18 and Dead.

[Tom Joad]

Originally Posted by Zeke

Uh, no?

Seriously, your ongoing display of poor intellectual understanding is completely baffling. You never make any sense and continuously reek of threatened.

Hiding behind your son...

Zeke, Zeke, Zeke, Zeke, Zeke, Zeke, Zeke, you just don't get it do you Dude?

This is the internet.

Your badge and your gun are no good here.

You can't cruise around in your cop car and intimidate people.

You have to rely on your wits alone.

And in that area you are way out of your league.

You're the quintessential Bully personality.

And like every Bully, deep down inside, in places you don't like to talk about, there's a scared little boy.

I'd feel sorry for you if I gave a shit about you.

Which I don't.

[Ike Bana]

Originally Posted by Tom Joad

So what branch of the military were you in Zeke?

How much combat have you seen?

Don't bother, man. I've asked him...and whenever I have, he's always conveniently left his cojones in his other pants. So there will never be a direct answer.

He was in no fucking branch, so in addition to never having seen any combat (nor have I), he decided that he was never gonna put himself in a position where he might.

Normally TJ, that would not be a problem for me...but in this case, considering what a pompous blowhard he is about the military and military service, I find the whole thing even more pathetic than his typical terminal uniqueness. In addition to his automatic personal hostility toward anybody who won't knuckle under to his Jr. High schoolyard bravado.

[Tom Joad]

Originally Posted by Ike Bana

in addition to never having seen any combat (nor have I),

I didn't see any combat either, but I saw enough of the aftermath as an Air Force Medic.

Shit, when I got reclassified 1-A in 1969 it was pretty much a forgone conclusion that if you got drafted you were going to end up as a grunt humping an M-16 through the goddamn boonies. On top of that the Marines were drafting at the time and rumor had it that they were taking one out of every five. That really scared the shit out of me, so after looking at the casualty rates and seeing that the Air Force and Navy had the lowest, I beat it on down to the Air Force recruiter and signed up.

I had to give them four years instead of two, but considering that my name might have ended up on that Goddamned wall in DC, or I might have been sent home with missing body parts like a lot of the young grunts we treated in the hospital, I never regretted it.

I don't know where my son got it from to go Special Forces. He's always been a lot more of a hard ass than me. I'm proud of him, but I'm also scared shitless for him whenever he is deployed. I never know what the Hell he's doing. Special Ops people don't share much in the way of details about their deployments, even to their families.

[Ike Bana]

Originally Posted by Tom Joad

I didn't see any combat either, but I saw enough of the aftermath as an Air Force Medic.

Shit, when I got reclassified 1-A in 1969 it was pretty much a forgone conclusion that if you got drafted you were going to end up as a grunt humping an M-16 through the goddamn boonies. On top of that the Marines were drafting at the time and rumor had it that they were taking one out of every five. That really scared the shit out of me, so after looking at the casualty rates and seeing that the Air Force and Navy had the lowest, I beat it on down to the Air Force recruiter and signed up.

I had to give them four years instead of two, but considering that my name might have ended up on that Goddamned wall in DC, or I might have been sent home with missing body parts like a lot of the young grunts we treated in the hospital, I never regretted it.

I don't know where my son got it from to go Special Forces. He's always been a lot more of a hard ass than me. I'm proud of him, but I'm also scared shitless for him whenever he is deployed. I never know what the Hell he's doing. Special Ops people don't share much in the way of details about their deployments, even to their families.

I'm curious...your opinion on stop-loss...and I suppose the military's utter disinterest in the enormous amount of PTSD due to stop-loss policy. And, I suppose as well, the Pentagon's utter disregard for it in redeploying so many who are clearly already suffering from significant PTSD.

[Tom Joad]

Originally Posted by Ike Bana

I'm curious...your opinion on stop-loss...and I suppose the military's utter disinterest in the enormous amount of PTSD due to stop-loss policy. And, I suppose as well, the Pentagon's utter disregard for it in redeploying so many who are clearly already suffering from significant PTSD.

