country, in fact most of the world, was in shock, and for a few days it seemed as though people really would want to live in peace. Didn't last, of course.
It's sort of ironic that Imagine, was my brothers favorite song from his favorite soundtrack from his favorite TV show Quantum Leap.
Well my dad was serving during that time (Vietnam). My only real memory of the war though is one day I was looking at some of my dads pins from his uniform that mom had and I asked where dad was and she answered he's "over killing babies."
Not a great image to put in a kids head at that age. I'm sure that has a lot to do with where I started questioning the military.
Peace (Got to like it, It means I don't get shot).
And on that note, here's something from an episode of the "Babylon 5" TV series.
Declaration Of Principles
The universe speaks in many languages, but only in one voice.
The language is not Narn, or Human, or Centari, or Gaim, or Mimbari.
It speaks in the language of hope. It speaks in the language of trust.
It speaks in the language of strength, and in the language of compassion.
It is the language of the heart, and the language of the soul, but always it is the same voice.
It is the voice of our ancestors, speaking through us, the voice of our inheritors waiting to be born.
It is the small still voice that says, we are one.
No matter the blood, no matter the skin, no matter the world, no matter the star.
We are one.
No matter the pain, no matter the darkness, no matter the loss, no matter the fear.
We are one.
Here gathered together in common cause, we agree to recognize this singular truth, and this singular rule:
That we must be kind to one another,
Because each voice enriches us and ennobles us,
And each voice lost diminishes us.
We are the voice of the universe.
The soul of creation.
The fire that will light the way,
To a better future.
We are one.
