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Discussion about Marines and war and idiocy and buddha and stuff
ADMIN NOTE:
This thread was split off of another discussion, which went way off topic. The discussion has been split off to this thread, so if some of this doesn't make sense, please understand it is in the context of Sabine's friend who has decided to join the US Marines.....
--Brian
Sorry Zenmonk don't agree.
Everyone should be required to some kind of service for three years mandatory. Weather military or simply some forestry or social service organization to give evryone a truer sense of the reality of the nation and break the myopic tendency IMO.
This thread was split off of another discussion, which went way off topic. The discussion has been split off to this thread, so if some of this doesn't make sense, please understand it is in the context of Sabine's friend who has decided to join the US Marines.....
--Brian
zenmonk_genryu wrote:If he joined the Marines now - he's an idiot. You're better off without him.
Sorry Zenmonk don't agree.
Everyone should be required to some kind of service for three years mandatory. Weather military or simply some forestry or social service organization to give evryone a truer sense of the reality of the nation and break the myopic tendency IMO.
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Comments
I personnally think that it is not beyond our capacity to don UN peacekeepers emblems any second and just dig in and offer humanitarian assistance to help offer security without our own profits in mind. Doing the best for all concerned is the point isn't it? Not that we started this affair that way, but it is up to us to voice where we feel our best efforts lie.
If you don't participate in the process don't complain.
PS. Nice to hear your voice again.
It's not a question of politicising it, it's a statement of fact and reality. Like it or not, at some point or another, compassion or no compassion, we're all a link in the same chain....It all counts, every single little bit of it....
That's awfully harsh & a bit too sweeping of a statement from the limited information we have. While not much better, you could have said he is 'deluded' for going into the marines and explained what you meant by that. Sabine obviously has some serious feelings for him & seems to respect him, so it seems likely that this kind of statement is going to come across as an insult to her & him.
thanks & metta
_/\_
One of my aquaintance, having risen to colonel of his regiment, left after his term was up and 'retrained'. He is now a parish priest in London. When I asked him what was the similarity, what united the two ambitions, he replied: "A passion for justice." It has given me much to think about.
I don't think that this is the time or the place to rehearse the arguments. This young man has made a decision and, whatever we feel about it, he has the right to make it. For some young people, in both the UK and the US, the armed forces represent, once again, a way out of poverty and lack of opportunity. I am not suggesting that this is the case here but we cannot judge another's actions, nor qualify them, without full context.
Sabine: you join a long and honourable roll of women whose men have gone to war, leaving them to worry at home. "Keep the home fires burning" is a vital task. It can also motivate a person to know how much he will be missed. He isn't simply joining the servides, he is going for the top: we should honour his ambition.
I don't want to waste my life away in this war (or any other for that matter.) From my point of view, this is an imperialist crusade in attempts to westernize a very violent culture and part of the world.
About a year ago, a local graduate from my small town perished in Iraq. The response was overwhelming and a park was named in his honor. He was regarded as a hero and the highest form of a citizen. This is when I started rethinking war in general. Is this what a hero is? Somebody who earns higher citizenship through brutality and killing? Somebody who was in the wrong spot at the wrong time? What makes him a hero? More so than say the friars who feed the homeless and go completely unrecognized in Cleveland. Or just some guy busting himself to support a family with no health insurance. Aren't they heroes?
I have been against this war since it started. This country happilly marched off to war 4 years ago in the hopes of a quick victory, short occupation, and the delusion that we would ride into Baghdad on a donkey just like Jesus. But look what they did to him a week later. Liberators?
Your attitude is just like mine was when I was "selected" to serve. I wanted no part of what I felt (and still feel) was an illegitimate and immoral war. But unfortunately I didn't have much choice. It was join, go to jail, or go to Canada. Not much of a choice really. So I opted to manipulate the system against itself and "volunteered" to join the Air Force. That way I could have some choice of where I ended up and what I would be doing. I was also fortunate enough to be smart, so I pretty much called the shots all along. I knew about the Russian language training program they had, so I volunteered for that, and since my language test scores in basic were off the charts, I got what I asked for. I also got into the airborne program, so really I had it made. I spent a three year vacation in Japan and Okinawa while many of my peers were slogging through rice paddies in Viet Nam getting themselves blown up or at least psychologically damaged. Do I feel proud of what I did? Not really, but at least I survived it. Sometimes you don't have easy choices and you have to do what seems the best at the time. I also don't really regret the four years I had to spend in the service compared to the two I would have had to do if I had gone with the draft (assuming I survived, of course). I met some really excellent people, got to experience life in a fascinating alien culture with all expenses paid, got to fly a lot (a lifelong dream), got to learn Russian, and as I said, that's how I got connected with Buddhism to begin with. So it definitely wasn't all bad.
