h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

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You've apparently seen words that I neither meant nor typed. And I did not quote you about 'mindless killing machines', or I would have specified a post number and thread. But in many of your words, this seems to be what you imply, even about those friend of yours in the various forces that you revile, and yet welcome home with a handshake and an .

Members of the services sign up to do what is an admirable job - protect their country at the behest of the current government (one of the basic requirements of that government, alongside protecting the populace - police, fire services... and education, education, education).

The stated aim of the current wars was to free certain countries from malign influences (and incidentally make our own future that bit more secure from those - or similar - influences)

They don't (shouldn't) question the whys & wherefores simply because they don't know (can't be expected to know) what their 'masters' know. They -have- to trust in their leaders, and those leaders, in -their- leaders.

The aims are admirable. I, among others, think that the facts are less so.

You and I are stuck with the government that was voted in, until such time as we can vote again.
They can't vote against their service, quite deliberately, in order to allow continuity for the country as a whole.

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I detest the fact of the Iraq invasion while supporting its basic aims. I admire and support the service personnel but not their highest masters.

If you want to blame the services for their service then go ahead - but shut the hell up if they're ever actually needed.

Morning Psycorp and Sprout

It is the attitude to, and the care of returning service personnel which winds me up. As WA and Sho pointed out with the Kipling poem, it was ever thus, but that doesn't make it 'right'.

Just because the two conflicts are being fought relatively far away, and possibly for reasons deplored by the general population doesn't mean that the suffering of those injured, or the stress on those fighting are any less than back in WW2 - when we all distinctly happy to have the army, navy, and airforce fighting for us.

I can remember watching dog fights over East Anglia, and also watching V1's land near my home. Thanks to the RAF the Battle of Britain and the countless lives given by the allies, I can write this today. Remember too the force much closer to home who tried in N I to keep the mainland from becoming a similar battlefied, in spite of IRA bombs which slaughterd soldiers and horses in London, and innocent people in cities around the UK.

I want the troops who are injured to come home to proper care in military hospitals. I want their families decently housed. I don't want victory parades, just good treatment for men and women who have given so much.

From the comfort of his youth Blicky can snipe at why people join the military, and to imply that they are more dumb than he.
Consider Blicky, a point I raised on another thread recently.
The RNLI crews put to sea on filthy stormy nights with huge seas running and gale force winds. They don't do it for money, or for glory, or even for their families at home by the fire waiting for their return
- so why do they do it? are they dumb too? No, they do it to try to save others in danger.

Novo

Blicky I'm not getting into that "discussion" where you repeatedly call me (and other ex- and still serving service persons) dumb because it's pointless and fruitless.

But we'll both remember that it was the dummies of years gone by who gave up their lives (volunteers AND conscripts) to allow us to have that pointless circular argument.

I'm not dumb for signing up - I joined military intelligence exactly to prevent the kind of things that might have happened had, for example, the 3rd Shock Army (based in the eastern part of this country) received orders to go over the inner German border with their tanks.

*********

Perhaps if idealistic people like me who did their job proberly were still around the famous "dossier" might have had better information in it...

Anyway. To get back to Novo's point. It isn't the war or the politicians or even the Generals that anyone is talking about here. It's Tommy.

Having been around Squaddies for a large part of my life I can tell anyone who will care to listen that they are the same as everyone else. Some read the Telegraph and follow their shares. Others read the Stun and only care about and beer. Some join for a trade, some for the comradeship and some as a way of seeing the world. Some play rugby for most of their career and do very well thank you very much (yes, Rory, I'm looking at you ) My PTI when I was a wee soldier-lady was Kris Akabussi.

They do a hard job and are roundly abused by many. What's all that about?

I didn't notice so many of them being abused when they stepped in to allow the firefighters to strike. I well remember them driving ambulances, and I am very sure that should the refuse collectors (or whatever they are called now) really not step up to the plate, the soldiers will be taking care of that too.

Even the fundie christians can love the sinner and hate the sin, after all.

I suppose soldiers here are facing the same problems US soldiers who fought in Vietnam did
They're fighting an unpopular war that the populace doesn't support
Easier to pretend the war is nothing to do with us, its being fought by 'them' as if we had nothing to do with it
As for soldiers pay the British army has always recruited a lot of its troops from areas where the army is a better career than anything the local area has to offer. They pay the measley amounts they do because they can get away with it (same as any other employer would if they could)

Do you not understand Sho? They're doing something Blicky doesn't like and as such aren't even worthy of basic human compassion!

Myself, I view them in the same way as I view people like refuse collectors and toilet cleaners. It's a job I'd hate to do, but without someone volunteering to do it we'd all be up to our ankles in shit.

The problem with Iraq/Afghanistan is it is a war with nebulous aims, launched on the basis of lies, with no clearly marked finishing line.

