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def difficult to watch that video (on a lighter note I ended up muting the speakers cuz the track is godawful)
while individual soldiers can and do commit horrible atrocities (against both civilians and their fellow soldiers; rape in the military is an issue) I guess I'm not sure how effective this anti-war message was? If this was a critique of specific acts committed by a small percentage of enlisted soldiers then I'd get it. As (based on the lyrics) it's simply a characterization of soldiers as monsters and bullies, I have a few problems.
Truth is, enlisted soldiers didn't choose to wage war against Afghanistan and Iraq, and many are serving their country not because they feel it's the right thing to do but because enlisting provides employment and access to education they need to provide for themselves and their families. In some cases these are resources they'd have difficulty accquiring in any other way.
Granted this is anecdotal, but over the years I've encountered a ton of military guys in my 'adult' line of work, and the vast majority are intelligent and moral people who are caught up in a really fucked situation not of their own making. Many are strident critics of the military and the war (at least privately) and negotiate a very delicate and difficult line between doing their job and being a human being.
War forces individual soldiers to act as agents of oppression on the behalf of their government, they don't get a choice in the matter. Yes there are soldiers who are despicable people who relish the power/authority they get in a military theater over civilian populations, but for most this is a job, a job they do not because they enjoy it and sometimes not even because they believe in what they're doing.
tl;dr The real criminals are the leaders who make the choice to send young men and women out into combat. As a result of decisions made by upper-echelon staff rather than combatants, civilian populations are oppressed as a function of these wars that shouldn't have been started in the first place.
If Vietnam taught the public anything, it's that the men and women who serve are profoundly affected by what they see and do while serving, often because they are forced to do and see things that no one should have to experience. I consider both enlistees and civilian populations in occupied nations to be the 'collateral damage', and in that sense this video omits a huge portion of the truth from the narrative.
cool topic, thanks for posting the video
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