I dunno.

Back in WW2 everybody pretty much got extended "For the Duration". And we had a draft.

But then that was back in the days when we fought real wars and fought them to win. Plus 16 million people served in WW2. That was something like 12% of the total population of the country.

In my day it was easier too IMO. We had a three million man military. And again you had a draft. So when you got to Vietnam you knew you were gong home in 365 days give or take a few. And you knew you were done with the war when you did. Every body had a DEROS calendar. And when you got under 100 days you became a two digit midget and it became a shortimers calendar.

Today we have something like a 1.5 million man Military.

That's less than 1/2 of one percent.

That means very little of our population is involved in this.

Like I saw one dude in Iraq say, "The United States Military is at War, The United States of America is at the Mall". Most people I encounter really don't give a shit. It doesn't involve them.

But I digress. As for stop-loss, it's bullshit. In our zeal to cut back on the Military and not have a draft, while trying to carry out Military Operations all over the world we have gotten to the point where serving in the Military requires one to be in a constant state of revolving door deployments with no end in sight. It really sucks for the soldiers.

And basically all I hear from uninvolved civilians is "They knew what they were signing up for".

Like I said, nobody gives a shit except for that small percentage that are personally involved. The rest of America slaps a car magnet on their trunk and drives off to the Mall to check out the sales.

Stop loss is bullshit. What we really need is to bring back the draft.

[Zeke]

Wow.

That was a lot of brainwashed and elitist quackery...

As well as a ton of projection.

[icenine]

Originally Posted by Zeke

Wow.

That was a lot of brainwashed and elitist quackery...

As well as a ton of projection.

It is true for the most part. Imagine if there had been an active draft during the Iraq War....we probably would have not had an Iraq War, the aftertaste of the Vietnam debacle in regard to the inequities of conscription during that conflict still very much alive in our national psyche.


Stop-loss did not bother me much being a lifer, but the Army sending kids from Korea (many of whom had been there almost a year) straight to Iraq (where many were killed in Ramadi) in 2004 stuck me as pretty cruel at the time. In other words some kids died without ever coming back to the States to live for a little while. Normal deployments to Korea are a year long if I am not mistaken.

[Ike Bana]

Originally Posted by Zeke

Wow.

As well as a ton of projection.

Look here...it's Zeke! The fucking psychoanalyst with a badge.

Y'know what? Am I the only one who's had a gutfull of this bullshit?

Make a fucking argument or shut the fuck up, Zeke.

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by icenine

It is true for the most part. Imagine if there had been an active draft during the Iraq War....we probably would have not had an Iraq War, the aftertaste of the Vietnam debacle in regard to the inequities of conscription during that conflict still very much alive in our national psyche.


Stop-loss did not bother me much being a lifer, but the Army sending kids from Korea (many of whom had been there almost a year) straight to Iraq (where many were killed in Ramadi) in 2004 stuck me as pretty cruel at the time. In other words some kids died without ever coming back to the States to live for a little while. Normal deployments to Korea are a year long if I am not mistaken.

In general? Sure.

But conscription is the back end result of a front end expansionist military policy. While that is a leadership issue, the fundamental key at the individual level is initially agreeing to adhere to it. If you sign on the dotted line, you're property.

That's not service, that's chattel.

If an individual signs a deal with the Devil and adheres to the terms? That can be respected. If an individual agrees to alignment then is upset that they don't control the deliverables? That's not really the Devil's fault.

And, if an individual believes it makes them somehow special to have survived the deal? Part of some sort of super citizenry amongst everyone else owed intellectual homage, PX, health care or hiring points?

That strikes me as self delusional.

There's been more than a bit of that in this thread, recently.

See above, dumbassery runs rampant.

[Tom Joad]

Originally Posted by Zeke

Wow.

That was a lot of brainwashed and elitist quackery...

As well as a ton of projection.

Just think Zeke.

If we would have had a draft, you might have had to go.