Military Standards
Quid
Definitely not a bananaRegistered User regular
Definitely not a bananaRegistered User regular
So some people feel that the military would be better served if it worked closer to a democracy or were as open and free as any other private organization. Others feel that the lack of freedom and current standards help the military serve it's actual purpose: Being an effective military.
This is just utter bullshit as demonstrated by Halliburton and Blackwater.
Protein Shakes wrote: »An example of this is collateral damage. When civilians cause collateral damage, they are tried in court.
This is just utter bullshit as demonstrated by Halliburton and Blackwater.
Quid on
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I'll reiterate this as well. A military is not a democracy for a reason. People can just as easily protest the wrong things and end up costing lives because of it.
How many years did it take for Halliburton and Blackwater bullshit to become known, and how long did it take for the authorities to go after them?
Answer: too many years, thanks to dont ask dont tell.
Furthermore, both of those makes one wonder just how much fucked up shit still goes on that the public never hears about.
I...what?
How does that work?
Pretty sure there are other factors in hiding the fucked up stuff that private corporations did/do in middle eastern countries
O_o
The Hell does DADT have to do with the fact that Blackwater has killed I don't know how many innocent people with zero punishment?
I...guess if we didn't discharge gay people, we wouldn't have had to hire Blackwater? I dunno, that's the only connection I can think of.
I am using DADT as a substitute for the mindset where what happens in the military stays there.
But Blackwater doesn't really count anyway, since they were a private company and it is a lot easier to go after companies than the actual military.
That is not the common definition of DADT. In fact, that is no one's definition of DADT but your own. If you're going to attempt effective communication, use precise language.
No.
Strategic decisions during wartime are of course done by commanders.
I am talking about more basic things, like decent wage, good housing, etc. Nothing wrong with letting people protest for those things.
The whole "military is not a democracy lol" thing is something Quid made up. I said said they should have SOME freedom.
Okay.
Then why hasn't it happened? Members of the military are punished all the time for shooting/assaulting people they aren't supposed to. It's hardly perfect, but it's also not like when you're in the military you're given a blank check to do whatever you want.
As opposed to, you know, Blackwater.
Lol, strawman after strawman.
You guys are awesome.
If you don't like their wage, housing, etc. Why join the military in the first place? Note this comes from someone actively trying to lose weight so he can join the military.
Freedom =/= Democracy!
But seriously, if you don't want to lose your civilian rights, why join the military? It's a volunteer army.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
First of all, he's not making a strawman. A strawman is where you misrepresent an opponents position and then knock it down.
This is the third time you used a phrase incorrectly. Stop it.
Second, he was asking for clarification, since the bolded part, particularly the "SOME," implies that you think soldiers have no freedom.
I'd rather have military trials stay where they are now than have them moved to civilian court, anyways. It's bad enough already with how many cops get acquitted regardless of facts/evidence, such as the acquittals of the Rodney King cops, simply based on a popular belief that cops are inherently "good guys" whose victims "probably deserved it anyways." Civilian trials involving military personnel would track along the same path. Maybe even worse as victims in many cases wouldn't be Americans.
There are many reasons, some good, some absolutely stupid.
Love for your country? That's fine. Very commendable, I applaud it.
Some join for the benefits of post-military careers. That's okay too.
But the military also tries to paint itself in a super-positive light. Ever seen those army commercials where the guy is climbing a mountain bare-handed and when he reaches the top the spirits of his ancestors salute him? So badass dude, right? So that may trick a lot of people into joining.
It's also a haven for killers and rapists, but that doesn't mean everyone in the army is a killer or a rapist.
Uh, they might as well be.
I am going to quote what I said in the other thread.
I want you to respond to every single one of these statements, using actual sources, since they directly refute what you just said.
Now, this is only for rape. Let's check how the military commonly treats accidental killings or "collateral damage" (well, called "accidents" but for all we know it could just be cold-blooded murder).
http://cursor.org/stories/civilian_deaths.htm
Hmm, interesting. Choice quotes:
Hmm. Anywhere else in the world, when you murder 93 people, you will either be executed outright, or (if it's a terrible accident or something) you will get hundreds of years of prison sentence.
If done by the US military? Nah. It's collateral damage dude. The vice president can't even deal with that particular village.
