Norm_uk

I don't think I have condoned "hero" worship so not sure where you got that from.
The police protect the public and the military protect the nation. If they can only protect from invasions I imagine you would have been against declaring war on Nazi Germany in 1939 because they didn't pose a direct threat until 1940-1941?
If you knew about modern western militaries you'd know they are not obliged to carry out orders which are clearly immoral, illegal or that would put them in unnessesary danger. Few western militaries expect blind obedience. A smart, thinking soldier is far more useful to their commanders than a mindless idiot. Still follow orders seems to equate some sort of mental illness in the minds of many people today - regardless of who is giving them and who is following them.
I've never been to Goa so cannot really comment. I'd like to have some examples of where the IDF have forced their soldiers to shoot little kids though...

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Paracletus

Well..Germany started invading others and we're clearly a distabilizing and aggressive force in Europe at the time..so No, I would have supported any offensive moves against Germany at this time. My point was more the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions, which have not made me feel any safer. North Korea however, I would justify an invasion of. As we have and are still witnessing, people will stand up onc they have had enough. Foreign intervention for regime change is a failed policy, and will continue to fail.

Also, didn't mean to insinuate you were pro hero worship, I was just a bit riled with the use of 'serious job they should be proud of.' which can be applied to most professions I feel. Threat of death or not. A job is a job, and a certain work ethic is to be expected. Judging intelligence by the boys from the US military I have met here in Bahrain alone hardly gives me confidence the military has a significant portion of intelligent applicants wishing to serve the country. This has been generally true in the case of the brits I have met to serving time, and I can't see how it would be very different with other countries, unless their militaries are so small they are able to recruit only the best applicants.

And as for not following orders blindly, to use an extreme case, I'd point out Bradley Manning. Whether what he did was right or not, it apears he felt there was a lot of immoral things going on and decided to be a whistleblower. Poor guy now that uncle sam has decided to do as they wish with him. Do you agree he should be prisoned and court martialied or did he do the right thing in his own mind, which surely, is all we have to rely on.

And for the instance of my accusations against the IDF, I merely rely on information I've been given from good friends of mine who have served time in the Israeli army. Listening to a person, barely old enough to drink legally, in tears, as he has killed some rock throwing kids is a rather disturbing event. I do entirely understand that civilian and innocent deaths are to be expected in a modern day battlefield, but the IDF use threats of rocks and terrifying home made rockets grounds for helicopter gunships, tanks and heavy artillery. I say the IDF should scrap its military and buy the same terrifying rockets from Hamas and fire them back. They afre clearly superior to advanced military equipment. I have always been pro palestinian, so do forgive my bias. I've infact yet to meet a single Israeli who supports this foreign policy. Might be the circles I roll in, but it speaks volumes.

Norm_uk

I think the problem with going into Iraq and Afghanistan is that most of the nastiest people have simply moved to Yemen and Pakistan. There is an argument for stabilising both countries but how we go about that is a different issue. I certainly don't buy the excuse that we should change our foreign policy to avoid being murdered by terrorists whose ideology hates us and wants us to die or submit/convert anyway.

I know a number of military service personnel and found them to be very courteous and respectful people. I admit most of the people I know well are officers so of course there's a different level there but even the American military personnel I've met tended to be well spoken, well mannered and of average or above average intelligence. There are idiots in every organisation of course, but any good military will spend time trying to get rid of them if they cannot be built up and turned around...more so than in most companies I've worked in I'm sure!

The trouble with Manning is that he's not gone through proper channels and has thus breached his obligations as a serviceman. There are processes to have your voice heard rather than blabbing to the media.

Without evidence of the IDF being given orders to deliberately target civillians I have to take your comments with a pinch of salt, sorry. You're entitled to be pro or against whoever you like of course but I don't think the IDF is obliged to lay down it's arms and pick up rocks when people throw rocks at them (rocks can kill as easily as bullets if they hit the right place). If Arabs peacefully protested (Gandhi style) they would achieve a lot more than they do sending suicide bombers and random rocket attacks into Israel, forcing half the country to live in shelters.

In any case the Palestinian issue could have been solved in the 1950s if the Arabs had done what Israel did to the 900,000 Jews around the middle east who were expelled from their homes (some had lived there longer than Arabs had writing, Baghdad for example- where Jews had lived since the Babylonian era) and were absorbed by Israel or emigrated elsewhere. We don't hear them calling for compensation for being ejected, we don't hear them demanding Arabs be killed for what they did. Just as we don't hear many Germans today who were repatriated to Germany from Eastern Europe after WWII, despite many of them never having been to Germany before. Why is that? They were equal in number to the Arabs who left Israel.

The Arabs living in Israel who were asked to leave by their Arab neighbours who tried to wipe Israel out (and failed) were not taken in by their neighbours but instead were labelled Palestinians and used in a proxy war against Israel ever since by their own people.

"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism." PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein quoted in 1977.

I don't think Israel is perfect at all but I think the situation has been made far, far worse by these sorts of people who have created a generation of hatred and lies in order to push their agenda of continued Arab dominance of the Middle East despite history showing us the region used to have dozens of ethnic groups, countries, nations and cultures.

Anyway, we can start a new thread on this or go to PM - back to Wootton Basset

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seven seas

maybe they do it willingly?