As to the poor young lad who got killed and then got a park named in his honor, I don't have a problem with that. I'm sure he did what he thought was right, and giving your life to defend your homeland is a brave and noble thing, no matter how deluded his motivations may have been. To give of yourself for the benefit of others (at least as he perceived it) is not something to sneeze at. More than likely he didn't want to kill anybody nor be killed, but it happened anyway. The least we can do is pay him some respect for his decision and his willingness to sacrifice himself for others. He was just another ignorant sentient being, like us, who was trying to do the best he could to do the right thing and find happiness. Please don't fault him for that. He didn't create the war.
Palzang
Gassho
_/\_
Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.
~Percy Bysshe Shelley
War means blind obedience, unthinking stupidity, brutish callousness, wanton destruction, and irresponsible murder.
~Alexander Berkman
Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.
~Ayn Rand
While I agree we shouldn't be throwing around the terms dumb, idiot, etc, there is a big difference between dying for a cause & killing for a cause. And while his intentions are certainly noble, this war is unwinnable & going downhill quickly. I do not feel that increasing troops is going to do anything either, as it failed in Vietnam.
Now, our attitude towards all beings, even demons should be one of compassion. But that doesn't mean we have to agree with them or excuse their actions. (not implying this guy is a demon)
metta
_/\_
By Scott Fleming, LiP Magazine
A soldier who served with the 320th Military Police Company at Abu Ghraib speaks out about the atrocities he witnessed
Aidan Delgado was a Florida college student looking for a change when he decided to join the Army Reserve. He signed his enlistment contract on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. After finishing the paperwork, he saw a television broadcast of the burning World Trade Center and realized he might be in for more than one weekend a month of low-key service.
In the ensuing months, Delgado became dedicated to Buddhism and its principles of pacifism. By April 2003, when he began his year-long tour in Iraq, he was openly questioning whether he could participate in the war in good conscience. Having grown up in Cairo, Delgado spoke Arabic and had not been steeped in the racism that drove many of his fellow soldiers. When he surrendered his rifle and declared himself a conscientious objector, he was punished by his officers and ostracized by his peers.
His unit, the 320th Military Police Company, spent six months in the southern city of Nasiriyah, and another six months helping to run the notorious Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. Now 23, having served his tour and been honorably discharged, Delgado is speaking out about what he witnessed. He says the prison abuse broadcast on 60 Minutes last spring was the tip of the iceberg; brutality, often racially motivated, infected the entire prison and the entire military operation in Iraq.
Why did you decide to join the Army?
It was not for high-minded reasons. I was in school, but I wasn't doing all that well. I was stagnating. I wanted to get a change of scenery, do something different. I signed up for the reserves, because in the pre-Sept. 11 world, the reserves meant you work just two days a month; you get to be in the army, but you don't have to do anything. I signed my contract the morning of Sept. 11 and then all of a sudden my reserve commitment meant a whole lot more.
How did you feel about your decision to join the army in light of what happened that day?
At the time, the whole country was riding high on this surge of patriotism, so I felt vindicated, that I had made the right decision. Because I joined before Sept. 11, I felt morally superior – I joined before it was popular to do so. Afterwards, when I saw the Sept. 11 feelings being redirected – Afghanistan was one thing, but then they started turning it towards Iraq – my feelings of patriotism waned.
It wasn't long after 9/11, maybe six months, before the Bush administration started publicly building their case for invading Iraq.
Yeah, that's what I thought was very striking. I felt like they had made a very strong case for attacking the Taliban and the whole Afghanistan campaign. But when they started talking about Iraq, I said, "Wait, there isn't any proven connection, and there are several facts that seem to indicate they were not connected."
How did Buddhism influence your feelings about the army and the war in Iraq?
My Buddhism developed parallel to being in the army. I wasn't a Buddhist before I joined the military, but after I signed on I had a couple of months before I went to basic training. That's when I started studying Buddhism intensely, doing research to cope with the stress of being in the army. I went into advanced training the next summer, and that's when I became really serious about Buddhism. I became a vegetarian. I started talking to my sergeants, saying, "I'm not sure the army's right for me; I'm a Buddhist now."
Within a few months of arriving in Iraq, I told them that I wanted to be a conscientious objector and I wanted to leave the military because of my religious beliefs. It ended up taking over a year to get my status, so I served in the whole conflict as a conscientious objector. I finally got conscientious objector status after my unit returned to the U.S.
How hard was it to get conscientious objector status?
