Excuse me

Recently Wikilinks.org released a video showing an Apache helicopter firing into a group of people in 2007. Some are armed, but two are Reuter's journalists. The link follows: (though this version of the video also has a dramatic introduction and summary to appeal to the emotional aspect of the event.

I have read comments from a number of other sites/blogs, both for and against. Frankly I'm disturbed. For the same reasons the anti-war crowd is, but also for the same reasons the anti-government and pro-military people are. The US military being what it is, is a way to train already cruel teenagers (just look at high school really) into disciplined killing machines. Very cool, well dressed killing machines with some really cool equipment. They sign up for a variety of reasons; honor, duty, money, violent pathology, education. And they serve an essential function in the unfortunate world created by the human condition.

The anti-military people say things like "if they were really fighting for freedom from oppression they would refuse to follow these kinds of orders." or how "they are psychopaths who love murder." The truth there is the same as any other profession, you listen to the experienced people, you follow direction and if you like your job, or are at consumed by it 24/7 the way these men and women are, you enjoy a job well done. With any sufficient familiarity to a function you get better at it, it bothers you less, and you enjoy doing it right. Being a garbage man is gross, but I got used to the smell and enjoyed pulling pranks revolving around rotting food, same deal, smaller scale.

I can agree that the training these kids have turn them into killing machines, but I don't begrudge them that. I do judge the bureaucratic policies that let these men and women serve for days at a time, for years at a time, with rare trips home, poor living conditions, and a lack of moral support. The BBC likes to talk about how much we revere our military here in the US, but the truth is that a lot of our civilians do (past service or no), but the people who get to make the decisions about where and how we deploy our forces around the world are missing large portions of the big picture. Warmongers are nearly always cowards, draft dodgers, or people who just never served or served but never fought(Cheney, Johnson, Clinton, George W. Bush among others).

I guess this is where the anti-government feelings settle in. I believe in the use of force, in having a large military that can be used for offense as well as defense. That is not how we are structured anymore, our deployments are overseas, our heavy divisions are overseas, our principle air bases and sea bases are overseas. In the case of invasion we have the National Guard (underfunded, lacking in training, and presently being deployed in rotation overseas), the police (not trained to repel anything and is having problems with the invasion of violent crime regardless), and the civilian militia (mocked in the media and constantly under attack by the ultra-progressive left). This is, of course, not the military's fault, or at the very least, not wholly. For years they were told, "use your budget or lose it" in very specific regards to material and research and development. Soldiers' pay was a background concern (making for ever decreasing education grants, pensions, benefits and living conditions (though the mid 70s were still the worst). I am getting off target: the military is the way it is because of bureaucrats (the cause of so many modern problems, I suggest you read Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies). The bidding process, the training process, the funding process all got out of control. This has nothing to do with the video, or the event, but it has everything to do with why we are even in Iraq, why we have such awesome toys for the military to use, and why we have such a high civilian casualty rate and one of the highest rates of friendly fire in a modern western military.

With a large standing army, there is an urge to use it. That the hammer will crush opposition and that force can end conflict. We know, at least in this new century, that this isn't the case. Which means the massively expensive organism that was created in case of another world war, bloated by a need to fund American companies, and wastefully spent to bankrupt the Russians is being used to fight people with little more than a third grade education and homespun clothes. Our soldiers are too expensive to risk fighting on the ground, too outnumbered to even try, and frankly we value human life quite a bit more than our erstwhile enemies. So we use helicopters, planes, drones, missiles and raids with long range visuals, unclear intel, bad intel, or just over stressed or over eager operators. It's a lose lose for the military in the eyes of the ever flighty and fickle American public. Either we risk Our Soldiers' Lives, or we kill the "poor ignorant savages who just want to live in peace."

I am personally of a mixed mind of this, I don't really agree with our Persian Gulf endeavors, or even with our operations in Afghanistan. I think we are there and it's important to do it right before leaving, but we probably shouldn't have gone in (I was all for it in 2001). Not because I think it was a waste of time, or even that it wasn't worth doing; because we moved the focus away from Home. It's been gone so long that our domestic policies are in shambles. The bureaucrats once again spun us a new conflict to prevent us from noticing the ax above our heads.

Again, I ramble. My points beyond "we are being screwed by our government, who is betraying what the country is founded upon," is that this mockery of liberty and freedom is still being bled for by high school football players and college students. Aggressive, sleep deprived, trained and heavily equipped children who follow the orders of a civilian government that appears to care little or nothing about WHY we keep fighting so long as we do. The GOP will refer to them as "defending our freedom and serving our nation, keeping it safe from terrorists on home soil" drawing attention to heroes and heroic deeds. This is a job better suited to our constantly embarrassed intelligence community, who seem to have the inability to adapt to the new war (partially the fault of the people who seem to be screaming bloody murder about civilian deaths Human Intelligence [spies] was killed during the Clinton years because it dealt with unsavory characters. No shit, bad guys talk to bad guys. So congress and the president decided to go more heavily with Signal Intelligence [wire taps, email monitoring, rendering]). The Democrats refer to the military as "men and women serving our country and protecting our freedom." They draw the focus to suffering families and crippled veterans. The far left purely point out the destruction of property, the devastation of lives and the violence of these action. They talk of bloodthirsty murderers who go out of their way to ruin the lives of peaceful people who, if they weren't being shot at by the army, would love to give us all hugs and blow jobs just to let them have our freedom to sue people for calling us names (a right protected by the first amendment) or to take away their ubiquitous AK-47s to keep them safe (a right protected by second amendment, which guarantees the first).

The honest to god truth why horrible things happen to people in other countries has nothing to do with our military. It happens because our civilian government wants them to. Because Congress wants them to. Not always because they feel its the best option (but the most public), but because of campaign donations(or backroom promises), or a fear of being called unamerican for not supporting our troops in an ongoing conflict (which used to be fine, its called a conscientious objector. In my case, I object to the half arsed way we are doing said conflict) , or for doing anything that the public does not want (public opinion being what it is, would require us to invade and retreat at least 4 times a week). And the public has no idea what it wants (as proven by the last 5 presidential elections with 50/50 splits). The only people with enough information to make an informed decision rarely do, they're too busy worrying about re-election to actually read what they are signing, much less to actually sit down and plan our domestic, fiscal and foreign policies. We are going bankrupt to placate the "conservatives" who have served in the military, while stabbing them in the back by using the stick unwisely, illegally, wastefully and idiotically. And we are going bankrupt to placate the "liberals" who have been screwed by previous administrations (they are poor due to free trade when it should be regulated, and regulation when it should be free) while stabbing them in the back by using the carrot irresponsibly, wastefully, and worst of all, scornfully (these people cannot take care of themselves, WE must do it for them!).

Stop blaming the military, blame the government. Don't blame the president, or his party, blame them both. And for god's sake, stop voting on what they say, but by what they do. Not what they say they are doing, but what the bills actually say.