To be a military type

[Rag-Doll 0]

"Australia's colonization of Indonesia and support for military oppression there,"

 

I expected better from you Ocean. You couldn't get past the first sentence without tripping yourself up.

 

 

Here is the recruiting page for the ADF. Apparently one needs to grow a mustache before joining, but it doesn’t seem like invasions and oppression is all that high on the list of jobs on offer.

 

http://www.defencejobs.gov.au/Default.asp?initMedia=1&media=flash&bounceBack=/Default.asp

[Kumapix 0]

 Quote:

Originally posted by eskimobasecamp:
Also, being in a fire fight must be five times the adrenaline rush of skiing a huge line. No shortage of adrenaline junkies out there.

excuse me did you really just say that?! dude, being in a fire fight or whatever you want to call it, most likely involves innocent civilians being killed and injured, towns and amenities such as hospitals, vital for life being destroyed ---- and you are talking about the adrenaline rush --- and in the same breath making a comparison to skiing a huge line? yehhh is that the same adrenaline rush of people flying planes into buildings and blowing themselves up on trains?

EBC, every firefight does not include war crimes. I agree that being in a firefight (and living!) would be a bigger rush than skiing a big line. Having said that, I would never get in a fire fight but would ride a big line

[Ocean11 0]

daver, you don't need to be so gentle with me mate, I can see when a question is a question, and when it's malice.

 

I joined before the age of the Internet and before I became informed about a huge swathe of reality that would not allow me to join now. I also joined at a time when the Eastern Bloc was a reasonably credible enemy. When I joined, it was based on an entirely private agreement with myself that I would never go to fight anywhere that didn't involve pure defense, even if I paid heavily for my refusal.

 

I had fun in the army (I saw a similar firepower demonstration to the one spud described among other jollies of that sort). I was also bored stiff in the army and annoyed by the closed-mindedness I saw there. Needless to say, I didn't fit in and other ranks hated me.

 

Not being much of a regretting type, I don't regret having joined, although if I had my time again I would choose to spend that time in more valuable ways.

 

Now that we have Internet news as opposed to brain dead media, I believe that anybody who allows themselves to be sent to Iraq or somewhere similar deserves exactly what's coming to them. They have no excuse.

[eskimobasecamp 0]

 Quote:

Originally posted by Rag-Doll:
"I can't imagine what would inspire a young man or women to join the military other than dire circumstances (no money, no education, etc.)."

Kintaro,

You get to do things that most people would never dream of doing. Standing on the skids of the helicopter as it screams along a tree top height before abseiling to the ground amongst rocket and grenade simulators making all sorts of racket is a real buzz. As a 20 yr old, planning and commanding a dawn attack involving tanks, APCs and about 50 soldiers is amazing. Regardless of the personality defects it highlights, being a minor warlord for a day is good fun. Then again, maybe it’s just the smell of napalm in the morning!

well you wrote it for me - i don't really have to explain why i am so disgusted and unimpressed by the attitude or military people.

... warlord... dawn attack... AND THEN YOU DO IT FOR REAL... and people die

absolutey disgusting

[Kumapix 0]

I see 2 different sides to this thread. We have the people who have been in the military and who say that there are all types of people in the military and that means good, normal people. They also say that being in the military can be positive.

The other side is made up of people arguing that the military is bad and does bad things. Unless you guys choose to discuss only the type of people that join the military OR whether the military is good or evil, I don't think this thread will be a good one at all.

[eskimobasecamp 0]

 Quote:

Originally posted by Kumapix:

 Quote:

Originally posted by eskimobasecamp:
Also, being in a fire fight must be five times the adrenaline rush of skiing a huge line. No shortage of adrenaline junkies out there.

excuse me did you really just say that?! dude, being in a fire fight or whatever you want to call it, most likely involves innocent civilians being killed and injured, towns and amenities such as hospitals, vital for life being destroyed ---- and you are talking about the adrenaline rush --- and in the same breath making a comparison to skiing a huge line? yehhh is that the same adrenaline rush of people flying planes into buildings and blowing themselves up on trains?

EBC, every firefight does not include war crimes. I agree that being in a firefight (and living!) would be a bigger rush than skiing a big line. Having said that, I would never get in a fire fight but would ride a big line

fire fight = guns = destruction... does not necessarily equal war crimes... = probable death or risk of death

what are you people talking about, this is NOT ok

do you know what war crimes are? civilian death is disgustingly called collatoral damage, it wouldn't be counted as a war crime

[Ocean11 0]

> As for targets - i'm well aware that a hospital would never be an intended target

 

I'm afraid you're wrong there. Hospitals in Iraq are being targeted deliberately because the whole country, including its medical infrastructure, has now become a threat to the invaders.