Extremely difficult – there's a huge burden of proof. You have to do an interview with an investigating officer who grills you on your beliefs to find out if you're just making it up or if you've really thought it out. You have to have some kind of documentation. I think one of my strongest points was that I had a lot of military paperwork showing that I had gradually identified myself as a Buddhist. I also had a lot of conversations with my superiors where I talked about being an objector and being a Buddhist, and they went on the record and said, "Yes, he's talked about it progressively throughout the deployment." That really did a lot to establish my sincerity.
The command was extremely hostile to me, and there were all kinds of punitive measures. They wouldn't let me go on leave. They took my ballistic armor away – they told me that I didn't need the hard plate that goes inside your flak jacket, the part that actually protects you against bullets. They said that because I was an objector and I wasn't going to fight, I wouldn't need it. This proved not to be the case; when we got to Abu Ghraib, there was continuous mortar shelling. I did the whole year's deployment without that plate. I really feel that was more maliciously motivated than anything else.
Also, I was socially ostracized. A lot of my fellow soldiers didn't want to eat with me or hang out with me or go on missions with me. They felt I was untrustworthy because I was critical of the war and I was a Buddhist. My command "lost" my CO [Conscientious Objector] paperwork or misdirected it. They'd say, "We lost your copy, you'll have to do it again."
I eventually got my home leave back because I threatened my commander that I was going to have them prosecuted for discriminating against me on religious grounds. My company commander, my company first sergeant, and my battalion commander had all decided they were not going to let me leave – they said I couldn't go home on a two-week leave because I wouldn't come back. My stance was that they were just doing this because I'm a Buddhist and they didn't agree with my beliefs, and I was going to get the ACLU and the World Congress of Buddhists involved. Ultimately, they decided it wasn't worth the headache.
You were a mechanic, right? Were you going out on patrols?
Yes, I was a mechanic and I primarily worked on vehicles. But because I spoke Arabic – I was the only one in my company who spoke any Arabic – I ended up, especially in the south, doing a lot of mission support with military police (MPs) to speak to local people, usually to buy things or trade or exchange money. I would also help MPs get around in the city. I got to meet a lot of local Iraqis and see a different side of things. After Nasiriyah, I didn't do any more translating because by that point I had made my CO status request. I had been very critical of the war and the command knew I was not going to play ball, so they kept me far away from Iraqis and prisoners in Abu Ghraib.
Let's talk about Abu Ghraib. When you first arrived there in November 2003, wasn't that right around the time all the abuse that eventually made the papers was taking place?
We heard about that in late December or early January. We heard that someone had sent a tape to CNN and they had been abusing the prisoners in some way. We didn't know how, so the nature of the abuse was a shock. But that they were abusing [prisoners] was not news to us – we had known about that for a long time.
What kind of abuse did you witness?
There were prisoners who were beaten severely – to within an inch of their lives – for various infractions like disrespect or refusing to move. [They were] horribly brutal beatings.
There were a number of prisoners that I know of who were killed for throwing stones during a riot. I shouldn't say riot; it was more like a disturbance. I talked with a guy who shot several of the prisoners. The prisoners were protesting the conditions – lack of food, lack of cigarettes – and they were marching around the yard. Some of them started picking up stones and throwing stones at the guards. They deployed extra military police to quell the disturbance. At first, they had rubber bullets and tear gas, but they ran out of that, and it wasn't really effective. At some point – I'm not sure who authorized it – the guards requested the right to use lethal force and opened fire with a machine gun, and ultimately killed several prisoners for throwing stones. The guards testified that they felt they were in danger, so they opened fire. The military accepted that. There wasn't any inquiry, and no one glanced an eye at the dead prisoners. This was for throwing stones. The world community has roundly condemned Israel for shooting Palestinans for throwing stones. And that happened at Abu Ghraib.
Did you personally witness the incident in which the prisoners were shot?
Actually, I wasn't there. I was segregated in the motor pool when it happened, but I ended up getting photos from people who shot the prisoners – [the photos] were treated as trophies and were circulated in our company. It was not a secret; everyone knew about it. All the members of the unit were passing [photos] around, and they posted them in the command center for everyone to see. This was something they were proud of. It was a very macho thing to shoot unarmed prisoners. One guy was a local hero for the week because he'd killed X number of prisoners – one of the prisoners he had shot in the groin had taken three days to die. This was something people were laughing and joking about. This guy was strutting around after having killed these prisoners and I remember just being utterly sickened. We were soldiers, and to shoot an unarmed, caged prisoner was not something to be proud of. Abu Ghraib and all the prisoner abuse [came out of] this atmosphere of brutality.
Can you give more accounts of the day-to-day brutality at Abu Ghraib?