Paracletus

I quite like that governments are being embarrassed. I have no faith in our dear leaders. Responsible politics and all that..

I can find some stronger views than this.."kill the Jews wherever you find them" - Haj Mohammed Effendi Amin el-Husseini (Grand Mufti of Jerusalem 1921 to 1948)

I'll leave the rest for another time.

Military graveyards are extremely depressing places to visit..but on the upside, it seems most of the dead now have names..

Norm_uk

Like their neighbours who are raising their children with high values like murdering babies in their beds and being a martyr is the best you can be?

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Norm_uk

I draw the line when the security and safety of people or our competitiveness is at risk. I also think we're the best of an overall terrible bunch so limit my criticism at policies which can be changed rather than whistle blowing - which smacks more of ego and self-importance rather than trying to raise concerns about bad policies.

There's a lot of self-hate in the West today from people who offer no solutions and just keep pointing fingers. I am all for self-examination (which the West does more than anyone else without a doubt) but prefer constructive critique over whistle blowing.
He paraphrased that from the Koran or Hadith - haven't time to look it up I know all about Amin el-Husseini though, the mentor to Arafat, friend of the Third Reich, overseer of the set up Muslim SS divisions in the Balkans...

Depressing indeed.

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shiva

Heroism in the forces is no longer a case of a plucky tommy charging a hord of Nazi machine gun nests for king and country but it still exists.

Regardless of why they are there and the political motives there are still some outrageous moments of heroism where individuals take incredibly selfless action to save the lives of their friends.

Regardless of whether you believe in the war, regardless of the merits of armed service it takes a certain type of individual to just dismiss these acts as part of a job.

Granted a lot of those passing through wootton basset were merely unlucky but a great deal went far and beyond their job remitt and sacrificed their own lives to save others. When it's a fireman or policeman we call them a hero, why is it that we deny soldiers the same honorific?

Examples abound but Johnson Beharry is a good starting point

Norm_uk

We deny soldiers the same honour (or rather some of us do) because they are often acting under orders to carry out policies we might not agree with. Couple that with the massive distrust of government and a slow decline in nationalism in many parts of the west (mostly due to the consistent yet fallacious link to Nazism and war) and it's easy to see why most people are prouder of their sports team than their military and country.

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shiva

Yes the frequent use of the word hero when applied to sports stars is a tad depressing really

Norm_uk

I was discussing this over drinks with a German and a Chinese yesterday evening and the common view of westerners, particularly Brits is that we are spineless, arrogant and care more about two holidays a year and our sports teams than we do about our culture, country or nation.

And that was just my view

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seven seas

I bet they loved it when you said how Britain was being polluted by their cultures. People have been moaning about the decline in language skills for decades. Yet English is still the dominant and most widely-spoken language globally. I would expect this to be very comforting, except I know you'd rather be semi-hysterical about the sorry state of something or other. Apart from your two friends (were they among the minority in their countries that feel the same about their national identity being eroded by foreigners? They have those everywhere), you should feel at home here, with xenophobic rants all over about how the local culture is being swamped by western behaviours.


Neighbours? Don't you mean their prisoners whose plight is an embarassment? And are you seriously trying to excuse IDF brutality by saying it's slightly better than Hamas's depraved lunacy? Standards are supposed to be high, and going up, but your ideal resembles a limbo bar.

Oh that's right, you subscribe to the 'race to the bottom' pragmatic view.

Norm_uk

One of them is my best friend and the other is my fiance...but hey, don't let facts get in the way of a good personal jab and a rant.

It would seem the broken record is back, dragging up things from other threads they failed to respond to without making everything personal if they responded at all..

I don't think any view I express, even a tongue in cheek post that isn't directed at you, can be understood by you in any context other than "lump with racist & thugs and then reply with personal jabs..."

Good thing we're not talking about Islam or UK immigration at all isn't it? Otherwise it would be another closed thread due to it getting personal.

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PS: You didn't mention my apparent BNP sympathies yet - you're getting sloppy. And surely drinking with a German confirms my SS aspirations no?

seven seas

Don't let facts get in the way of a rant? FACT- English isn't an endangered language, but don't let that fact get in the way when you want to have an old-codger rant.

BTW Even if the people you were speaking to were your one friend and your fiance, they still have feelings. So, how did they take to your views about them polluting your culture/language? Or are you gonna run away from this question again?

Yeah, coz I'm the one who keeps running away from questions.

Yeah, I am the one who brought up how the UK is going to the dogs because nobody cares about British language and culture, right? Another closed thread? Big deal. And I don't decide those things anyway. Perhaps they closed it because of your unethical beliefs/ethical people phoney debacle?

No, I didn't mention them. But I will mention again that you ran away from that question.

Norm_uk

I'm not going to feed the troll this time, sorry.

This is based on a tongue in cheek post to another forum member and you're trying the keyboard warrior thing again.

I've offered you the chance to PM me a few times and that offer still stands. You're clearly more interested at attempted denigration of a person in front of an audience than you are with exploring issues, seeing where we disagree and why or debating anything.

The last thread was closed because of your personal attacks and my responses to your slander as everyone knows...I'm not going to be involved in that happening in this one. Find somewhere else to get your troll food from.

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