The Not so Subtle Moral Decay of the US Military

But why didn't you support us Germans against Communist Russia??

 

True! If it is to be over, no seat belt will help you.

 

Not just greater awareness but greater push to actually identify and punish offenders (at least some of the time). Consider the pictures from military prisons in Iraq or video of civilians being fired upon - that kind of materiel simply wouldn't have existed only a couple of decades ago and couldn't have been publicly distributed. Do you really think those kind of offences didn't happen or were even just less common in the past though? The simple fact is that we know communications and recording have massively expanded over the decades but we don't know the fundamental nature of people has changed.

That's something you've always had because you inherited it from your European ancestors (sorry). Again, you've not established that any fundamental change in human attitudes or behaviour are behind the different outcomes you're perceiving.

You're suggesting leaders in the past weren't? Again, awareness (though not necessarily accurate) due to mass media and ability to complain (though not actually do much about it) due to the internet are the differences here. The leaders as essentially the same.

 

That’s a lot for enlisted but still doesn’t compete with what the civilian world will pay people with those backgrounds. Possibly Intel since they’re more likely to end up at a different government agency.

 

Good point. As I see it, BOTH Russia AND Germany invaded Poland, and it was
Britain and France who declared WWII.
Just being disingenuous.

ps it was Germany who created the Soviet Union and Communism by shipping that
devil Lenin back to Russia.

 

Whenever you get people talking about the "atrocities" of soldiers (ie young boys sent to war)
there's a good chance this is all just politics. It's an "atrocity" if some soldier harms a civilian -
but that doesn't mean the US Govt was involved.
However, when you have jihadis engaging in mass bombings of civilians and pushing tons of
heroin into Europe you have to ask was the Taliban LEADERSHIP behind such moves.

Who recalls that famous photo of a Sth Vietnamese girl running from Hue during the Tet Offensive
1968? She got caught in the bombing. She became famous. After liberating Hue the Americans
and Sth Vietnamese found a mass grave - people strangled to death or buried alive in a huge trench
down one thoroughfare - it never made headlines.

 

It's "boots on the ground' disease. We had it in Vietnam but nobody learned. You can't turn young people into stone killers and expect them to just turn it off 10 months later, not without a WHOLE lot of mental anguish.

Old men flying drones wouldn't care though. You get LOTS more mentally tough as you age.

 

I'm afraid your understanding of history has let you down again.

The 1973 Paris 'Peace' Accords left North Vietnam in control of 10% of South Vietnam and allowed the North to station close to 200,000 soldiers & support personnel on that territory. South Vietnam quite rightly saw the agreement as a death sentence and only signed it because Nixon & Kissinger threatened to cut off aid to them. America got its POWs back and generations of brainwashed Americans got to claim a 'victory' that any sane person knew was nonexistent. A recorded conversation between the two made it clear that they knew the agreement was a death sentence for the South and was designed to create a 'decent interval' between US withdrawal and the fall of the South.

Cambodia was not part of any 'Empire' in 1975. North Vietnam occupied a small amount of territory on the border with South Vietnam, less than it had before the Paris Accords. Notionally North Vietnam & the Khmer Rouge were allies, but the KR loathed the Vietnamese and had already murdered all the Vietnamese-trained cadre who returned to Cambodia during the 60s & early 70s. Most of the invasion of the South came from North Vietnam, Laos & South Vietnamese territory given away by America in 1973.

 

Because you Germans had already invaded and occupied Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, Belgium, Holland, Luxemburg, Norway, Denmark, Yugoslavia and Greece and attacked Britain before you decided to invade Russia. Your nation had already killed hundreds of thousands of people before it invaded Russia intent on murdering millions more.

America knew that your nation was so evil it chose to put Hitler in command and cheered as Germany murdered its way across Europe. No nation that evil could be allowed to rule Europe and become a world power. You are just lucky that the people who defeated you were less barbaric than your nation. Had they been as bad as Germany you would not be alive to tell us how nice you think Hitler was.

 

None.. What does that have to do with VT? Its a wacky, hateful conspiracy website.

 

I found your article genuinely interesting. I have never gotten deeply involved in the issue
for personal reasons involving my own family. But some points - I doubt many Americans
saw Vietnam as a victory. And I do see Hanoi as ruling over Indo China.
Thanks for that.

 

What makes it wacky and hateful?

 

Facts and critical thinking.. It just won't stand up to scrutiny and I am a critic of Israel, the Likud and Bibi

 

Wars are only acceptable when defensive. Unfortunately 'protecting US 'security' or interests is the main reason the US fights wars. Many years ago I was shocked to hear an old CIA guy tell John Pilger that the reason they supported the killing of strikers in Latin America was because it was in America's National Security. America has used the word 'security' to endorse whatever if wishes to do - in that instance taking resources from the local people and giving it to the US. That interests would fall into this also is obvious.

The US acted in this way to create and hold its Empire and is now acting in a similar way to most declining empires. Unfortunately it is not pretty.

 

So in other words, all you have is your opinion and nothing specific.

 

Very few saw it as a victory at the time, but you only have to read a few posts on this board (or even this thread) to find people who claim that America won & then had victory 'stolen' - victory here is defined as Sth Vietnam not falling to Communism. The specifics of why vary a bit, but it is always someone else's fault. Nixon did declare a 'VV' day at the time, which some still cling to as part of their 'proof' that America 'won'.

As for what you 'see', historical facts don't care. Before 1979 Cambodia was controlled by governments or movements hostile to Vietnam and was most certainly not under its control. You can tell yourself otherwise, but it doesn't alter the facts.

 

I agree with you, for sure. But Pilger is an old Maoist. He has a bad reputation here in Australia.

 

NO NO NO!!!! This is the 'thinking' of the Hard Left, turned inside out. Substitute the words 'racism' and 'hate speech' for 'Russian propaganda' and 'anti-Americanism' and this could be the creed of an college professor defending Anti-Fa, and urging on a student mob to storm Charles Murray's lecture.

'Veterans Today' is so obviously what it is, that it's not even necessary to call people's attention to the fact. I doubt it's connected to the descendants of the KGB, because the latter would be far more sophisticated. Whoever is paying their bills is being subjected to an 'Our Man in Havana' operation -- some bureaucrat who is so stupid that he thinks that something like 'Veterans Today' could influence a single vet who was not already deranged. Here is an article from it, not all of which is wrong, written by an eccentric Pakistani, who often forgets the obligatory trope of modern anti-Semites, -- "of course, not all Jews "-- (they evidently cannot afford a sub-editor at VT, not even for the headline,so the English is often a bit strange, but the crazed ideology is clear enough). He even has a coherent thesis, based in reality, which is that the nefarious Jews, usually seen by anti-Semites as evil but highly intelligent in the ruthless pursuit of their own interests, are doing contradictory things and even hurting their own self-interest. (This ought to suggest that what is happening in the world today is not the result of some plan, but the traditional clash of benighted ignorant armies). Anyway, here's the kind of thing a vet, casually Googling, will read when he clicks on Veterans Today:

More follows, if you can bear it.

 

Continued from a previous post.

My main reaction after reading through this is pity.

 

WWII was a constitutional declaration of war by Congress. We have not had such a legal declaration since then, yet our government has been at war pretty much ever since 1950.

Yes sir, I spent my year in Vietnam serving in a helicopter ambulance unit picking up wounded. I have seen the insides of helicopters completely spattered with human blood. I have smelled death many times.

I went there with an open mind but quickly discovered my country had no valid interest there. Yes, the military industrial complex profited greatly, but the US had no business in how the Vietnamese ran their country.

Our war of terror in the Mideast is no different--brought under fraud. Smedley Butler USMC was right, war is a racket as we practice it today.

 

You're right, it has nothing to do with VT.

But it has EVERYTHING to do with your naïve perspective. It has everything to do with your credibility in statements regarding the military. You are certainly entitled to your opinions, but if you never wore the uniform you're just another armchair general like Dick Cheney.

 

The USA hasn't won a war since the Department of War got changed into the Department of Defense in 1948.

Turned the USA soft and mamby pamby at the top.

 

Americans are Americans. Every subset to a more or less degree is going to be representation of who Americans are.
If the military is declining in moral charecter it is because the American people are of declining moral charecter.

This should be a surprise to no one because fir the last 60 years there has been the firesale on moral behaviors. We have traded morality for "social justice" and the morality of the American people has declined as a direct result.
This is exactly what the leftists always wanted. They just wouldn't admit that this is the consequences.

 

No one, no thing, and no institution is perfect. But from the top down, the bottom up, active and/or retired, I have nothing but respect and admiration for the United States Armed Forces, all the way back to our Founding Fathers.

 

We owe it to them to be better people than we are.