On Apr 10, 2006, at 3:57 PM, jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net wrote:
> On 11 Apr 2006 at 8:14, Dennis Perrin wrote:
>
>> I'm sure there were/are very nice Marines, and I knew a few when I
>> was in
>> the service. But I also knew some real --yes-- sadistic assholes,
>> and that's
>> drilled into them from boot on. It was drilled into us in Army
>> boot, and
>> there were some sadistic fucks there was well. That's what the
>> military
>> does, by and large -- tap into that violent core. My Drill
>> Sergeant told us
>> this all the time, that his job was to erase our civilian minds
>> and develop
>> our warrior minds. And as boot went on, the deeper this appeal
>> went, getting
>> us to scream and yell about the possibility of spraying commie
>> guts all over
>> the battlefield. Fortunately, I never saw the real shit. Of
>> course, this was
>> post-Vietnam, so nobody did.
>>
>> I will say this about the service -- it politicized me. It's where
>> I read my
>> first leftwing literature. It made me a socialist. The military is
>> a complex
>> place, and it affects people differently, for good and ill. I'm
>> glad to hear
>> about you late father-in-law, and God bless him (no sarcasm). But
>> don't tell
>> me that there are no sadistic assholes in uniform. I was there.
>> Indeed, I
>> felt the pull for a time.
>>
>> Dennis
>
> But the wording that was objected to was that Marines were somehow
> more damaged or fragile persons
> than other members of the armed service or even civilians. That's
> BS. I could write a good deal on what's
> wrong with the military but it isn't all bad and I don't think it's
> much worse than what is wrong with most of
> our society. Seems like most men who beat their wifes never join
> the military. Most men who rape were
> never in the military. Most sociopaths who kill without remorse
> didn't learn to in the Marines or the Army.
> Most CEO's who cut corners at the expense at the environment and
> everyones health didn't learn to do that
> in bootcamp.
>
> The Army has sadists and so does the Navy and Air Force. Teaching
> kids to kill is going to be harmful for a
> certain number of them. The biggest failure in this area on the
> part of the military is that they don't take
> responsibility for the ones whose minds they fucked up. They just
> discharge them for medical reasons,
> wash their hands of them, and then let society deal with them
> however they wish. Generally the military
> tries to weed them out of the enlisted ranks but tends to promote
> many of them in the officers ranks. It might
> be interesting to study why this is so.
>
> The 2nd Marine Division has a much smaller percentage of assholes
> than the 3rd Division. That has to be
> directly related to the officers rather than the enlisted men. How
> would sadists know to specify the 3rd when
> enlisting? The 3rd makes them in higher proportion than the 2nd.
> The courts martials and discharge
> records more than mere suggests this is true and not just an
> apocryphal tale. The fault for the noticeably
> higher rape and assault rates must lie with the commanders of the
> 3rd rather than something inherent in the
> Marine Corps since the 2nd's is no different than interbranch
> average IIRC. The 3rds rape and assault rate
> rises and falls with changes in the personnel of its command
> structure.
>
> I think that, just as was your case, military experience has a
> politicizing effect on all recruits. Few enlisted
> men are ambivilent politically. They may not all be leftists but
> perhaps in greater proportion than amoung
> real estate agents?
>
> The military doesn't exist outside of our society, it is part of
> it. Civilians tell the military where to go and who
> to fight. If left primarily to military decision makers the US
> would have no troops currently in Iraq.
>
> John Thornton
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