From Right to Left, a Vet's Perspective

I don't think it is controversial at all. His opinion sounds perfectly normal to me and it is refreshing to me in particular that he is smart enough to spot BS and seek out the truth. One item I'll never understand about fellow Infantryman however. There is this group of folks that goes through basic training or OSUT if you will and through all the weapons demonstrations, grenade throws, artillery demos, etc..........never dawns on them how random or destructive war is until after they deploy to the actual environment. Just blows my mind how that can possibly happen? What are they in denial through the training regimine? Anyhow, reads like he grew personally a lot during his time in both the Marines and in the Army......nothing wrong with that.

I remember one time on guard duty with another Infantryman. He just reported for guard duty, not a care in the world about what he was guarding or why.......he just wanted to get it over and done. I asked the SGT in charge to open the partially buried weapons bunker because I was curious what we were guarding and the SGT obliged (which was cool). It was about half the size of a regular COSTCO and in it stacked floor to ceiling on skids were White Phosphorus artillery shells. You should have seen the other Infantrymans eyes bug out. "Willy - P" you know what that shit does to people?" "Holy shit, look how much of it they have!!" He exclaimed. I think up until that time in Cold War Europe he had no fricken idea what he was there to prevent. He was living in a dream land where Army service was just another job. This guy went all the way through Infantry OSUT and a partial assignment at his first overseas unit and never really thought about reality. Like I said there is a group of people in the Infantry MOS like that and I just cannot understand how they process the training and not get it......until it hits them in the face.

I don't see anything controversial about this either, he has a good understanding of how things really work in this day and age. Given the influence and power of corporate money in both media and politics, I'm not sure a whole lot can be done until we get money out of politics and then bust up the major media empires.

Some great thoughts. Some great perspective. To be fair - the enemy has to be worth killing. If thousands of young kids face each other in trenches and all they see is themselves, then you get what happened in Christmas of 1914. And while all applaud the humanity of young boys playing soccer in no man's land, the officers knew truth. At some point in time, we're gonna have to load magazines, fix bayonets and kill these very boys our boys are playing with. So it is important for some demonization to take effect. If not, then you get 1914 Christmas all over again. Case in point would be Japan in 1942. The news papers were filled with atrocity after atrocity. And it needed to be done to get mom and pop sitting in anywhere USA to agree to send their son several thousand miles to the West to fight in some Godforesaken jungle.

But even more so, the death has to be horrible to the victim. The death experienced by Iraq in 1991 was "not so bad." This is borne out by the fact that they would again, be experiencing death in 2003. So one on the one hand, we shouldn't be Rotterdamning the place to death, we do also need to have the "beating" be severe enough to keep that enemy from needing to be beat again. Case in point would be Japan post 1945. Model citizens, aren't they? So while we should not be immune to the death we are creating, we do need to keep the death at such a level that its prevented in the future. The fact that America jumps so quickly into war is, I feel, a result of us not being bombed into oblivion. Remember, Pearl Harbor was part of Hawaii and Hawaii was not a state in 1941. Mainstream America has not suffered bombings, civilian deaths, starvation from merchant ship sinkings, etc. This needs to be understood as well.