 

> I expected better from you Ocean. You couldn't get past the first sentence without tripping yourself up.

 

That's always your response isn't it Rag-Doll. Inane mockery, with absolute ignorance to back it up. Instead of looking at military sites that will give you no good information, why not spend the time better by educating yourself about what your country is really up to? Then we can have a discussion without you tripping yourself up and laughing like a jackass.

[eskimobasecamp 0]

... and i certainly wouldn't get a rush out of shooting stuff... i can't imagine anything more off-putting or awful

 

i'll stick to skiing, protesting, being informed and never working for a big company or joining the military thank you

[Ocean11 0]

I still get a rush out of shooting stuff. I especially get a rush out of shooting the little boys in my neighbourhood (with my son's Big Fish water gun).

[daver 0]

"Needless to say, I didn't fit in and other ranks hated me."

 

O11, for some reason i'm not surprised to hear that.

[Rag-Doll 0]

Ocean,

 

Make up your mind. Is Aust supporting military oppression or is it colonizing Indonesia? Perhaps in your mind Aust deploying its forces in support of a UN sponsored referendum and having them confront and disarm Indonesian supported militia amounts to colonization whilst not intervening in West Papua amounts to supporting military oppression. Seems in your simple world, we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t.

 

“That's always your response isn't it Rag-Doll. Inane mockery” No, it’s not Ocean, not unless it is warranted and in this case it is. Your deluded ignorance in the information age really deserves nothing less. You consistently offer up the most puerile of misinformed views and attempt to claim the moral or intellectual high ground when really you’re just a sad little man who views the world through a lens of his own inadequacies. Do the people in your local neighborhood know how lucky they are to have a man blessed with such clarity of understanding of world politics living beside them or do you find that they regard you in much the same way as your former military colleagues?

[Ocean11 0]

> Is Aust supporting military oppression or is it colonizing Indonesia?

 

Too dumb to see that's a both/and not an either/or proposition.

 

You need to check out Australia's support for Suharto and its reliance on Indonesian resources going back at least to the 70s.

 

 Quote:

The Freeport mines are guarded by Indonesia's Special Forces, who are among the world's most seasoned terrorists, as their documented crimes in East Timor demonstrate. Known as Kopassus, they have been armed by the British and trained by the Australians. Last December, the Howard government in Canberra announced that it would resume "co-operation" with Kopassus at the Australian SAS base near Perth. In an inversion of the truth, the then-Australian defense minister, Senator Robert Hill, described Kopassus as having "the most effective capability to respond to a counter-hijack or hostage recovery threat." The files of human-rights organizations overflow with evidence of Kopassus's terrorism. On 6 July 1998, on the West Papuan island of Biak, just north of Australia, Special Forces massacred more than 100 people, most of them women.

John Pilger (Yes, I know John Pilger is utterly beyond the pale for writing terrible stuff like this.)

 

Of course military types don't like to hear this sort of thing. They like to think of themselves as useful, necessary people instead of an unproductive drain at best, and a murderous, destabilizing presence otherwise.

 

And ad hominem rebuttals seems to be standard military issue as a response to any criticism.

[eskimobasecamp 0]

here here ... and i very much respect john pilger as an author.

[eskimobasecamp 0]

Another excellent political writer - George Monbiot - http://www.monbiot.com/

[eskimobasecamp 0]

some rather interesting articles on war in general http://www.monbiot.com/archives/category/war-general/

 

and some more rather interesting articles on war in iraq http://www.monbiot.com/archives/category/war-iraq/

[Rag-Doll 0]

So when Aust intervenes in East Timor and reduces Indonesian sponsored violence it’s colonizing Indonesia and when Aust doesn’t intervene in West Papua it’s supporting oppression….

 

"Australia's colonization of Indonesia and support for military oppression there,"

 

It's an either or proposition.

 

 

BoC,

Sorry for participating in the hijacking of your thread.

[eskimobasecamp 0]

this thread is all over the place - but here's an excerpt from an article written by monbiot in jan 2005 --- read this and you'll get somewhere close to my feeling on international power politics, mr bush, mr blair, war, military and people who sign up to be part of it.

 

"The US government has so far pledged $350m to the victims of the tsunami, and the UK government £50m ($96m). The US has spent $148 billion on the Iraq war (1) and the UK £6bn ($11.5bn).(2) The war has been running for 656 days. This means that the money pledged for the tsunami disaster by the United States is the equivalent of one and a half days’ spending in Iraq. The money the UK has given equates to five and a half days of our involvement in the war.

 

It looks still worse when you compare the cost of the war to the total foreign aid budget. The UK has spent almost twice as much on creating suffering in Iraq as it spends annually on relieving it elsewhere. The United States gives just over $16bn in foreign aid (3): less than one ninth of the money it has burnt so far in Iraq.