Compare and contrast with the Falklands. A war with a defineable start, a clear aim and a quantifiable result. The armed forces went out as a block and (largely) returned as one. It was thus possible to welcome back our people with street parties, parades and due pomp & ceremony.

With Iraq/Afghanistan, our troops come back in isolated units a few hundred at a time, whilst the bulk remain at the front. It's not really possible to have a big parade for the Black Watch (say), whilst the Greenjackets are still dodging suicide bombers.

More worrying are the recent comments of General Dannat, when he said the army was becoming less representative of the society it leaves behind. Whereas the army believes implicitly in honour, personal sacrifice and clear moral duties, these are qualities disdained by many civilians; as Blicky has amply demonstrated. How long can the forces keep inculcating these values amongst recruits who increasingly are unfamiliar with them?

If the "me, me, me" generation triumphs, ultimately we will see the end of the armed forces. When that happens, we can say goodbye to liberalism.

Democracy isn't free.

I don't fully agree. Two options seem possible:

1) Better pay and conditions, thereby not just recruiting on the basis of altruism/desire for adventure/desperation/other motives that apply today. If the UK army paid Blackwater rates of pay, I would suggest that the recruitment gap would evaporate rapidly.

2) Scale down to a more modest level of ambition. Belgian/NL/German/Japanese armies are quite adequate for protecting the national territory, plus a little light peacekeeping. Elite units can even manage (just) Afghanistan type work. It just means that Iraq type adventures are out of the question.

sprout

"Elite units can even manage (just) Afghanistan type work."

Jeez man, the entire Soviet army couldn't manage Afghanistan!

We actually need more troops in Afghanistan than we need in Iraq at the moment, there's no way that a small force, how ever good it may be trained, is going to make the slightest difference in that country (although to be honest, looking back at the first line of my post, I'm not so sure *any* size of force is going to make much difference!)

we've never been able to "manage" Afghanistan. I don't know why anyone ever thinks anyone would be able to "manage" it. The Sovs gave it a good go but... well, I can't speak for the soldiers they sent there, but i know about the ones who were close to us and they were as demotivated and dispirited a bunch of folk you could ever meet.

Conscription is ok, but ... The German army don't make a contribution (IMO) commensurate to the size and income of the country. And that is for various reasons which we all know about. But there is a stigma attached to actually wanting to go into their army as a professional which is hard to describe. And I don't want to get into mud-slinging but Blicky's attitude is fairly typical.

The professional part of the German Army does very well though but it's not big enough.

If we just cut our own forces down to a core of professionals - they would all be special forces and paras and marines. Only short-term soldiers would sign up for the Logistics corps, because that's not a soldiering job for most of the time. The British forces are stretched alarmingly thin now and it is difficult to see how it can change without a complete about turn of attitude on the part of the politicians as to how they are renumerated for their work. One thing the American forces really have going for them is the college credits programme - that would be one sort of incentive that i would have definitely loved to have had.

And sorry, I hadn't realised we were talking about "welcome back" parades - I agree that is unfeasable and not practical, and I wonder if the returning troops really like things like that (except in the case of Falklands type things) Parades like that, after all, require a lot of polishing, pressing and marching around.

I often wonder why seemingly rational people assume that anyone in a unform is a facist-pig or psycopath. I have met very very few of either sort in the forces - more outside of it.

For my part, I can say that I don't like the way that soldiers are treated, just as I don't like the way that many people in low paid, low status jobs are treated. They're treated awfully, and they're asked to risk their lives for causes which they may not believe in. That's a pretty awful situation for them. I would absolutely be happy if they were - for example - paid more, or given better quality housing. You could probably finance a pay raise for the lowest paid parts of the army by buying one less aeroplane every year, or by paying the upper echelons less. (OK, maybe an ignorant comment. My point is that I would be happy for the individual soldiers to be paid more, but I don't want the army as a whole eating up more of the budget, they get more than enough already.)

On the other hand, I can understand why people feel a bit uneasy about people who have decided to join the army. I appreciate that at certain times, it's absolutely essential to have an army to defend the country. But in practice, we haven't been in that situation for an awful long time, and what the army really does - not their decision - is a lot of meddling in other countries, such as the Afghanistan or Iraq invasions and occupations. When you choose to join the army, it must occur to you that mostly you'll be involved in the bad stuff, and only in a very unlikely scenario will you be actually defending the country. That makes the decision a somewhat dubious one. I'm not going to go all the way and say I think that the choice to join the army is a bad one, because people have very complex reasons and motivations, but given the above, it's a decision that would make me somewhat uneasy about a person. That's very much not the same thing as to "assume that anyone in a unform is a facist-pig or psycopath".