We talk about the Geneva Conventions a lot, but most people haven't read the Geneva Conventions and don't know what they say. [One thing] they say [is] that prisoners can't be held in an injurious climate. Abu Ghraib was extremely cold, and one of the ways guards used to control prisoners was to remove their clothing and tents, leaving them exposed to 30-degree weather. That's a violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Another provision of the Conventions is that prisoners have to be protected. We were taking constant mortar and artillery bombardment [at Abu Ghraib] from the insurgents outside the prison. Of course, [the prisoners] weren't protected; they were in open tents, and over 50 of them were killed because they were out in the open, they couldn't flee, and they had no cover. I remember fearing for my life many times – and I had a flak vest, a helmet, and shelter. I can't imagine being a prisoner, hemmed into a barbed-wire lot with no overhead protection, no protective clothing, and no air raid shelter. When there were bombs falling, they just had to sit and hope they didn't get killed.
I'm not really interested in naming names or getting culprits caught; I'm just interested in letting people know that what happened in Abu Ghraib was not an anomaly. It was virtually standard operating procedure.
Another incident I heard about was that a prisoner had shot a guard in the chest with a smuggled-in handgun. The guard didn't die, but [the guards] retaliated by shooting [the prisoner] in the leg and the side with a shotgun. His leg had been broken by the shotgun blast and was hanging off by an odd angle. They were taking this guy to a hospital to get medical treatment for his broken leg, and dragged him on his snapped leg and then threw him into the back of a truck. Granted, this was a man who had attempted to kill a guard. There was no question that he was a dangerous individual – but he was not dangerous at that moment, handcuffed, with a bag over his head and a broken leg. To drag him on that broken leg and to toss him in the back of a truck was additional brutality that wasn't professional and wasn't humane.
What else did you witness at Abu Ghraib?
I worked in the radio headquarters of Abu Ghraib for a while. They were once again trying to punish me by putting me in an undesirable job. While I was there, I ended up reviewing the prisoner records and looking over the offenses of the people who were in Abu Ghraib prison. I found out that most of them were actually not there for anti-coalition offenses. They weren't insurgents. Most of them were there for petty theft, drunkenness, forged documents, really minor crimes.
Who would arrest them for these kinds of crimes?
We were the depository for the Iraqi justice system; they didn't have their own prisons. Iraqi judges would sentence criminals, and a lot of them would end up coming to Abu Ghraib prison. The military would also do random sweeps if they received fire or were attacked from a certain area; they would just arrest everyone of a certain age in that area and take them to Abu Ghraib for questioning. Most of them would be cleared, but the process took so long that you'd end up being in Abu Ghraib for six months to a year before being released. I felt very vindicated last week when a report came out from the Pentagon that talked about the reasons the Iraqis are so upset. One of the reasons [had to do with] these random sweeps and detentions. Family members or friends would get taken to a military prison for a year, for nothing. That was definitely highly immoral, if not illegal – and counterproductive, because of the animosity it generated.
How many prisoners are at Abu Ghraib?
I can't say exactly, because I might get in trouble with the army, but several thousand. It would fluctuate on a daily basis. There was a shuffling going on between Abu Ghraib, Basra, Umm Qasr, and lesser prison camps along the way. There was a continual shifting of prisoners. That would really upset the local Iraqis because sometimes relatives would be shuffled around between these prisons. Someone who was arrested in Baghdad might be sent out to Basra in the far south of the country and be out of contact with their relatives and in the process of being shuffled around. A lot of the paperwork got mishandled or mismanaged, so people wouldn't know where their relatives were. I encountered that routinely in the operations command. Relatives would come, trying to track down a prisoner, but we didn't know [where he was.]
How many of the guards or others working at Abu Ghraib are prison guards or police officers in the United States?
A relatively high percentage. Out of my unit of 140, I would say at least 30 were police officers or correctional officers.
Do you think a connection can be drawn between the criminal justice system and the prisons in the United States and the people who were working at Abu Ghraib?
I don't have much direct experience with corrections in the U.S., but what I hear from news reports is that the corrections system in America is rife with brutality and misconduct as well. So I'm not really surprised that they transplanted the misbehavior from American prisons overseas. At least in America there's some sense of responsibility; a prisoner has some recourse to seek redress. Over there, they are literally anonymous prisoners, and there is nothing they can do. The guards have absolute authority – life and death authority.
One of the things that disturbed me about Abu Ghraib was that the soldiers [claimed] they didn't know it was a violation of the Geneva Conventions. They said they didn't know that it was wrong, they didn't have experience in handling prisoners. But if my company was indicative of the rest of the guards at Abu Ghraib, there was a high percentage of police officers and correctional officers; there was plenty of experience with felons. They knew what the standard was for humane treatment of prisoners. That sort of defense rings hollow.