 

The figures for war and aid are worth comparing because, when all the other excuses for the invasion of Iraq were stripped away, both governments explained that it was being waged for the good of the Iraqis. Let us, for a moment, take this claim at face value. Let us suppose that the invasion and occupation of Iraq had nothing to do with power, domestic politics or oil but were, in fact, components of a monumental aid programme. And let us, with reckless generosity, assume that more people in Iraq have gained as a result of this aid programme than lost.

 

To justify the war, even under these wildly unsafe assumptions, Bush and Blair would have to show that the money they spent was a cost-efficient means of relieving human suffering. As it was sufficient to have made a measurable improvement in the lives of all the 2.8 billion people living in absolute poverty, and as there are only 25 million people in Iraq, this is simply not possible. Even if you ignore every other issue – such as the trifling matter of mass killing – the opportunity costs of the Iraq war categorise it as a humanitarian disaster. Indeed such calculations suggest that, on cost grounds alone, a humanitarian war is a contradiction in terms.

 

But our leaders appear to have lost the ability to distinguish between helping people and killing them. The tone of Blair’s New Year message was almost identical to that of his tear-jerking insistence that we understand the Iraqi people must be bombed for their own good. The US Marines who have now been despatched to Sri Lanka to help the rescue operation were, just a few weeks ago, murdering the civilians (for this, remember, is an illegal war), smashing the homes and evicting the entire population of the Iraqi city of Falluja. Even within the official aid budgets the two aims are confused: $8.9bn of the aid money the US spends is used for military assistance, anti-drugs operations, counter-terrorism and the Iraq relief and reconstruction fund (otherwise known as the Halliburton benevolent trust).(4) For Bush and Blair, the tsunami relief operation and the Iraq war are both episodes in the same narrative of salvation. The civilised world rides out to rescue foreigners from their darkness.

 

While they spend the money we gave them to relieve suffering on slaughtering the poor, the world must rely for disaster relief on the homeless man emptying his pockets. If our leaders were as generous in helping people as they are in killing them, no one would ever go hungry."

[me jane 0]

 Quote:

Originally posted by Ocean11:
They like to think of themselves as useful, necessary people instead of an unproductive drain at best, and a murderous, destabilizing presence otherwise.

I was definitely an unproductive drain. I joined the Officer Training Corps when I was at university (a kind of part-time army for uni students). I was not at all interested in fighting or doing any other kind of military work so before joining I checked that we would never be called up to serve and they said that we would be the last group to be called before consciption was introduced. I joined because I got paid double or three times what I could have earned at a part-time job in a bar or shop for spending a few weekends a year camping and running around in the mountains and Wednesday afternoons studying navigation and first aid, shooting in ranges, eating a free dinner and then drinking in the heavily subsidised base bar. I ended up leaving after just under a year though as most of the others were right-wing, posh public school types with high ranking military fathers who weren't really there for the same reasons as me.

[Ocean11 0]

 Quote:

Originally posted by Rag-Doll:
So when Aust intervenes in East Timor and reduces Indonesian sponsored violence it’s colonizing Indonesia and when Aust doesn’t intervene in West Papua it’s supporting oppression….

"Australia's colonization of Indonesia and support for military oppression there,"

It's an either or proposition.

No, it's both/and, whichever is necessary to maintain control at any given time, and according to the fig leaf du jour, whether it be anti-Communism, anti-terrorism, or humanitarian assistance.

The answer to what sort of people join the military would be - young people who don't know any better, people with limited knowledge of the world, and little effective empathy for anyone else. Also people with naive notions of service and patriotism. That described me when I joined. Some obviously learn to know better after they leave or even before, and some obviously don't. Those that don't will keep supporting any military adventure that their country gets involved in, however disastrous.

[eskimobasecamp 0]

I can't comment in detail on the Australian forces involvement in East Timor, however i would agree that positions of support change according to the political climate, balance of power and the selfish interests of nations. One day you aid a certain group/government, the next day they are the enemy. This isn't exactly a new concept.

[Rag-Doll 0]

"While they spend the money we gave them to relieve suffering on slaughtering the poor, the world must rely for disaster relief on the homeless man emptying his pockets. If our leaders were as generous in helping people as they are in killing them, no one would ever go hungry."

 

EBC,

 

I don't think anyone disagrees with the general view of this article or what you're saying about the tragedy of war – I certainly don’t. Although the above quote is a little melodramatic don’t you think? Most of the killing taking place now in Iraq is Sunni v Shiite v Sunni and little would change in that regard if the US left today, but that is a completely different issue.

