The topic was why it took the shitlibs and Hasanabi-watching leftists (lol) a fucking tattoo to denounce Graham Platner, an Iraq veteran who did 4 trips to the war zone and then joined the Blackwater mercenary company to kill even more people.
The topic was why it took the shitlibs and Hasanabi-watching leftists (lol) a fucking tattoo to denounce Graham Platner, an Iraq veteran who did 4 trips to the war zone and then joined the Blackwater mercenary company to kill even more people.
Well put. People can get caught up in moralizing more so than doing analysis of material conditions. Such analysis doesn’t mean we excuse atrocities, but it does mean we don’t lose sight of methodology for creating a better world in favor of waxing on about how morally inferior some group of people is. I’m sure we’d all love to think we’d never be “the baddies”, but scientific socialist framework would indicate that some of us who aren’t would be under different conditions; the alternative is believing that it all boils down to a moral choice and overcoming personal corruption, and that’s a form of idealism.
When I was still a liberal there was a time that I was deeply patriotic and wanted to serve. It wasn’t because I glorified killing or thought other cultures were inferior to mine but because I genuinely believed that the USA was better than the alternative, that we were the lesser evil keeping the greater evil in check around the world. My perception of the US Mil was one of a liberator and protector, as fucked up as that may sound. That’s how I was taught to see the world and it stuck with me for a long time.
I was fortunate enough to learn over time that this wasn’t the case and as a consequence my opinion of the military diminished slowly but surely and my position on war in general shifted dramatically. This development began long before I was even a socialist and continued well after until now where I can firmly state that I am both anti-war and anti-military in nearly all circumstances save for a handful of extreme ones.
I don’t cry when a marine steps on a land mine and gets his leg blown off, but I do hope he survives and learns from his experiences serving that he isn’t the good guy and he’s on the wrong side. I do this in part because I know many people in uniform have been outright tricked or bribed into participating in something they probably wouldn’t have had they been better informed like I was.
I also can’t help but imagine: “What if I hadn’t learned what I learned, continued down that path, and I was the one who ended up stepping on that land mine?”
Cops and soldiers might be the enforcers of empire but it’s important to remember that they’re just the attack dogs of the capitalist class and just like any other attack dog they are that way because they’ve been trained to be; some working class person was fed a mouthful of lies and shut out from the truth until they believed up was down and right was wrong. Then they were sent to kill people like them, watch their friends die for nothing, and then come up broken and disfigured - if they come home at all.
Every soldier and cop created by the capitalist state is one more doctor, one more musician, one more engineer taken away from the world and turned into a willing accomplice for evil. They are still perpetrators and wrongdoers but they are also victims and have had wrong done to them. Whether they deserve forgiveness or not is debatable but I can at the very least call ‘comrade’ any veteran who was able to see through the veil and join the right side of history in the end. Better late than never.
Not from me and not from the leagues of people in the Third World they have slaughtered, even if they were Red Alert 2 Yuri mind-controlled by post-2001 slop-propaganda in American high-school library recruiter stalls. I don’t think it’s debatable, I think it’s an active choice some comrades will make and most of the people who put up with baby-killers will have to accept it one way or another. It’s a difference of principles, in my opinion.
Now imagine how many people they have taken away from us. I’m less interested in the brains of cops, soldiers and jackboots then the brains splattered by them.
No war but total war on the American empire
I don’t put the lives of the imperial soldiers above those of the people whose lives they’ve taken or ruined, despite your obvious misgivings on my position.
If the choice comes down to it they’ll get the wall and I won’t object.
I agree with some parts of what you say, but this:
Feels like whitewashing criminals. Yes the guys may not have had the resources nor the wake up call before joining but so what? does that excuse any of them from going half a world away to participate in a genocide? or more recently does any of that excuse them from killing innocent fishermen in the coasts of Venezuela/Colombia? fuck no.
I wasn’t excusing anything; I was explaining the nuance behind people willingly joining the military. Writing them all off as simply being racist psychopaths who want to kill people is a knee-jerk, moralistic argument fueled by misplaced passion and devoid of material analysis. It’s a vibes-based way of understanding phenomena and has no place in Marxism.
That is my sole critique, not that US soldiers are ‘UwU smol beans’ or whatever.
As a citizen of the Global South, I was impressed on knowing that people from the military like Aaron Bushnell or Mike Prysner exist. However, it will take time as you have mentioned to destroy that American Exceptionalism installed in the military and to plant the seed of empathy and humanization of the oppressed.
All I know is that there is certainly a great number of abandoned veterans by the US and I am not sure if it helps to agitate them. However, I wish you all the best of success.
It appears your “uneducated” veteran was already educated on the pre and post world war American colonial wars and wanted to participate in them. He wanted to volunteer in Vietnam if he could. He thinks small wars are pretty enjoyable because heavy artillery takes the fun away from fighting and Iraq and Afghanistan were indeed ‘small wars’.
He also worked at Abu Graib prison even after the torture and warcrimes were exposed in the media.
I never once mentioned Platner. My post wasn’t about him specifically.
my “I never once mentioned Platner.” shirt for babykillers in a Platner thread has a lot of questions already answered by my shirt.
I wasn’t talking about Platner and you can’t prove otherwise. Drop the strawman.
I ain’t reading all’at. Marg bar Amreeka.