Did you ever try to report these kinds of incidents?
No, I never did – I didn't have good credibility in my unit, because I was known to be a liberal. I was a pacifist, I was against violence, and I was very critical of the war, so no one took me seriously. My command was very hostile to me because I was in the process of trying to get my conscientious objector status. I thought that what they did was immoral, but I thought that if the command was sympathetic they could easily find some legal basis for it. So I decided that nothing would happen [if I spoke out] because the command accepts what they did. There was no outrage about what they did, so there was not going to be any punishment. What I needed to do was to go home and try them in the court of public opinion.
You spent most of your formative years in Egypt. Here in America there has been a lot of racism against Arabs for a long time and it really increased after 9/11. How did that affect the army?
I think racism is a key motivating factor in the war. We witnessed a Marine kick a six-year-old child in the chest for bothering him about food and water. People in my unit used to break bottles over Iraqi civilians' heads as they drove by in their Humvees. A senior enlisted man in my unit lashed Iraqi children with a steel antenna because they were bothering him.
The only way people can do these sorts of things – which would never be acceptable in America – is [because of] the notion that Iraqis are somehow related to terrorists and 9/11. We completely dehumanize them. I used to come into conflict with other members of my unit who were doing these things, and [tell them] it was wrong. It made me really unpopular, the radical notion that you should treat Arabs or Iraqis as human beings.
Why did you decide to speak out about your experiences in Iraq?
At first, I just wanted to live quietly and leave the whole experience behind me. [But then] people started asking me about my war experiences. In a way, my first discussion was a response to all these people. I thought I would have a forum and talk to everybody at once and I would never have to tell anyone else ever again. As I went along, it snowballed and I gave a talk to [my] community – and that's when 400 people showed up.
After I spoke, people were really moved by what I had said. I received several offers to speak on college campuses in Florida. I don't think the American people are bad or willfully making wrong decisions. I think they're making misinformed decisions. If they had some more information, they wouldn't support the war and their views would change. That's really my goal, to create a sense of critical thinking, of disbelief, a sense of responsibility for the negative consequences of the war.
This is what is so difficult for me. I mean I love this country, not it's leaders of course, but the ideals of it. The Consitution, the vast amount of freedoms. This is all great and something I would never give up.
But in America, there is this automatic assumption that any war we enter into, it is justified and anyone involved on our side is a hero. Meanwhile the thousands of casualities of the invisible enemy were poor deluded fools who 'suffered what they must.' Are we to say that the extremists also do not wish to defend their homeland? After all, they see it as their legitimate duty to defend their land from the invaders. Does the enemy not fight for honor as well?
It is sad that so many young, good souls are lost in this war. I believe Odysseus once said that, "War is nothing but old men talking and young men dying."
These whole past 4 years have been nothing but that. Idiot politicians squabble over who has the right to get married and whether or not flags can be burned. Meanwhile, highschool graduates are slaughtered in the desert halfway across the world. Defending our country?
During World War I, at the Battle of the Marne I believe, the British had lost over 30,000 soldiers in a SINGLE DAY. All for what? Freedom? Honor? We must ask ourselves the same question today. After 3000 deaths, what are we to make of the war? Are we really fighting for our freedom? After all, we were the invaders this time.
I appreciate your input, as always, but this thread was NOT about "how can I stop him from going to do something that HE TRULY BELIEVES THAT HE WAS MADE TO DO" or "how can I stop the war single-handedly."
It's TOO LATE to change his mind, so DO NOT use him to vent your frustrations with the US government. I'm a liberal, too - I don't agree with the level of US activity in the Mid-East either, but I didn't make the decision for him. He believes it's his responsibility to help set things right.
He knows what happens in prisons - he's done his homework! He knows what he might have to deal with over there, and he's honorable enough to avoid it, or if necessary, be a whistleblower to authorities. All soldiers aren't evil little weasels!
Like Knight, I do believe that it's absolutely dreadful that young people are dying day by day, and that there really should be some other way that we can resolve this, but we really can't just JERK everyone out of the Mid-East at one time. With any luck, he'll be going over there as a peacekeeper, and he'll come back in a few months.
I don't even know if this post made sense. Hopefully, it made enough sense to get my point across - it's not about politics, it's about a relationship that might or might not be hindered by war.
The difference is that he was the Buddha.
For the rest of us, calling a brother or sister and idiot is fraught vwith danger.
The Buddha needn't have been the Buddha to call someone an idiot. The only difference is, I guess, that he had no need to back it up.
If a child is going to hit another child with a sharp stick, we don't need to be a buddha to let him/her know it's an unwise thing to do, and that there are consequences....