 

Personally, I’m glad I was never called upon to go to war. Doing the stuff I described above was fun but only because it didn’t involve killing people or having other people trying to kill me. The power of military weapons is terrifying and the damage they do to humans really does defy belief. Riding through trees on a snowboard is fun. Scooting over trees hanging from a helicopter is fun for much the same reasons – it’s exciting and a little bit dangerous and a million miles from the everyday banality of life. I wouldn’t recommend the military to my daughter because in 20 years time it will still be the chauvinistic, conservative organization it is today and was 20 year ago when I joined it and I reckon a person as clever and gentle as she is would be wasted in such an organization.

 

The original topic was military types and a few of us have said that there probably isn’t a single military type and that the military is full of all sorts of people, most of whom are pretty normal people who are no more enthusiastic about invading or killing or even supporting the foreign policy of their governments than your are.

 

 

Ocean

 

 

I agree with your concluding summary. I think that is right to a point. I don't think support for the military need be binary. As I said earlier, there are occasions when an armed presence is the only option. It wasn’t the correct option before the US invaded Iraq, depending on your view, it might be argued that imposing a force between the Sunnis and the Shiites now is appropriate or it was apprpriate to use force to do something about the crippling oppression of the groups like Taliban. It's a pity the latter wasn't done sooner. The tragedy of our time is that we don’t have the political institutions in place to enable the world to make effective use of a global armed force to stop the humanitarian disasters inflicted at the point of a gun on a population by their neighbors or own governments.

[Ocean11 0]

> The tragedy of our time is that we don’t have the political institutions in place to enable the world to make effective use of a global armed force to stop the humanitarian disasters inflicted at the point of a gun on a population by their neighbors or own governments.

 

The tragedy is that the populations of the West don't take enough interest in what their governments and corporations are doing - the arms deals, the resources exploitation, the support for oppressive governments, the unfair trade systems. Sort out those problems first, and if that doesn't do the trick, then think about international armed forces. (You can see how this applies to the situation in the ME right now. If the warring parties weren't lavishly funded and armed from outside, the ineffective international forces wouldn't be necessary.)

[Rag-Doll 0]

That's a fair point (although I presume when you say the West, you're not including Cuba and Peru in there with the US et al ) but it's not only the West doing that stff. Russia and China are also big players in all of those activities as well.

[damian 0]

RagDoll – I also noticed and disliked the characteristics you noted (distain for civilians, chauvinistic, misogynistic and socially very conservative. It was run by men so institutionalized that they were mistrustful of anything strange or different).

 

It was very strong in the Army and I disliked it immensely.

 

“distain for civilians was nothing more than petty tribalism”

 

This exists all through Australian society: we ridicule the sport popular in the next state, we ridicule the neighbouring states or cities, we hate different food, we hate people who ride bicycles, we pretty much hate anything different. Australia is chronically internally xenophobic and the military is the darkest example of it. I didn’t meet many thinking people that lasted very long in the forces, leaving some very nasty men to run it.

 

Our common observation of this issue highlights what type of people make career military men (at least in the Australian Army). You and I likely share some similar attributes (lawyer, banker, former Tokyo expats, now expats in a another country, liberated enough to dig BC snowboarding even though most of our professional peers think snowboarders are punks….). We are probably not the same people, but there is a reason why people like us do not stay in the forces and other types of people do.

 

Various things have changed in my life since leaving the Army, things that would simply never be tolerated by them, particularly given I was an officer (no, I’m not gay). I honestly still have bad dreams about waking up enlisted back in the Army with all my unacceptable attributes on display, as well as being unshaven, having lost my hat and left my rifle leaning against a tree 30m from were I am sitting

 

EBC – in the Army, when learning how to kill people, one of the things you are trained is to control your rate of fire. Even though you have a fully automatic weapon with a pile of full magazines, you are a more effective killer if you squeeze-off single aimed shots at the centre of the seen mass rather than blazing away in every useless direction at all and nothing. Even medium weight machine guns (like the famous and obsolete M60) are most effective in killing the enemy when short bursts of fire are delivered, rather than ripping through a few meters of belt and hitting nothing. Perhaps you would do well to apply the same discipline to your technique of debate

[Ocean11 0]

 Quote:

Originally posted by Rag-Doll:
That's a fair point (although I presume when you say the West, you're not including Cuba and Peru in there with the US et al ) but it's not only the West doing that stff. Russia and China are also big players in all of those activities as well.

Yes that's true. But as a citizen and voter in the West, I'm not responsible for what the Russians and Chinese do. As I learned in the army , you have to lead by example, and I would like to see my government leading by example in the areas I just outlined. (Most officers in the army were fine examples of mealy-mouthed scumbags, and the few exceptions with any integrity stood out like beacons in the night. Lt. Spud would have had me doing pushups in full kit just for cleaning my teeth with a twig, so he'd be in the former category.)