Now, the thing I would like to draw your attention to is that these events happened and went unpunished because of what I stated in the previous thread: a culture of fraternalism and extreme violence. What kinds of individuals does such a culture attract and/or breed?
Is it surprising that when your top commanders are viewing civilian mass murder as acceptable, your foot soldiers are viewing other crimes of equal or lesser magnitude, such as rape, as also acceptable? Maybe this is why these things are frighteningly common?
Military standards wise:
One thing for sure, I thought it used to be if your boss(or bosses boss to the Nth degree) spoke up/out about something everyone under them was supposed to remain quiet. I know they do this with UCMJ cases (where if an officer makes a comment on a case, anyone serving under that officer cannot serve on the board or any part of the case). With all this talk about DADT and the Chief's responses, I'd ask that all the generals shut the hell up.
Anyone of retired military status should remove their military affiliation from any comments they make. They're no longer in the military, and regardless of their stance, no one needs to know they where in the military. It makes it clear that it is a personal belief and not one representing the military in any time or fashion.
Those two things, that should curtail all these stupid comments of retired military personnel coming out and making stupid offhand comments.
Also, military personnel are not told they can't protest (at least you can't protest while in uniform), but it's highly discouraged. You're free to speak your mind, as long as you maintain military standards and discipline. That means that a group of NCO's aren't going to go to the Secretary and demand to be paid more or improve their housing. What is encouraged is that you do it properly, through the proper channels. Doing it the other way is only insubordination and lack of proper customs and courtesies. That is what will get you up shit creek.
Any service member of sound mind knows this and make all their requests that way. All the other people you see/hear about are idiots and bad apples.
No, we're sticking to one subject at a time. Prove your claim that the military are held less accountable for killing people than private companies.
Show me a single person from Blackwater that's been sentenced for the crimes committed in the ME. There are plenty of service members who've been sent to jail for misconduct. Surely Blackwater must have plenty.
Before Eric Prince's hearing in 2007, we did not have any laws that stated that soldiers of private companies operating outside US borders are subject to US law. Therefore, they could not be prosecuted, since they had de facto immunity at the time they committed their crimes.
Fantastic! Now that we've disproved that particular claim, since, well, not having laws governing something is pretty much the opposite of accountability, let's move on to something else.
We didn't disprove much of anything. There may not have been accountability, but look at results.
As a result of their crimes in Iraq, we didn't renew our contract with them. In essence, Blackwater was banned from operating there.
Why did we not ban the US military from operating in Iraq/Afghanistan, similarly?
edit: if you really want to move on to something else, go ahead and address what I stated in the previous page with regards to rapes and civilian mass-murders.
Probably because while the accountability is far from perfect, it actually exists. People actually are punished for their wrong doing in the military. That it's not perfect doesn't mean they're not held accountable.
Which, you know, you still haven't proved exists for private companies on anywhere near the same degree if at all.
Presumably so they could be held as accountable as contractors.
I mean clearly that's the best way to go.
Except it doesn't
You're a silly goose of the highest order
Also again I like how everything stupid that the people in charge of us do is somehow our faults
It's called IG, you fool
I'm sure that could be the lesson learned if you were a 3 year old with autism.
And your level of rhetoric is very amusing considering the US military has committed many, many more crimes, most of which were orders of magnitude more serious.
Response? "It's collateral damage."
See, we at least made the effort to go after Blackwater, and when we couldn't, we just cut our dealings with them. The US military on the other hand just gets free pass whenever it comes to major war crimes.
I don't think you have your facts straight. We passed the bill that made private personnel operating in foreign countries accountable in 2007. We banned Blackwater from Iraq in 2008. This means that the reason we banned them was NOT because accountability did not exist for them (since it did, at the time we banned them), but because they had committed far too many war crimes.
You admit that military accountability is far from perfect, which I guess is better than nothing. But let me ask: what good is accountability if it will not let you prosecute and punish people who are ordering bombs be dropped on civilian centers with full knowledge that civilians live there and will most likely die?
Now tell me, is it the US military that you’re upset at, or is it professions that are largely male dominated, market to males, and recruit people from unfavorable and low economic backgrounds that you have a problem with? Because the military has it’s issues, but it does its best to deal with them.