All that said - if you're going to have an army, the soldiers in it should be treated properly by the state, just as any employee of the state should be treated properly (and for that matter, anyone at all should be treated properly by the state, by their employers, etc.).

"it's absolutely essential to have an army to defend the country. But in practice, we haven't been in that situation for an awful long time"

An awful long time? We're not even up to twenty years according to my watch... Unless the very real prospect of the Cold War going hot didn't count for some strange reason.

If the Cold War had gone hot, having an army would have made no difference at all to anyone. There's nothing that even the most well trained army can do about an arsenal of thousands of nuclear weapons.

You know, there's very little point in completely irradiating the vast tracts of land you're aiming to invade. A Soviet attack on the West wouldn't necessarily have led to Western Europe being attacked with Nuclear weapons. Mainly because the USA couldn't attack the Soviet Army in-theatre, and the Soviets wouldn't attack targets they wanted to occupy. Vast tracts of the USA and USSR would've been radioactive slag, but the bits with armies/allies on would probably have been relatively untouched.

There's a good counterfactual about it somewhere. I can try and dig it out if you want?

Why did I use vast tracts twice? I've never used that phrase before...

Blicky does actually have a point. From a selfish point of view, going into the Forces is stupid. You get paid badly to do things you don't like and have no say in.
From a point of view where other people matter as much as oneself, going into the Forces makes a great deal of sense, for the reasons that have been pointed out.
Whether you should join up depends on how important your survival is next to the safety and freedom of others. There are excellent personal reasons for staying a civilian, so Blicky's view, while unpleasant, isn't illogical.

When one of the cavalry gets off their high horses and takes a closer look they might notice that i have never called soldiers dumb.

I have repeatedly, (which I thought might have clued them in, but not it seems) that signing away your freedom of choice to a system whose leadership changes which means that you might find yourself ordered to do something abhorent to you is dumb. It the signing up is a dumb move.

Now Im sure you can all point to choices in your life where you look back and think I did well there and others where you think if I had my time again I might make a smarter choice there.

I have never questioned the soldiering skills, honour or integrity of any single or specific group of soldiers, but Sho said this:

"Perhaps if idealistic people like me who did their job proberly were still around the famous "dossier" might have had better information in it...

Im not against honour, Im not against valour, but when the honour and sense of duty of two countries generation of young people is exploited for waging war that is vile.

I havent said I find soldiers vile.

Now im off for a bit I might comment some more if any has something interesting to say or if you have any points about what Ive said rather than what you imagine I have said.

one love

I come form a Garrison town that is also a major naval port, Plymouth, and am something of a . Consequently I do have mixed emotions about such things.

Lots of my pals are in the services and I do feel for way they are often treated and the equipment they get. I know for one that I would not risk my life for the kinda money they get. A good pal of mine who left my call centre to become a Royal Marine actually took a big pay cut?!?!?!? And I do monkey work. .

On the other hand surely most people who sign up know what it entails, and it is not a new thing that un-popular foriegn misadventrues causes problems when they are not clearly a sucess. This has been going on since the menfolk of tibe ug to a kicking after oging after tribe og!

The truth is different ocnflicts are bound to elicit different reactions in the population and we are blind if we think this is not going to happen.

Dogster said much of what I was going to say.

Careers in the military are an odd thing. I once met a police marksman and we got talking about ethical issues (for reasons I won't go into) and he was very interested in how ethical issues and training in ethics might help his control room staff make better decisions. His example was being on airport security and being told that a child was wearing a suicide bomb harness. He was interested in how sure control would have to be before giving him the order to fire. (This was before de Menezies was killed).

For him, the ethical issue was not whether he should follow the order or not, but whether the order should be given in the first place. At first I thought this was an abdication of moral responsibility for his actions - "just following orders" is not an acceptable defence. But then I thought about it a bit more, and realised that the whole system depends on him doing as he's told, more or less without question. He's on guard duty, so he can't do the intelligence analysis or weigh up the pros and cons. He just has to put his faith in his commanders and do as he's told, instantly and without question, obeying any lawful order.

And the whole military needs to be like that. We need them to have independence and initiative to be effective soldiers, and enough of a sense of moral independence not to obey unlawful orders and to keep to international rules of war, but to be able to follow orders in the field and orders in general without question - to accept that moral responsibility passes to our political leaders, and to the electorate.

I don't think I agree with the idea that signing up for war is honourable and valiant. Perhaps this is an attitude born of always having lived in peace. I certainly hope that the time won't come again when that attitude has to change for people. Anyway, I feel that if people join the army for moral reasons, out of some feeling of responsibility, in these times, well, they're probably misguided.

Nonetheless I feel that, while the government are recruiting people to be soldiers, they owe those soldiers a certain duty of care. Moreover, any anti-war protestors who may target returning soldiers are picking their fights and targets poorly. It can become a sort of unwarranted pack rudeness.