Panda Bear said:
Complete and utter horse****. My old platoon sergeant back when I was a Marine had won the silver star for attacking and killing six Viet Cong with nothing but his e-tool (a small shovel) after he ran out of ammo. That's courage.
A bunch of wanna-be hippies in a drum circles or spoiled leftist children of equally spoiled baby-boomers posturing and caterwauling, essentially sucking up to an enemy that would execute them as infidels if given the chance, is just pathetic.
I am sure my knowledge of history will be insulted here...
I still am having trouble with this idea of war and violence as always the more courageous option. I am sorry Panda, but not believing in individual wars in Vietnam or Iraq asolutely does not automatically make a person a spoiled, scared weeny unable to stand up for what they believe in.
I think it's valid to look at specific situations to decide your opinions about an individual war. To me, believing in every single war that has ever taken place, as you seem to do, shows just as little thought and backbone as believing that no war is ever justified.
If I can admit that at some times in human history war has been necessary (certainly it has), can you acknowledge that sometimes, the bigger, better, BRAVER person is the one who is brave enough to stare down his attackers, knowing their hatred for him, knowing their desire and ability to harm him and say, "you may hate me, you may push and provoke me, you may hurt me, you may kill me, but I will never lower myself to that level"?
I offer examples such as such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Mahatma Gandhi, the Lone Rebel at Tiananmen Square, Cesar Chavez, Lech Walesa, and Henry David Thoreau. These people never threw a punch, never fired a gun. But they stared down empires, challenged powerful governments, changed their nations, and changed history. They knew their lives were on the line, and in some cases ended because they believed the status quo was simply wrong, and they stood up for their beliefs in the face of a much stronger foe.
I hope that you can admit that those people displayed courage. If not, it's not worth talking anymore because we literally will not agree on a thing and never will.
If you are thinking, fine, those people are great, but virtually none of the whiny hippies crying about war will ever reach that level of courage, this is a more valid and interesting point, and one that, if pressed, I suppose I'd have to agree with. But I also submit to you that the very few of the people in support of the war, shrieking out like lunatics "yeah let's go kill the hajjis!" will ever enter this or any war, will never be under attack, will never fire a gun into human flesh. They display absolutely no more or no less courage than those sitting in a "drum circle," "caterwauling."
Please answer this question honestly: Do you think that the American military is infallible? Very few things are, if any. Even hard-line Catholics do not take the doctrine of papal infallibility to mean that the pope does not make mistakes or is without sin. If, somewhere down the line, somehow, a situation arises in which you happen to disagree with something the American military is doing, would you have the courage to say, "hang on a second, this is not right"? YES this absolutely DOES take courage. To me, not believing in every single war doesn't indicate fear. Taking the party line indicates fear. Refusing to question authority indicates fear.