Sometimes, it's not about being a Buddha...it's about seeing things that are as plain as the nose on your face. And the Buddha formulated the Four Noble Truths and The Eightfold Path to help us see things more clearly, far earlier than he did....He had to come to their conclusion, but he presented them to us as a 'fait accompli' to guide us in our steps.
Outspoken it may be, but I concur with ZM's point.
Until society can offer a more satisfying career path for the poor and the disinherited, they will form a reservoir of available cannon-fodder. And while the rich can go on buying commissions through privileged education in military schools, Dartmouth, Sandhurst, West Point, etc., it will remain an option for the ruling classes.
It is not by showing disrespect for those who make the armed sewrvices their choice that we shall put an end to the slaughter of our young but by getting out there and stopping war.
ZM, you quote Thomas's gospel, but you miss another verse from the sayings of Jesus:
At Yom Kippur, we seek reconciliation with God, but, in the days preceding, we are supposed to be reconciled with our family, neighbours and friends. After all, if we want to persuade our young not to be part of the slaughter, we are unlikley to get them to hear us if we are calling them idiots.
Actually, you have a point Simon.... Nobody has the right to label anyone as being a idiot, or anything else, for that matter....It's what a person does, not who they are, that may be criticised......The actions may seem foolish/stupid/crazy, but the person themselves should not be labelled as such.
And all or any criticism should be heavily underscored with compassion.....
Palzang
I would have to agree that it might be a good idea for all US citizens to do some sort of social service - but not military. Our military history is riddled with lies and deceit. It's a money-machine that has been built on the blood and lives of hundreds of thousands of US men and women.
I think Dick Gaughan said it very well:
Come all of you workers Who toil night and day
By hand and by brain To earn your pay
Who for centuries long past For no more than your bread
Have bled for your countries And counted your dead
In the factories and mills In the shipyards and the mines
Who've often been told To keep up with the times
Now our skills are not needed They've streamlined the job
And by sliderule and stopwatch Our pride they have robbed
But when the sky darkens And the prospect is war
Who's given a gun And then pushed to the fore
And expected to die For the land of our birth
Though we've never owned One handful of earth.
We're the first ones to starve
We're the first ones to die
We're the first ones in line
For that pie-in-the-sky
And we're always the last
When the creamed is shared out
For the worker is working
While the fat cats about
Aye and all of these things
The worker has done
From tillin' the field to
Carrying the gun
We've been yoked to the plow
Since time first began
Aye and always expected
To carry the can.
Sorry - I got off-topic. But, I can't abide war. Especially war made under the guise of justice when it's all lies, money and power.
Sabine - whatever decision your friend has made - I hope he makes it back hale and whole.
-bf
Well...people do have the right to call each other idiots. That is the point of free speech; freedom to be offended and freedom to offend. As far as I am concerned, it is an idiotic thing to do; joining the military. If a family member of mine wanted to join the ranks, I would not hesitate in calling them an idiot for doing so.
And also, anyone who thinks that they were "MADE FOR THIS". 'This' being killing a bunch of people as some sort of divine providence is clearly delusional and needs to be told as such.
And remember, being nice is not always nice.
I concure, myself I was a skivy-waving signalman, visual communications. Figures.
I had to smile at that, inside joke.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sacca/sacca4/samma-vaca/index.html
While I am not a buddha & cannot determine the exact outcome of speech, I am highly doubtful that calling Sabine's friend an idiot was appropriate. I really don't see any good coming from it, regardless of whether or not it's true. Now, if this person were here on this board & was receptive to the buddhadharma, then things might by different, but I still doubt he would be responsive to name calling. Most people, when insulted, only hear the insult & not the actual message behind it. It's kind of like sending someone a package coated in broken glass. Unless they know the sender & that the contents of their packages are worth the bloody hands, chances are they wont open it.
_/\_
metta
I don't think calling someone... anyone ... an "idiot" for a choice they made is a good idea, no matter what you think. That whole thing about walking a mile in another man's shoes.... I'm sure that some decision that each of us has made in our lives could be considered "idiocy" by others as well. Not a one of us is any better than anybody else. It depresses me to see such strongly negative feelings on my site
I myself have had quite a few ancestors involved in the military, either here or in Europe in the 1800s through Vietnam. It can be difficult to reconcile this with my unpopular pacifist views. How am I to say it is wrong to join the Army when many of my ancestors have done the same? I often struggle with this personally but still hold true to non-violence.
I realize that mine as well as several other very liberal posters have come across as uncaring and unaffectionate. Speaking for myself only, I do not intend that to be the case. But I am also resolute in the belief that to join the service in this day in age is to throw your own life away. How many tens of thousands of young, healthy souls have to return to America scarred for life emotionally and missing limbs? How many more flag draped coffins need to be flown over to families saying what a noble cause their boy had fought and died for? How many fatherless children? Grieving mothers? The War on Terror?
