Dying For Montenegro

[_Chap]

I sort of like Water Dog's sincerity. And when he says

A lot of conjecture that's above my pay grade.

I'll go along with that.

I'd like to add to that a little. In Water Dog, I think we can perhaps hear something of the voice of the soldier who is trained to fight, but gets little voice in where he is sent or what he does when he gets there (which is, by the way, pretty much the way it has to be). His loyalty is to his immediate group, and from time to time he is bound to ask, sometimes louder than others, why the hell his best buddies are getting killed and injured, and what is gained by that. What's it all for? Who's making these decisions and what good does it do?

If they didn't feel like that some of, or all of the time, they'd be sick bastards. In fact, I have rarely found serving soldiers, officers or enlisted men to be particularly enthusiastic about war in itself, even if they are proud about being good at their jobs. Sometime the alienation can be extreme.

There is a story from WWI Britain, when a conscientious objector was arrested for refusing to answer the draft, and the police sergeant informed him with some relish that he was to be put in the same cell as a bunch of soldiers on leave from the trenches who had been arrested for being 'drunk and disorderly' the night before. No doubt the sergeant thought he might have a hard time, and get beaten up in a way the sergeant might find satisfactory.

What actually happened was this, according to the account I heard:

Soldier to conscientious objector:
Wot you in for then, mate?

Conscientious objector:
(Draws deep breath) I refused to join the army because I think war is murder. (Prepares for the worst ...)

Soldiers:
Yeah, that's just wot it ****ing is!
****ing b****y murder, that's all!
You tell 'em, mate!
Stick at it!

And so on ...

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

I love that the board's pantaloon presumes to know the mind of a Soldier...

Cool.

- Doc

[_Morley]

It's not a world I envision, it's simply how the world is. Darwin and all that.

By that reasoning, shouldn't the US be taking over some of our weaker neighbors, too?

You're clearly unfamiliar with our domestic and foreign policies on a historical level. We're probably one of the worst offenders since before our Republic was even founded.

Thanks for the heads up. I'll try to read some history.


By that reasoning, our foreign policy should be based on a kind of Social Darwinism, right? We should continue our glorious past.

And we should allow others to do the same. Because it's natural.

That seems to be what Waterdog is saying.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Morley,

I have no idea what compels you to make an absurd statement or jump to a conclusion that would make even Greg Louganis envious, but I can tell you that the US government generally works toward its own interests, just like virtually every other government does.

????

Weird.

- Doc

eta: I also find it concerning you think yourself so amazing that you'd not "allow" another sovereign entity to function autonomously. Phew. That is hubris.

[_Morley]

Morley,

I have no idea what compels you to make an absurd statement or jump to a conclusion that would make even Greg Louganis envious, but I can tell you that the US government generally works toward its own interests, just like virtually every other government does.

????

Weird.

- Doc

eta: I also find it concerning you think yourself so amazing that you'd not "allow" another sovereign entity to function autonomously. Phew. That is hubris.

Have you followed this thread?

Or are you just responding to the last few posts?

[_Chap]

... the US government generally works toward its own interests ...

Let's try to make that a bit more exact, shall we?

... the US government generally works toward what those who wield power and influence at its upper levels consider to be an acceptable compromise between what they believe will keep themselves in power, and what they believe to be in the interests of the US as a whole. Very often they seem to have been wrong about one or both of these, particularly and most disastrously the latter ...

Of course the same can be said about many other governments. The difference is that if Montenegro makes a mistake about its national interests then (unless you agree with Trump's little fantasies), it's mostly only Montenegro that catches a cold.

[_Doctor Steuss]

Yep, those ones. The same boys that got us into Iraq. You know, the boys that get off on this crap and love to play spy games.

I thought that after the WMD snafu, there were new policies put in place to help prevent questionable intelligence from making its way to the top(?). Don't top dudes/dudettes now have to personally sign off and vouch for intel before it can be shared above certain levels?

Also, I don’t know that it’s particularly fair to impugn the current analysts/heads for what happened under a previous batch. Some of the same career people are still there, but there are also a lot of people who were trained/hired after those events.

I do admittedly have a gut-response bias though regarding people who work in the FBI and OIA.

[_Morley]

Morley,

I have no idea what compels you to make an absurd statement or jump to a conclusion that would make even Greg Louganis envious, but I can tell you that the US government generally works toward its own interests, just like virtually every other government does.

????

Weird.

- Doc

eta: I also find it concerning you think yourself so amazing that you'd not "allow" another sovereign entity to function autonomously. Phew. That is hubris.

Have you followed this thread?

Or are you just responding to the last few posts?

Doc- I may be misreading him, but I think Dog is arguing for an isolationist foreign policy. However awkwardly, I'm questioning the implications of said policy.

[_Morley]

I do admittedly have a gut-response bias though regarding people who work in the FBI and OIA.

yeah

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Doc- I may be misreading him, but I think Dog is arguing for an isolationist foreign policy. However awkwardly, I'm questioning the implications of said policy.

I think he's suggesting more of an America-first policy that probably walks back the State Department's overreach. If you look at the former Eastern Bloc countries that now are a part of NATO, want to join NATO, or are basically big-brothered in by NATO due to borders abutting you can understand why gelding Russia was the impetus behind Crimea, their current comments on Sweden & Finland, and their efforts to destabilize us through political machinations. What's the practical value, in 2018, of continuing to present an aggressive and hostile stance toward Russia where, if Ukraine is allowed to join NATO it'll most likely spark another invasion by Russian to take eastern Ukraine, and either dividing it like Germany was, or sparking all out war?

Do you want to spend another $4T and probably tens of thousands of lives on a NATO country that's no where near the North Atlantic? I have two girls serving in the Navy right now and I'd prefer they not die for another Iraq.

So. You know. Montenegro is just setup for the larger discussion about our future and whether or not you're willing to bleed when the US adds the Congo to NATO because it has yet another paranoid geopolitical aim to counter, say in this case, Chinese incursion into Africa. When is enough enough, and when do we stop shi ting out national treasury for other nations when we gots potholes ta fill n' crap?

- Doc