Would you fancy your son joining the Marines?

[MistleToo]

A bit worrying isn't it?

There are all these brave men putting their lives on the line - they come back from Iraq and do that to each other? wtf?

You forces wives have the utmost respect from me. I always bawl my eyes out when they do the christmas messages on tv. I don't know how you cope, I really don't. You're so brave and strong.

My dh is a marine,he never had to go through this type of initiation but it does go on.

dh and his mates are just normal blokes, ther will always be afew idiots that think this behavior is acceptable but i don't beleive they are in the majority.

To be honest if either of mysons wants to join up i would encourage them to get an education\travel and make sure they were entirely sure about their choice. i hope i would support them in whatever they want to do.

thanks sky will get one over tomorrow - where r u based? (we do have a few RAF wives here - think there's only about 3/4 familys thou) DH is on about going to lincoln I think - he tells me u guys have a better quaility of life than us lot (but I don't know how much is him saying so i'll agree! lol) would rather hear it from the horses mouth! lol.

(ac- hat's off to ur DH as well - don't think mine could do the training - in fact I know he couldn't! lol) I honestly don't know how u guys/infantry wives cope.

Munz - Just a quick post to say I am in Akrotiri at the mo but due back to the UK in Feb. Cat me with any questions you might have and I will give my honest opinion.....and ask DH for his too. If your DH will be an OR three year postings are one advantage (rather than the two that seems to be the Army norm) etc... Anyway totally off topic for here so CAT me if you want.

MOnkeyTrousers - I hope this comment of yours doesn't mean you think our DH's are a bunch of animals... it sure reads that way.

"No, I'd rather he became a private armed contractor and shot innocent civilians from his car. Animals."

munzsDH - thats the party line, and its a gross oversimplification. If you werent in Iraq, you wouldnt be in danger from some Iraqis who probably believe that they are defending their country against an invader, so you wouldnt have to fire on them when they threaten your life. And you didnt make the decision to go to Iraq - someone else made it for you. Someone who will never go near the firing line.

The British armed forces are there to serve the British government. Not truth and justice.

Please dont think that this is a personal criticism, because I dont know what your motives for joining or staying in the army are, but this is why I would rather my children didnt go into the peace-time armed forces.

The thing is though, that modern war, awful as it is, and I'd be the first to admit to that, is highly tecnical. The days of being able to have 8 hours training and step into a spitfire are long gone (and that did happen in ww2 btw). It took 3 years to train my dh to be a fighter pilot.

So if you want the country defended, ot be able to sort ot massicars abroad, you have to have a peace time armed forces. Like it or not, that is the reality.

mb - dont get me started on the need or otherwise to defend Britain, and the need for, um, practice to keep the troops fighting fit, and try out new technologies! Suffice it to say that I have left the country. (And with house prices like that, I doubt I could go back even if I wanted to, once our house is sold.)

I considered joining the armed forces when I was at school, and I didnt ponder this question of fighting a controversial war.(other things decided me against) Was brought up on WW2 tales of my parents. Naive days, eh?

BTW, I once attended a technical talk on GPS given by a US military engineer, and he commented proudly at one point, "You saw what our GPS products could do in Iraq!"
[speechless]

Just out of interest are you a pacifist totaly?

no, Im in favour of violence actually!
Just dont like organised violence which is done cynically to make a group of rich people even richer. Esp when said rich people are not risking their own necks.

So if something like the nazis rose to power you would fight to oppose them?

"the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing about it"

Point is, once you join the army, you are letting someone else make that decision for you, about what is evil and what is good. That's fine if you trust them.

No you don't! 'only obaying orders' didn't work at Neurenberg or Mei Lei! As my dh keeps tellign me!

You still have the right to disobay and the resposibility to take the consequences.

But the reality is that if Hitler rose to power now we couldn't train up the AF, we have to rely on those who are alreay trained. Put up a kid with 8 hours training now and he/she wouldn't get the s/c off the ground

But, mb, Nurnburg was decided by the winners! And they made the rules. I can't believe that if a soldier said that they had changed their mind, and didnt think tht what they were doing was right any more, they could just opt out with no unpleasant consequences. (else why have some American soldiers fled to Canada? does US have different policies?)