A teenager who wants to meet this end will not find it difficult with the current state of foreign affairs and politics. They must realize this with the hopes of being persuaded. Otherwise, sadly, they are in danger of becoming just another casualty in a grand political misadventure.
I want to go on the record saying that I served in the first Gulf War and a few other minor flare ups here and there, and I am very comfortable with my Buddhism and my military record. Please know that I have enjoyed my time here on this forum, but I cannot abide by the hostility shown by the hard-core pacifits members to those of us who have served in the military and don't feel the need to appologize for our actions.
I may be a Buddhist, but even the nation of Tibet had an army and they used it when they were attacked by China. They lost because they were not strong. And Buddhism has suffered accordingly. This is a world where the strong will always prey upon the weak. Pardon me for daring to believe that the weak need defended. And I guess, I don't swallow the entire Buddhist package when it suggests that the we stand aside, fully turgid with our love of our pacaficity, while murderers go on killing rampages. Just like the genocide the Chineese have commited in China.
As to the Zen Monk, I don't find anything in his orginal post and his later rationalizations of his recent speech that meets a Right Speech threshold. Perhaps the Zen Monk and a few of the rest of you should consider some time away from your keyboards before you post more hateful speech?
Let's remember it was until the Contental Congress forced the change that the words life, liberty and the pursuit of property were the intro to the bill of rights.
The whole system has been set-up from the get go to favor the wealthy, thus the electoral college. I hope none of this is new to any of you. Please don't get me started about the private creation of the federal reserve system.
"In the case of words that the Tathagata knows to be factual, true, beneficial, but unendearing & disagreeable to others, he has a sense of the proper time for saying them."
Sabine is here, Sabine posted and instead of commiserating with her I told her the guy's an idiot and that she should be doing her damnedest to get him to start thinking. I stand by that. I'm not saying btw Sabine that you haven't indeed tried, but keep trying, and then try some more, right up until he goes, then try when you write to him. Don't stop, don't encourage this lunacy, don't collude, don't tell him how brave he is. Tell him he's being an idiot. Tell him that he was not 'made to do this'. Tell him that whilst you care for him, you cannot condone what he is doing. That is right speech and right effort. Exhaust yourself in that and if he still doesn't listen, lose the guy because he has already lost himself.
And Kickapoo, don't assume that because someone is against war that they have not experienced it. It might be precisely because they have that they have no time for such blatant stupidity masquerading as politeness and presenting itself as a maudlin plea to ignore the reality of what is happening in reality. Buddhism does not avoid conflict. It does not hide behind quotes from Sutras. In fact usually there's an inverse proportion of real insight to the amount of sutra quotes being bandied about. It's not about making someone feel good, patting them on the back and telling them that they are a unique and special reflection of the divine (they are actually the divine, the absolute, but such a shame to let them in on the secret). It's about reality and that reality is not necessarily something that we want to hear or like. This war is idiocy and anybody who condones it, goes along with it, excuses it or justifies it is perpetuating that idiocy. All too often people have this notion that Buddhism involves some bewiskered worthy, sitting on a zafu beaming and speaking soft words of golden wisdom - bollocks. It's sometimes more like:
Matthew 21:12: And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all those who were buying and selling in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves.
I must have missed the bit in there where it said, "And Jesus entered the temple and said, "Excuse me chaps, but perhaps we can have a sharing discussion and talk about compassionate livelihood, whilst we pass around a peace pipe and massage each other."
Yep! And if it contributes in the smallest way possible to someone deciding to stop someone else being an idiot - great stuff. If my posts are deleted, I completely understand and take no offense. I don't get angry about stuff like that and I can appreciate if it's thought that my posts are not suitable. If I can change one person's mind about colluding with stupidity however, I'll do whatever it takes. I've never been interested in being voted, "Most Likely to be Rememebered as being kind of Agreeable."
Your response after this btw is to tell me just how unBuddhist I am. I have notes if you want to put that eloquently with suitable quotes from various sutras. Feel free to plagiarize. But, just one small and salient point - Buddhism (in fact any genuine way, regardless of name and form) is precisely about realising that we are Boundless. Someone should have warned you.
How is it any different that this young man is not a member of this e-sangha?
ZM: Even in a confrontation aimed at helping someone to consider elements of choice that they may not have noticed or taken into account, personal insults are counter-productive. They tell us something about the insulter rather than empowering a change of mind.