Also, your statistics are misleading. 15% of the military is made up of females. Just to give us some numbers as an example, let’s say there are 100 people in the military. Since women are 15% of the service, that gives us 15 women. Since 30% of females reported being raped, that means 5 females reported being raped in the military as far as this little experiment is concerned. 1 in 20 people.
Last I checked, the military was made up of about 1 million people, and the population of the United States is somewhere around 300 million, so the military population is about 1/300th of the civilian population in our country. 100 * 300 = 30,000 people in the US population overall. Let’s just assume for simplicity that only 50% of the US population is female, even though I’m fairly certain it’s a couple percentage points higher than that. This gives us 15,000 females and according to your statistics, 1 in 6 of them will be raped. That gives us 2,500 people raped out of 30,000. 1 in 12 people.
This is why saying such a thing as “there is TWICE as much rape in the Army as the general population!” is disingenuous at best. Our country as a whole has a problem with rape. Seriously, it’s a big issue. Don’t pretend it only happens in the military, or that the military is inherently worse than the general population about it. For every horror story you bring up about lack of reporting and blaming the victim happening in the military, I can point to just as many instances of that happening in civilian life.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t claim that the military DOESN’T have a problem with rape. Of course it does. But it’s working to fix those problems, which is better than a lot of civilian institutions are doing. Look at Haliburton!
Right, so, if you're in the military and commit a crime you stand a good chance of going to Jail. If you're in Blackwater and commit a war crime you stand a good chance of... being sent back to America to work for the state department.
Just so we're clear, you want the military held to the standard of the latter then?
You seem to lack a basic understand of what makes an action just or unjust in wartime.
It's the latter, however I am talking about the military in this case since someone came up with an oxymoron called "military standards".
I disagree with the bolded statement.
Yes, fewer rapes (in number) happen in the military because the military has fewer women. Go figure.
Now extrapolate that. What would be those numbers if the military's female-male ratio was the same as that of the general population?
1/20 divided by 15 multiplied by 50. Oh look, 16%. 3.2 people out of 20. Compared to the general population, which is only 1/12 = 1.6 people out of 20.
Uh, because in the USA it is unconstitutional to pass retroactive laws. The federal government is prohibited from passing ex post facto laws by Article I, section 9 of the U.S. Constitution.
So we do not have the ability to charge people for crimes they committed before the action became a crime, in the legal sense of the word.
I think this pretty much invalidates the rest of your post, RE:
I mean, that was their punishment they received in 2008 that you were trumpeting as them being held accountable.
Here I was thinking it was the rapists who caused rapes, but obviously its the presence of women that causes it. Must be those short skirts they are wearing all the time. What if instead we made the military like 85% women, at that point we could just kick all the men out for dereliction as they'd be spending their days doing nothing but raping.
Also is the US rape rate 15%? Since the USM rate of 30% was double the US average? 16% ~=15%?
So why are we talking strictly about the US military? Why are you bringing us statistics that only apply to the US military? What about other countries? Russia? China? Brazil? Why do you care so much about our military that you seem to be so vehemently against it, if you have a problem with hegemonic masculinity as a cultural system?
So I went to college before I joined the military (weird, right?) and I was put through the exact same lectures, talks, and programs that I'm currently going through in the military for rape and sexual assault prevention. Are you saying that our rape education system as a whole is screwed up? If so, how is that solely the military's responsibility?
You just reiterated your earlier statistics. We already knew this, what's your point?
In response to your question, if there were the same female-male ratio in the general population as the military, then we wouldn't have the problems that we do with rape, or marginalization of women in general. The more your demographic is represented, the less marginalized and abused you tend to be in society. Hegemonically masculine subcultures tend to marginalize women until more of them show up in that subculture. Look at how women were treated in the workplace until more and more of them started showing up.
It takes a man and a woman for an incidence of male-to-female rape to happen, so I don't think it's controversial to say that the fewer women there are, the fewer the number of male-to-female rape incidents. If the military was all men, would you point to it and show it off as the ideal society because it has no rape? Clearly not.
Also, speaking of rape, I'm surprised no one has ever talked about other types of rape, such as male-to-male rape (which isn't only committed by gays, by the way), female-to-male rape, and female-to-female rape, all of which are also incredibly common in civilian society. The problem is that these are reported even less often, due to the stigmatization of male rape victims.
I am willing to bet quite a bit of money that the military is teeming with these as well, if the amazingly high rate of male-to-female rape is any indication.