link. Of course the 
ors downvote bombed the people pointing this out.
he's further down in that thread saying how much better off now iraq and libya are than before they got attacked by the US. And talking down to an iraqi who chimed in to say he's wrong
Greeted as Liberators
there's a "peace memorial" in my city that literally just has little plaques about all of america's (official) wars and literally has a quote from a handwringing troop along the same lines like "I dont know if it was right or wrong but an iraqi child told me we were heroes saving the day" basicall
Listen, who are you going to believe? That pile of corpses or this hand puppet of an Iraqi child I'm wearing?
And that Iraqi child's name was Albert Einstein
There's a bazinga in that thread posting about how 
Iraq's economy is doing so well now and HDI is around the same as their neighbors! Problem is that obviously the economy was in the shitter during the 90s because of the brutal sanctions, and if you look at the HDI graph, it's grown at around the rate as it did in the 90s during said sanctions (with a noticeable dip around 2003 🤔).
Also last year (or early this year?) the Iraqi dinar has been subject to financial war by the US as punishment for trading in USD to Iraq. The US has manipulated the exchange rate with the explicit purpose of causing harm to the Iraqi economy and therefore the people. Buying medicine is much harder and there's a large black market for specialized goods and food not produced in Iraq. Wholesome chungus.
How can he not understand being a part of an invading force makes him guilty by association? A (former) soldier still thinks he was saving lives instead of destroying them, as if Iraq didn't have clinics or vaccines before his organization bombed them.
On a more positive note, even people like this support Palestine.
This seems like a textbook case of cognitive dissonance. Like they have some of the right ideas, but squaring those with their actions pretty clearly casts them as the bad guy and that's hard to deal with.
That being said he was still part of an illegal invasion force and a war criminal, so I'm not too concerned
as if Iraq didn't have clinics or vaccines before his organization bombed them
They literally do believe this, people probably still think Iraqis lived in mud huts before the American bombs of freedom and prosperity fell
Although they may have been right about not having vaccines because of the sanctions by their own government
I don't think he was worse than Saddam
The American urge to say the stupidest shit imaginable
Americans are never worse. It doesn't matter how many civilians they kill, how many wars they start, how many countries they invade, how many nukes they drop... they're always conveniently better than the side they're destroying. God, I sincerely, sincerely wish for a war on American soil one day, to repay everything they have plagued the world with tenfold. I won't have an atom of sympathy for any of them.
I never once fired my weapon in your country. I simply ensured the people firing weapons at your people were in optimal health to do so.
I'm ashamed that the war took place. But I'm not ashamed in nursing war criminals back to health so they could go back and kill more civilians.
"I didn't kill those people, I just shipped ammo to the military base"
see, this is what sucks about reddit, because this guy is an idiot lib but I'm sure he could be convinced. but since the conversation is on reddit, we have no choice but to bash his head in with a rock. oh well.
I have a theory that internet debate is mostly useless as a way to convince people because we're all just text on a screen instead of people. This might be mitigated within internet communities, where users recognize each other and take each other somewhat seriously, but randos arguing can never ever convince the other of anything significant.
We're all just NPCs in the posting RPG
That's a really good point. I see the @ in your name on hexbear and start to wonder but then I say, "Oh that's queermunist, I've seen her before. She's cool." On everybody is just a rando
I'm usually more reserved about the troops, I think there are a lot of potential allies but I met a former marine recently who told me about training the Israelis in a massive "cop city" type of town meant in his words "to invade Gaza."
All he really cared about was how hot the girls were.
Its frustrating because I do think some people regret joining immediately, or they stay asleep for a little while under propaganda but then you run into guys like this.
The ones who see combat are more likely to be potential allies. You'll find more potential allies in the army than the marines. A lot of people from bumfuck towns join them because they're worshipped by the people as these badass heroes. Have met very few marines that weren't frat boys looking to bang women and fuck up minorities.
I unfortunately meet a lot of Marines. I would say theres a good number i meet who are just really uncurious and dont understand the world around them. Ive met some good people albiet misguided
Seconding the feeling on the army. It's the branch that's the most punch-in, punch-out working class by culture
Yeah the air force is a mix of nerds and apocalyptic evangelicals
Then we make a movie about it 20 years later about how sad we felt, yada yada
88 points
sus af
"Most soldiers don't see combat, he was probably just a cook or a mechanic."
"Ah yes so he made life livable for the people who did kill children. Very wholesome."
People get very upset when i mention that the people who work in the payroll department of the US Army still have blood on their hands. Just quit and get a respectable job like being a cashier or janitor lmao. No need to work for the deadliest faction on earth.
Yup, even ISIS has doctors and accountants.
ew wtf is this gall?
Bro "if it weren't for us Iraq would be like yemen." Yemen, is also a country where the US is doing war crimes?
I don't understand why you can't just live in shame and shut the fuck up if you're a veteran. Just live in shame and shut the fuck up about your experience.
No one's going to forgive you and rationalize for you, your victims will probably just let go of their anger instead of turning their grief into ghosts as they still need to live and move on. I think most people outside the US know that American troops are brainwashed brutes anyway, as if they'd let that excuse their crimes, but just choose to not obsess about individuals and instead lament and resist the institutions and power behind the American state.
your victims will probably just let go of their anger instead of turning their grief into ghosts as they still need to live and move on
That's a thought I notice a lot of folks don't usually have; a lot of people are quick to say the survivors will become 'terrorists' (freedom fighters more like), but actually most will try to scrape up what they can of what's left of their lives. I'm reminded of someone I read about who had to literally pick up the unidentifiable pieces of his brother in a blanket after his brother, wife and kids were struck by a drone bomb, and the poor guy returned to his meager life but gained a stutter after the experience.
(But sure, it's the veteran we're supposed to feel sorry for)
I think the word "evil" implies a lot of cartoon and comic book bizarre identifiers and personality, even up to the Nazis and Hitler who were also bombastic and absurd in their embrace of murder and destruction.
That soldier trying to normalize his brutality and aid in cruel occupation is evil. Evil is a person like Eichmann, who fled to Argentina, to lead a mediocre existence there. Evil is a bureaucrat for the Nazis just shuffling papers making sure munitions, food, materiel, and paychecks were being sent to the Wehrmacht.
Arendt's Banality of Evil's thesis - that Evil can not flourish without these mundane, career-driven, simple-minded "go with the flow" moral cowards and cretins - has really come to light once more in the past month.
It’s like that old Frankie Boyle joke…
Not only will America go to your country and kill all your people. But they'll come back 20 years later and make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers feel sad.
hexbear's really making me want to move to Iraq recently lol
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