Look, if I had a teacher/disciple relationship with you & I was considering joining the military, then you calling me an idiot would be an effective teaching. But if I was unreceptive that day, I would probably just go off in a huff & I may enlist that day. Now, we are on a forum for 'new buddhists' and Sabine is 16 years old. Honestly, a good teacher is good at assessing the inclinations, level of insight & receptivity of his students. I really don't feel you have considered these things properly with Sabine. And this is all about karma/vipaka. Do the results resemble the intent of your actions here? No, all that has happened is a bunch of contention. You could have made your point more effectively with different with different words. You didn't though. That's all I'm saying.
metta
_/\_
However, I can't imagine they would make that same decision if our country was going through a war, like we are now. I am defnitely not a supporter of this war. I want us out of there ASAP. Heck, I am not a supporter of ANY war!
fine. I'm not going to argue anymore.
_/\_
"If a man steals a pig, they call him wrong. But if a state is stolen, they call it just."
We can say the same thing of our modern society. Still full of paradoxes. It is according to society, wrong to steal and very dishonorable to hurt othe or kill other people. At the same time we deify people who do the same thing in the military. And it is considered a high honor to have fought in a war and presumably killed people.
Why do we do this? Mo-Zi pointed this out quite well. We treat the same action differently because we gloss it over with such superficial notions like patriotism, westernization, and liberation. All of these are propoganda pieces clearly manipulated for national support.
So am I a radical pacifist? I don't think so. I am a radical free thinker who would rather not kill people or be killed.
Please post a copy of your DD-214 if you are claiming to have tasted war. You seem to me to be way out of your area of expertise. Do you have a telephone number for your monk boss? I'd like to call him or her and suggest they check you into asshole rehab? How's that for not avoiding conflict?
So, your response is to call me a plagiarizer and to post a fantasy about how you think I'll respond? You have some deep pain and issues and I wish you the best in finding relief.
My biggest disappointment is that I once read your posts with interests and found you someone who could contribute to the betterment of the people around you.. I hope you find peace.
I'm a new user and your monk called me an idiot for volunteering to service this great nation and defend the weak from the murderous. Frankly, I believe you need to have a long talk with your resident monk, and not us novices.
I do however appologize for calling the monk an asshole. Even though I believe this guy is talking out his brown-eye lately.
Ok, I'm sorry. I'll move along quietly. Big Smile.
I would suggest that you read what I actually wrote, rather than what you think I wrote, and then perhaps rephrase your response accordingly. As to peace - I have found it and, interestingly, also found that it was not seen through avoiding conflict, but in understanding the roots of conflict which are within all of us, and one of those roots is ignorance - the deliberate ignoring of reality, rather than lack of education. Believing that the kids who are dying in Iraq are in any way whatsoever serving "this great nation" and "defend (ing) the weak from the murderous" is about as deluded as it can get. Murder doesn't stop by more murder. They are not defending anyone and they are not serving anyone, except Haliburton and the ongoing societal cull of the poor, hopeless, under resourced and stupid, that is the present American war machine in action. They are cannon fodder for an unecessary and unwinnable war, nothing more, at least as far as the American government is concerned, and that the US regime has put those kids in that position should be cause for shame, not for flag waving and congratulations.
There is an all too common misunderstanding that Buddhist practice means avoiding conflict, it doesn't, instead it asks us to walk straight into the heart of it.
To attain this peace of mind one must embrace whatever one encounters: "The wisdom of peace of mind does not flee in the face of a lack of safety or the onslaught of overwhelming danger; rather, it steps forward and receives such things. As the expression [by Ryōkan (1758-1831)] goes, 'When you encounter a disaster, it is good to meet it [fully]; and when you encounter death, it is good to meet it [fully]'." This is "the path of attaining the wisdom through which one can accept, just as it is, whatever misery or impending danger of death one might encounter, and thereby live a fulfilled life in each situation." More specifically, "One greets and accepts each situation, without hating or avoiding it, and by becoming one (narikiru) with that situation, one lives a life characterized by peace of mind."
- Christopher Ives - What's Compassion Got to Do with It? - Journal of Buddhist Ethics
I have absolutely no interest in contributing to the betterment of people as an end goal. That phrase is pretty meaningless to me. I do have an interest though in their awakening and finding the same peace that is there for all of us, because fundamentally we awaken with all beings and a genuine awakening experience really brings that home to a person at a very deep level, where they can no longer be deluded by, amongst other things, the lies of the nation state and corporations. Whilst we can't awaken another, we can be honest and direct and, if necessary call a spade a spade, not an 'ergonimacally designed, multi use, horticultural implement acceptable to all faiths'. As to my 'monk boss', that would be me. I'll tender your comments for the full consideration that they deserve and take a careful strategic overview.