The idea of entangling our military in Syria makes me nauseas [View all]

[Victor_c3]

I'm appalled at the idea of the Syrian regime using chemical weapons on civilians too, but I'm scared shitless of Syria turning into another mess like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Doesn't anyone remember that Sadam's use of chemical weapons on his own people in the past was one of the reasons that the bush administration used to justify the 2003 war in Iraq? Was that war and the estimated 100,000 - 1,000,000+ dead civilians and $1 trillion wasted worth it?

I made many of the points in this thread in a post that I made in another thread, but I thought it was worthwhile to post this as a thread in its own right. Anything war related tends to get buried in the rear echelons of this forum. Most people are happy to ignore war and don't want to talk about it.

Before anyone is eager to send our military to fight in anyone's mess we need to know exactly what it is we are sending our Soldiers into and we all need to own it. Unfortunately, that isn't the case. We'll rally at the inhumanity and cry for the use of deployment of our war machine to Syria for a week, the government will do it, then we'll forget about it when the season finale for dancing with the stars or the voice comes up. We as a country will forget about what is going on in Syria and glance over what our military is doing on the ground and how it is impacting our Soldiers.

War turns nice people into evil people. Having been through it first hand myself (I served as an Infantry Platoon Leader in Iraq for 13 months in Iraq in 2004) I've experienced it first hand. Once you start shooting and killing people, it gets easier to do. Once you find yourself comfortable with committing murder what do you suppose that does to a person's moral compass?

When we hear stories of Soldiers posing with bodies of Taliban fighters like they were hunting trophies or videos of Soldiers pissing on the dead surface, we shouldn't be shocked. It's not natural to kill anyone. Having been through that experience myself, it makes you feel like shit regardless of the circumstance or how "justified" you are told it is. And, as much as I like to think that I'm a good person, the honest truth is it only got easier to do it the more the war went on. As soon as you can find yourself easily committing the ultimate transgression what stops you from committing any others? I'm probably doing a great job getting myself the "DU biggest piece of shit" moniker, but the only reason I didn't piss on the body of or pose with the body of a person I killed was because I didn't think of it - and that is the honest truth.

I don't know exactly what circumstances would make war an appropriate option or what a justified military response would be. I'm in the throws of trying to figure out my own anti-war stance and a lot of my positions on the subject is contradictory. However, my biggest sticking point with war is that the media needs to stop sterilizing it. We as a country would be more opposed to war if we understood exactly what it entailed in its full detail. It's just like the average American eating meat. Since most of us are removed from the process that brings us meat, it is easy for us to eat. However, if we all had to go into our backyards and butcher our own cow and take its life with our own hands, I bet many people wouldn't be able to stomach it. The same holds true to war. It's easy to support a war when you are thousands of miles away and you see the clean shrink-wrapped version presented to you by the media but it isn't easy to support a war when you actually have the blood on your hands and you are involved in it.

The media needs to show the dead women and children and report all of the atrocities that happen. The media needs to show the flag draped coffins and the gory images of the mangled dead that is produced. If we can stomach making the decision to send troops into harms way, then we need to stomach the gory details of what the decision fully entails. I know that at some point I need to get over myself, but the personal pain and images that I endure as a result of my war time service needs to be on the conscious of every American who supported the war. Every American who supported the war should have a picture of a mangled child's dead body front and center in their living room. They should have to face that image constantly during every moment of their life and it should haunt them just as much as it haunts the Soldier who killed that child and the family that lost that child. When they are sitting on the floor opening birthday presents with their child on an otherwise happy day, images of a dying 10 year old with a sucking chest wound and his shocked 6 year old little brother and three handcuffed uncles should be front and center in their mind. The parent should have to look at their shocked 4 year old daughter and explain why they are crying on their birthday.

If it wasn't for the support for the war at home there wouldn't have been a war. Everybody would be hard pressed to support any war if they knew the full scope of the violence that will be committed in their name.