• some_guy
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    17 hours ago

    “I might have supported a war built on a house of lies, but it’s that idiot’s fault that he believed me.”

  • BillyClark@piefed.social
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    1 day ago

    Someone should ask Susan Collins why she thinks people join the military. Because based on that video, it seems like her answer would be, “because they’re idiots who want to throw their lives away on a politician’s whim.”

    • pulsewidth@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      I mean… I get that a lot of people choose military jobs because they are poor or have limited options, and her response in context is really tone deaf.

      But there’s surely a lot of enlistees that choose for very stupid reasons. The US armed services in post-911 were frothing at the mouth to get over to the middle east and exact some vengeance. Bush Jr still holds the highest approval rating of any president since tracking began in 1945.

      • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
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        1 day ago

        That still blows my mind. What about 9/11 made people like Bush? If anything he shares some blame for failing to prevent it…

        And they immediately hijacked it to ram through their neocon agenda, damaging America and many other countries and people in ways we may never recover from. It’s not like those things happened in secret, at least not all of them.

        • b34k@lemmy.world
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          24 hours ago

          And don’t forget, he oversaw the (now first of several) once in a generation financial collapse. He left the country much worse off than he found it…. I don’t understand how anyone has nothing but contempt for him.

      • discocactus@lemmy.world
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        20 hours ago

        But he’s the edgy new “different” Democrat who will make the party more acceptable to… Well fascist adjacent people… But… He tells it like he sees it! Even though he’s clearly not that smart. But he’s honest!.. Well for a politician, maybe…

  • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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    17 hours ago

    This is the issue with antiwar discourse primarily focused on US troops. The troops are volunteers, and there are plenty of ways that harm to them can be minimized or negated while continuing to slaughter people, like through drones.

    The actual victims of imperialism, the Iraqi people, did not volunteer for any of that shit. But to focus on them means treating them as human beings with moral worth, which, in US politics, is such an extreme far-left idea that it’s basically relegated to the “lunatic fringe.” The furthest “left” mainstream critique of the war is this stuff about the poor troops, which, yes, it’s still bad to send them into conflicts without reason even if they volunteered and even if the risk is mitigated. But it’s hardly the worst thing about the war, and it falls flat for a lot of people.

    • Eldritch@piefed.world
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      1 day ago

      Yep, responding to “look what you did to me” with “hey you gave me the ability to do it” isn’t some sort of moral flex.

      • discocactus@lemmy.world
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        20 hours ago

        I mean both are in the wrong. Volunteering to be a murderer for hire is bad, and hiring murderers to murder people for oil under false pretenses is bad too.

        • unitedwithme@lemmy.today
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          22 hours ago

          Was any of it not factual? I don’t know who either of these people are, I’m not obsessed with politics like many, but it just sounded like she knew the facts.

          • DebraBucket@lemmy.world
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            18 hours ago

            It ignores the fact that the premise of the Iraq war was completely built on lies. There were no “Weapons of Mass Destruction” as Republicans claimed. A lot of people enlisted thinking they were protecting the US from a danger threatening the existence of the entire country, which ended up not being true.

            • unitedwithme@lemmy.today
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              18 hours ago

              OK I’m only speaking to the clip, not the entire Iraq war. The guy accused her of sending him to war when he’s enlisted. She’s just commenting the facts, right? That’s all I’m talking about.

              It’s always easy to shit on stuff after the fact looking back, but the gov is good at covering stuff up; so at the time, yeah, a lot of people enlisted thinking they’re doing their duty. Probably the same as now with Iran and Israel. Just gov BS and a cover story to go with it.

  • Eternal192@anarchist.nexus
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    1 day ago

    She doesn’t appear healthy enough to be in charge of anything… oh right almost forgot who the president is.

  • Eldritch@piefed.world
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    1 day ago

    While technically true. She’s still the dumb bitch that voted to subject the troops to it.

    • just_another_person@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Enlisting to serve does NOT mean you should expect a war of CHOICE. Iraq had nothing to do with anything, and this old bag CHOSE to send people to die there.

      Not because we had to, because SHE wanted to.

      • Eldritch@piefed.world
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        1 day ago

        Oh absolutely. Which is why I still pointed out that she was the one that voted to subject him to it. No one should sign up to fight in the army of the capitalist. Or any other authoritarian group drunk on power regardless of what economic dogma they spout.

        But once you sign up you cannot resist them using and abusing you in words of choice like that without severe consequences. It’s still on her as it always has been and always should be.

      • porous_grey_matter@lemmy.ml
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        1 day ago

        If you are American it 100% does. Why would you think the moment you signed up would be the moment they would stop starting wars suddenly? I mean, fuck senator Collins obviously, what an awful ghoul, but she’s correct in this case. Anyone signing up to be in the military has to own what they’re signing up to do and it’s not like there’s no way to know.

        • criscodisco@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          I joined in early 2001. It was a completely different time when I went in vs when I got out 4 years later.

          Less than a year before that I was campaigning for Ralph Nader.

          Life is complicated sometimes. We don’t all have an easy escape from the situations we are born into.

      • Grimy@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        I don’t think it’s right but you sign away your rights to those expectations when you enlist for the most part.

      • GreenBeard@lemmy.ca
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        1 day ago

        I just wish more soldiers understood that Democrats are anti-war, because they are pro-soldier. Republicans are pro-war, because they consider soldiers stupid cattle asking to be slaughtered.

  • ceoofanarchism@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 day ago

    I mean I know this is unpopular but this is right he joined specifically to kill people in Iraq to fight in “his war” he was not quiet about this both suck.