It is just not as clearcut as looking for the next Hitler! The problems we face today are not ones that can be solved by a conventional army, and the only people we can attack are countries smaller than ourselves, because the advanced countries all have similar technology.

PS: hasn't Hitler just risen to power in teh US? Shall I post my America-in-a-state-of-fascism link again? whoops. sorry, theyre on the same side as us keep forgetting

It would seem to me NN that you are just here for an argument, being petty and saying things that dont make sence and / or are totally simple minded and idiotic.

"and the only people we can attack are countries smaller than ourselves"

Iraq is 2 and a half times larger than the UK so smaller, I think, is not the way to describe it.

Level of technology has nothing to do with anything. An RPG can cause a serious amount of damage and they are old as far as weapons go. A bullet is a bullet at the end of the day, it doesnt matter what kind of weapon, or how old said weapon was, they still kill people

I will catch up on this post abit more and then let 'er rip...

the outcome was never seriously in doubt though was it MunziesDH?

Please don't use personal insults on MN postings. You may have notices that I went out of my way to say that I did not wish to imply any personal criticism of you.

mb - just to say that I agree with you in principle, but in reality, there are too many other factors that stop me from supporting that point of view!

And I have just built the wrong verson of my software, through thinking about the future of the British Army , so had better concentrate for a bit.

I wasnt insulting you NN....
Just the things you were saying

I may think that some things my DW says are idiotic..doesnt mean i think shes an idiot

(most of the time)

OK, mdh, no worries - I just had a mental vision of a giant guy in uniform yelling at me!

However saying that if I wasnt in the Army I wouldnt be in danger from outside terrorists is wrong Im afraid. 9/11, The London Tube bombing, Australian bombings etc. Being at home doesnt mean your as safe as you once were.

Why was the US Army bloke bigging up his GPS? In what context? God my phone has GPS. Which was invented by Japan/China by the way. US just happened to get the satellites into space before anyone else.

And as MB says just blindly following orders doesnt happen in the any anymore. Soldiers are well within their rights to disobey an order they feel is illegal as far as the LOAC is concerned.

The way people look at the AF in another country needs serious re-addressing. We may have better weapons, but we are in a totally alien environment.

Look at Veitnam. The US were better, trained and better equipped, but lost due to superiour numbers and lack of local knowledge.

The same things confront modern day soldiers. Attackers know more about the area they are in the the AF do and so, yes, we need to keep training and testing new equipment, so that when faced with things like this we can overcome them with the least amount of difficulty possible.

I know people die in war, military and civilian, but thats how wars are. Its sad when it happens, but I cant change it, and I dont think that I can. I know I can help people though. The AF dont go around picking people off just for looking at them funny. They dont go around blowing things up for a bit of a laugh. So people in government make big decisions that I have no control over. They make choices that you have no control over as well, like taxes, schooling, nhs etc etc. But if you dont like it you have a choice most of the time.

Long and moaning / boring I know, and if I had the time it would be longer and more in depth, but I dont want to be responible for killing people sat in front of their computers now do I??

mdh, I respect your point of view, but there are just too many holes in it. I could analyse them point by point, but I dont think it is helpful to re-fight the Iraq war! And I suspect that deep down, you know them yourself.

Interesting about SatNav being invented in the far east, I didnt know that. can only say, that judging by the impression I got, am vaguely surprised that GPS works at all, but then the same can be said about most software when you know the guys who write the stuff.

'only obaying orders' didn't work at Neurenberg or Mei Lei! As my dh keeps tellign me.

Do you know what was the result of the Mei Lei prosecution?

"just blindly following orders doesnt happen in the any anymore. Soldiers are well within their rights to disobey an order they feel is illegal as far as the LOAC is concerned."

That does not seem to have stopped many from shooting innocent civilians.

1. What was the war in Iraq started for?
2. Was there manipulation of the truth, in order to sell it to the public?
3. Would anyone want his dh/ds ever to be the killer of an innocent person?

Let us see before 9/11: I quote the Nobel Laureate Pinter:

"post-World War II history was full of examples of Washington exercising "a clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good".

"The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War."

"I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile."

"The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them."

"You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force of universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis."