Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

Good post.

Do you blame him, or the pool of shit he was swimming in? Or both?

It's certainly not just him. No doubt that war can be brutal for those in it.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

There's a movie I'd like to see.

TM

He did an article on some of his experiences for West Point's alumni magazine, and sent me the clipping (yes, an actual dead-trip clipping!) a few years back. I ought to tell my sister, who likes to hang around some movie types, to get it from him and give a run at it as a script idea.

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

Dumbo Drop. We see the movies we would pay to see.

Actually, this is not true. We see the movies studio executives think we'll pay to see. I read a whole article on how random it is when a movie (that doesn't have a kajillion dollar budget) does well. They never know when something will or will not do well. Maybe they should hire someone from Big Data.

TM

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

dude someone who can enroll at school has the option or, well, enrolling at school.

Everyone has the option of enrolling at school. If you have a heart rate in America, you can take a class in something, with govt loan money.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Adder

Any militarism is almost always worthy of criticism.

I really don't think we do.

1. Agreed
2. War involves doing some awful, illegal shit. The kind of mind that will do the work you and I wouldn't usually isn't a necessarily sane one. It's hardly surprising many guys in Kyle's line of work hold some pretty fucked up points of view. They work in a profession that arguably one has to be kind of nuts to enter, and if they weren't nuts going in, they become so after being in war. We need people willing to put themselves in that crucible. That some will do awful shit is not unexpected. Cost of war.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

What I said had nothing to do with policy. It was about the boneheads who glorify Chris Kyle. If that's criticizing militarism, I can live with that. I said that most soldiers don't deserve to be lumped with Chris Kyle.

A lot them would see being lumped with him an honorable thing. That's a fucked up worldview, but as much as you and I may not like thugs, they're a necessary evil.

Glorifying Kyle or his kind is silly, I agree. But noting that we do need them, and they serve a purpose, is not glorifying them. This was, I believe, Icky's original point. War is kill or be killed. Having lunatics killing innocent Iraqis is indefensible. ...But if there are guys like him assassinating radical clerics who support ISIS or Al Queda, and naively seeing their work as a black and white thing, I'm alright with it.

What side of what coin am I not seeing? I'm not pretending Chris Kyle was a saint.

You're not acknowledging Kyle was a necessary evil.

If you are saying that we need a military that is ready to kill people, I don't disagree. But if you are saying that we need a military full of Chris Kyles, I think you're wrong, and I think your adopting a pose that has nothing to do with what kind of soldiers we need. The guy I've been hanging out with if full of interesting things to say about the military and the recent conflicts, and much of it is critical. I don't get the mindset that the military deserves unthinking support.

I've had the same experience with military people I know who've seen time in Iraq and Afghanistan (and Vietnam, fwtw). These people were critical of the bases for the wars, their length, and how they were fought. But this is just talk, after the fact. In the mess of a firefight, where the grey areas and equivocations evaporate quickly, you want a true believer like Kyle around.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

War involves doing some awful, illegal shit. The kind of mind that will do the work you and I wouldn't usually isn't a necessarily sane one. It's hardly surprising many guys in Kyle's line of work hold some pretty fucked up points of view. They work in a profession that arguably one has to be kind of nuts to enter, and if they weren't nuts going in, they become so after being in war. We need people willing to put themselves in that crucible. That some will do awful shit is not unexpected. Cost of war.

Agree completely, but (a) we shouldn't glorify the Chris Kyles of the world -- they are the collateral damage of going to war, and (b) when we decide to use military force, we are decided not only to kill foreigners and blow up their stuff, but also to turn more Americans into Chris Kyles, and we ought to own up to this. Pretending that he is a saint is an exercise in massive denial that's not fair to those who serve.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by taxwonk

A lot of them computers seem to blow up under Humvees and fall on soldiers.


BTW, I was having a very, very bad day Friday and I said something to you that was undeserved. I'm sorry.

I hadn't noticed, but really - there's no need to apologize. You realize we're probably on the same page. I've seen several people with serious heart ailments and MS get held up in the disability claim process while people I know were embellishing, if not outright bullshitting, about alleged inability to work sucked up benefits. That's wrong.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I hadn't noticed, but really - there's no need to apologize. You realize we're probably on the same page. I've seen several people with serious heart ailments and MS get held up in the disability claim process while people I know were embellishing, if not outright bullshitting, about alleged inability to work sucked up benefits. That's wrong.

I'm sure I said some really awful shit, too.

No apologies here, but feel free to feed me my own shit in the future.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Agree completely, but (a) we shouldn't glorify the Chris Kyles of the world -- they are the collateral damage of going to war, and (b) when we decide to use military force, we are decided not only to kill foreigners and blow up their stuff, but also to turn more Americans into Chris Kyles, and we ought to own up to this. Pretending that he is a saint is an exercise in massive denial that's not fair to those who serve.

I couldn't agree more. The notion that our soldiers invading an innocent nation like Iraq are somehow victims when Iraqis fight back, and heroes when they kill Iraqis indiscriminately, is beyond stupid. First, the USA is not always on the side of good. We are on our side, fighting for what benefits us, which is not an automatic synonym for "good." Second, the Iraqis who fought back are not evil. ISIS, which grew into a massive power after we left Iraq, is evil. It kills innocent Iraqis, journalists, and just about everyone else with whom it comes into contact. But the Iraqi soldiers (formal and militia) - even the worst Baathists who supported Hussein - were not evil merely because they fought back an invader. When you invade a non-aggressor country and people shoot at you, they have a right to do so. You as the invader have assumed that risk. And we at home may not judge forces defending their own nation as "evil" or "wrong" or anything else. They are soldiers, no different than the ones we sent over to their sovereign territory. And to the extent they are being forced to take up arms to defend their own land, they are a hell of a lot closer to heroic than the invaders compelling them to do so.

Why the average American doesn't grasp this irrefutable logic confuses the fuck out of me. I'm guessing it's because, silly religious sorts we remain, every military endeavor is couched as a battle of morally right versus morally wrong.

(Afghanistan, OTOH, is a different story. They poked us first and assumed the risk by harboring AQ. ISIS is also distinguishable because they are objectively evil.)

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Totally classic. Santorum finds the Pope tough to listen to. Yeah, so was Christ you bozo.

[taxwonk]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Totally classic. Santorum finds the Pope tough to listen to. Yeah, so was Christ you bozo.

You do realize that when you give it a name you sustain it?

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Jobs like this are particularly problematic. A lot of them are dead-ends within the military. You don't really want someone who is trained as an unfeeling automaton of an assassin to command broader troop formations, and generally moving into senior command ranks requires that (or sometimes a pentagon desk job). Some people get pulled out and retrained, but most languish. So besides all the problems around how you've been trained and what you've been trained to do, there are limited rewards for doing these jobs well, so you're going to start getting pretty frustrated with the military itself as you keep doing this.

Then think on this: as independent contractors, after leaving the military, these folks are in demand and get paid well.

They also get recruited to other parts of the Government: CIA, NSA, Secret Service, DIA, etc.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan

They also get recruited to other parts of the Government: CIA, NSA, Secret Service, DIA, etc.

We should get them all trained to do more useful things for society back home, like maybe have them all become DJs. Know anyone who could take on that training?

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by taxwonk

You do realize that when you give it a name you sustain it?

Look, when I see a CiNO, I call him a CiNO