why do nations sacrifice their young?

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Lee
Money and education may very well have been there motives however, nobody forced them to make the choice..."

---

I never said anyone forced people to join the armed forces Lee. I said "...they entered a contract with the government to received money, and benefits, for their services."

You do however bring up an interesting point Lee. When you're in an impoverished small town or city, with 50% or higher unemployment, I guess nobody really forces you to do what's needed to survive, you just do it.

how sad if you perceive that your only hope of survival is to do something that can cause you to be killed.

If I felt I had to choose between gangs, crime, drugs, or the military, I'd choose the military.

I see a recurring double standard by many of those people who claim to be either pro war, or identify themselves from some odd reason as "pro military" and "patriotic" as per however it is they describe those 2 things.

On the one hand, they call all soldiers heros. When a soldier dies they expect everyone to glorify and idolize and commend them for some sort of "noble sacrifice" and profess to be staunch supporters of people who have offered to give their lives in defense of our freedom and to whom we owe our freedom.

On the other hand, when you attempt to suggest people in the military shouldn't be expected to sacrifice their lives any more than anyone else, they run about saying "Well it's their job! If they didn't want to do it, they shouldn't have signed up! They're just doing their job and that's that!"

Well... which one is it?

If a guy dies in combat was he just doing his job and thus not deserve any more praise than anyone else?

Such subjective interpretation of what it means to be in the military and who serves.

What people who use the "It's their job. If they didn't want to do it, they shouldn't have signed up" argument are all too often doing is absolving and excusing this country's civilian leadership from holding any responsibility for their own actions. Military servicemen and women shouldn't give their lives for flawed causes and unjust campaigns because it's their job. Their job isn't to fight and die more than it is all of our jobs to ensure they never do for anything less than the absolute most justified reasons.

Quote:

---

Originally posted by desslock
Plus, compare that to the Vietnam War, where there really was revolt in the trenches. You do not see that here with Iraq, beyond occasional instances which I am sure you would find in any situation. In fact, if they feel misled and tricked, wouldn't the military ballots have voted against Bush? Go look and see who won the vote totals in Fort Hood, Texas - where their Army infantry division has had a lot of deaths in Iraq. You will not see blue....

---

I think that's an oversimplified analysis of of certain facts with respect to things on the whole.

The military has been for a good few decades now traditionally Republican. The military is traditionally conservative.

Just as certain minority groups traditionally vote Democrat even though quite the case could be argued that it doesn't necessarily do them any good to do so or the Democratic Party doesn't really inherently look out for them or take their best interests to heart.

Further, military indoctrination and culture favors the development of loyalty towards those in the chain of command and the people who hand your orders down to you. The same culture that enables someone to put faith in the orders of a commanding officer or the nation's civilian leadership and risk death carrying them out. It's to be expected that regardless of circumstances there will be a significant amount of support within the military for the president in office.

Quote:

---

Originally posted by desslock
And with Vietnam you had huge revolt at the polls. LBJ went from a historic 1964 election to leaving disgraced and humiliated in 1968. Note that the 1968 and the 2004 elections have one interesting similarity ---- they were all about the war at that time.

---

I think some different circumstances make the Vietnam timeline not really applicable to the 2004 election.
1. There was no Sept. 11 with Vietnam. Had the VC committed a massive terrorist attack upon US soil in 1965, who knows what LBJ would have been able to get away with. Further, by the time 1968 came around the conflict in Vietnam had been going on for a good while longer than Iraq. With a draftee army, no less.
I definitely agree with you that time will tell and depending on how things go in the next few years, there could be quite shift in sentiment. But I don't think there's been enough time as of yet to be able to draw comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq with respect to the public's attitudes toward them.