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I do believe the good ones care, but the military is there for a purpose. Hopefully the reason for sending troops is justifiable. The end goal, the target of the attack or the rescue or whatever... people join the military and know they may have to give their lives to protect/defend the country and our way of life.
Lincoln was a cold blooded Commander-in-Chief! He went past the point of caring. He had a country to keep together and that was all that mattered. That and keeping his loony wife from robbing the national treasury. Horrific war.
[i]Quote: Do Politicians even really care about those that suffer and die when they declare war?[/I]
Yeah, they do. I commanded a unit in Desert Storm. Those under me were assigned to me and I was responsible for their lives. My bosses above me were responsible for them and for me - all the way to the White House. It was an obligation none of us took lightly.
If one of my men died, I had eight hours to make sure their next of kin were notified - even a preliminary notification, even if we didn't know all the facts yet. We saw it as a duty we owed to the man's family for sacrificing their son or husband to the fight.
After Desert Storm I served in Washington for 20 years. I saw President (George W.) and Mrs. Bush go to Bethesda and Walter Reed off the schedule to visit with the wounded - trips that the media never saw. Emotionally, they were some of the toughest things you can imagine.
They care. They just see the world in geopolitical terms and know that from time to time throughout history, disagreements between stated nations become wars. They decide to commit US forces to wars to preserve what they think are the nation's best interests. Sometimes history proves them right; other times history is somewhat more critical. But every single White House contact I know has told me about the anguish that each President has endured when they send X number of troops to war, but only bring X minus y troops home.
On a personal level I beleive you are correct - in that Americans value the lives of our citizens more now than ever before. While we "accepted" vast amounts of deaths in the civil war, we found it harder as the years went by. Even in WWII we lost vastly less than the other combatants.
Vietnam - 52,000 I believe - in a general sense, the "Military Industrial Complex" didn't care very much, although the families and large parts of the society did. The fruitlessness of that war was evident to even the youngest foot soldier almost instantly - it would be hard to believe that the Pentagon or the President didn't know any better - more likely their Politics trumped the body counts.
Today - while I believe you are correct - I also think that the apparatus of state, what we call the "Military Industrial Complex" has gotten so large and so wealthy/powerful, that "it" cares more about its continuation than it does about the lives of a relatively few volunteers. Economics drives the world and all institutions and societies accept certain things which - when looked back upon - sometimes look differently.
Example: We accept a major carnage on our roads - the deaths and maiming of so many that the stats boggle the mind. Do we care? Well, we can claim we do. But have we done everything possible to avoid these massive statistics? No. Not even close. Therefore, it can be said we - as a society - said "It's OK...we accept these deaths and injuries for now".
Of course, if we meet someone gravely injured in an accident we care. If they are family or friends we care greatly. But "we" as a society don't care enough to have reduced it further (even though it is technically possibly in MANY ways). The reasons are somewhat similar - momentum. Why build public transit when you can make money money from cars and highway contracts and insurance and...yes...injury? Why install various monitoring devices in cars (breath in tube to drive) when drunk driving is "approved of" by so many in society and law enforcement (winked at)?
We have done a lot to tamp down the amount of Americans dying in wars...the trend is our friend to some degree. However, the costs of the entire security state (along with other things) have run our deficit up to the highest in history and turned a lot of our country into a 2nd and 3rd world nation (infrastructure, education, etc.).
We need to reallocate because the world has changed and efficiency matters. We can't spend a trillion a year on security if an adequate job can be done for less.
When Politicians decide to declare war, do you think they really honestly give a **** on how many troops suffer or die due to it? If you look back to say WWI do you really think any of the Politicians in any of the militaries that participated really felt bad or lost sleep over how many soldiers got killed or seriously injured, or even with current wars more recently few, if any Politicians truly feel horrible and awful for sending so many to die?
Obviously those at the top never have to worry about getting their own heads blown off, limbs blown off, killed etc. So as much as Politicians may talk about the great sacrifices troops and soldiers have made, do you think most of them honestly could give two ***** about them? Or do you think they just think of them as numbers and think "Sucks to be them"?
I worked for an Israeli company years ago. The "Chairman" (no president in a kibbutz company-company run by committee)
He was an active Colonel in the IDF. This was around the time of the first Iraq war.
He was in Atlanta for a meeting and over drinks, he said "no man should ever send young people off to war if he was too old to screw (he used the other word)
Some of the posts in this thread are no closer to reality than the beliefs of the most-simplistic of the Trumpsters and the Tea Party. The process of statecraft might involve military action (even occasionally proactive, as in the case of the First Gulf War), but among the tested democracies, this is usually undertaken after the opposition makes the first move, as in Kuwait.
It's also worth noting that Coalition commanders in that action had essentially bottled up the remainder of Saddam's forces on what came to be called the "Highway of Death", but lacked the resolve (or maybe had the conscience) not to exterminate the foe for killing's sake. (We might have paid a price for that 10-15 years later, by which time the Iraqis had mastered the tactics of a partisan war of attrition via dirtier tactics.
War is hell -- but the hard fact is that as civilization advance after the collapse of feudalism and its replacement with the concept of the nation-state, the world has always required an informal global policeman. Rightly or wrongly, that role has been thrust upon the United States, and it has chosen to carry it out, and probably with less blatant ambitions than its three predecessors (Spain, France, Great Britain).
Those who take issue with this point need to differentiate between global hegemony, (which was the goal of both Hitler and Stalin), and simple globalization,which refers only to the emergence of uniform standards, markets, and ground rules, and in which, by default and the circumstances of the world's economies in 1945, the United States inherited the most prominent role. The two principal alternatives. mercantilism and isolationism. have been tried and failed, though the former led to far greater bloodshed.
Ask George Bush how easy it is to spend other peoples lives
Quote:
Originally Posted by Abnerthonil
When Politicians decide to declare war, do you think they really honestly give a **** on how many troops suffer or die due to it? If you look back to say WWI do you really think any of the Politicians in any of the militaries that participated really felt bad or lost sleep over how many soldiers got killed or seriously injured, or even with current wars more recently few, if any Politicians truly feel horrible and awful for sending so many to die?
Obviously those at the top never have to worry about getting their own heads blown off, limbs blown off, killed etc. So as much as Politicians may talk about the great sacrifices troops and soldiers have made, do you think most of them honestly could give two ***** about them? Or do you think they just think of them as numbers and think "Sucks to be them"?
ALL tensions between any countries should be resolved this way: top government brass of each country involved should fight with sticks in a large amphitheater. While representatives of the people of each country watch. Whoever party wins that fight, the other country unconditionally surrenders.
That's it.
That was the custom about 3,000-years ago. Then we got better weapons that didn't require physical contact.
The rules of engagement will tell you the answer. If they tie the soldiers hands as obummer does. they don't care about the soldiers life.
We no longer fight to win. We fight to prolong by placing too much emphasis on preventing damage to non-combatants and structures.
It doesn't work, and eventually causes war fatigue on both sides with no winner.
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Ask George Bush how easy it is to spend other peoples lives
