spaganya said:
The point of the civilians helping the VC is to show you that because they were helping the combatants, they themselves turn themselvs into combatants; no longer innocent.
Do you think if someone attacked the US that civilians just might help US soldiers? The VC were
Vietnamese and we were attacking
Vietnam. The VC weren’t some invading force. The US was the invading force. We knew going in that they would all work against us. By your logic we would have to kill them all. No surprise then that that’s just what we tried to do.
I am well aware of My Lai Massacre,
Then presumably you don’t think that was mass murder. My God, what then qualifies as mass murder in your book?
and i am also aware of the severe mental state that most soldiers were (and some still are) that served in Vietnam.
Oh, I see, they were just gallant & brave soldiers having a bad day. Yep, bayoneting toddlers
is stressful. Do ya think just maybe they were in that severe mental state (and some still are) because they’d been killing civilians day in & day out for their whole tour?
You seem determined to try and prove that the American soldier is some kind of devil out to damn the world.
If the shoe fits... If there is a devil then the American soldier surely does his work. Only one example more damning exists in human history that I can think of.
Humans do things that are wrong. We arent infallible.
Fallible is forgetting to pay a bill on time. Eating sandwiches while the women you shot moan in a ditch, at least until you’re done with lunch and then you laugh while you finish them off, is evil. And there’s no significant difference in my book between massacring a village with bullets versus dropping a bomb on them from a plane. Both are evil.
US is not always right, i am in the belief that US should have never invaded iraq, and that this war has as much to do about showboating and politics than anything else. But the fact remains that the US DID invade, and theres really nothing we can do about that now.
Sure we can. We can install a true democracy. We can compensate the victims and their families for our mistake; a $trillion might do it. We can help mend those we injured instead of leave them to fend for themselves. We can apologize. And finally, we can leave. But we’ll do no such things. Instead the soldiers there work to set up a new dictatorship that we will control.
The original comment was about whether we should honor the modern soldier. And my point was and still is that we SHOULD. because in today's world where everyone is looking to balk the "man" and gather together in some random town square singing kum ba ya, there still exists people in this world that would rather serve the country that protects them.
Just because I’m not firing my machine gun willy-nilly into Iraqi neighborhoods doesn’t mean I’m dancing with flowers. The soldiers there do not serve or protect me, and that should be obvious to them by now. They make me less safe and continue to
willingly do so. How can I respect that?
And i am talking of ANY modern soldier. Not just Americans.
I respect soldiers, modern or not, American or not, who serve and protect.
Personally i think people have lost the pride that comes with pledging your allegience to your country.
How can I have pride for a country that murders millions of people who were no threat to it? That continues to oppress and kill civilians and steal their resources? I’d have to be brainwashed. Robotically pledging allegiance a thousand times might do it.
I think soldiers try and keep that alive in today's society and for that, deserve respect and honor.
Respect and honor don’t come with the uniform.
Alot of people owe their lives to the modern day soldier.
A lot of people owe their deaths to them too. Why not include them in your picture?
