Are you willing to fight and/or die for your country?

[viper]

I\'m willing to fight, kill and die for my country....

Infact yesterday we looked at our career opportunities and tbh they don\'t exist.... those that know me know I\'m a very fat bastard.... I have 24months until I am too old to join the RAF..... well guess what.... today I joined the Gym and have started the Atkins diet.... my intention is to lose 10 stone before the cut off date and get fit! And join up hopefully as a pilot (i have the qualifications)

[joeb]

That\'s a good goal vips, I hope you;ll make it :tup:

[LivingTarget]

We\'ll know it when we see the pictures he takes from his instructors plane. 24 months is a long long time so who knows!

Keep it up! :popcorn:

Edit: :X bloody popcorn thing didnt work

:404:

[isoFlux]

i would not fight, die, or join the armed forces for the United States of America.

i dont care who i might be killing, what i might be fighting for (what the media tells us or the real reason), or why people think we should be doing so. the last war the US needed to fight was WWII. since then, the wars we have faught (save for Afghanistan, but that wasnt really a war, more like a bitch-slap before we move on to bigger countries that start with an I) have been for petty, arrogant, imperialistic reasons. for the past 60 years the \"given\" reasons for invading countries by the US has been \"they arent free\" or \"they are evil\" or \"they might have the possiblity of having big missiles\". which i dont think are worthy causes for people to leave their families, die, and disrupt peoples\' lives (physically, and mentally, specificaly: PTS*). politicians sit behind their mass-media shroud barking orders and throwing declarations of war around like they grew on trees, not the bodies of their fellow countrymen.

ya, democracy is a good thing. its far from perfect, room for plenty of improvement, and definatly not mastered by the US (or anybody else for that matter). invading countries to promote a flawed and in-development-governement that the people of that country arent ready for, dont want, or cant deal with is stupid. they get killed, their houses destroyed, their families and entire CULTURE turned upside-down by the invasion. and the politicians just get a piece of paper with some statistics on it and maybe a censored, self-promoting clip 10 miles from the action on CNN. \"its the price of democracy\". bullshit. McDonalds and the GAP isnt worth this. we are killing our boys on the front and killing thousands of people and fucking up far more lives in the country we invaded.

anyways, in a nutshell, the causes we seem to be fighting for since WWII have not been worthy of my, or anybody else\'s, death or suffering.

if i get drafted i will do one of two things: extend my studies in Germany, or move to new zealand (the Canadian border is gonna look like the Iron Curtain). i refuse to fight and die for something as petty as oil and fake WMDs.

*Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. previously known as \"shellshock\". hundreds of soldiers are coming back without physical wounds, but will spend the rest of their life in a mental hell of flashbacks and daily trials. the government is spending little or no money on trying to heal these wounds, esp in National Guardsmen. in some cases, its half-treated near the front, so they can be sent back to the front immediatly (and develop a far worse case when they get back to their families).

[=D.C.L.I=Everest]

I wouldn\'t, for the simple reason that no country is worth fighting and dying for (to me). I\'d rather choose things to live for: freedom, for example, both personal and collective.

[The_Punisher]

So Evert, you wouldn\'t fight for your own freedom? How bout someone else\'s?

[=D.C.L.I=Everest]

If there\'s a cause you\'re pursuing, you\'re better off alive than dead for it, obviously. I just prefer living for something over dying for something. And one would think that fighting is done whilst living, no?

[The_Punisher]

Martin Luther King : \"I submit to you that if a man hasn\'t discovered something he will die for, he isn\'t fit to live.\"

[isoFlux]

i will die to protect the life of people i love. but beyond that, i will be able to accomplish a lot more alive than dead. ther are plenty of things i will fight for, but few things i will be able to willingly, conciously die for.

i find myself wondering what was going through the mind of monks like
Thich Quang Duc, the Buddhist monk who burned himself in protest to Vietnam. sure, he demonstrated that he did not like the Americans interferring with Vietnamese politics and social experimentation, but what did he accomplish? he demonstrated extreme and almost inhuman disicipline when he didnt move or make a sound, but did it really change anything? i think him, and the other monks who did so, could have done many more swaying and effective things if they were alive to protest and make a real difference in the viewpoints of both the Vietnamese and American public.

i think an important thing to realize when you sign up for any Armed Forces, esp in a time when your country is at war, or is nearing war, is that you are very likely to have to sacrifice a hell of a lot. that means leaving your family and children, living under extreme conditions and dealing with intense stress, being shot at, shooting other people, taking part in brutal actions, and many other things that only a soldier can understand. while there are many thousands of soldiers who are not injured, almost everybody who leaves a war (or police action :wtf: ) leaves changed and injured in some way. its not guarnateed, but you can count on it. so, joining the military in my book is similar to pouring the kerosene on your body and wating for somebody to throw a match at you. if you arent ready to burn yourself alive for that cause, i wouldnt feel comfortable even being a cog in the war machine thousands of miles from the front.

[Capone]

I don\'t necessarily believe that the war in IRAQ was handled properly but eventually the iraqi people will have freedom from opression and torture. I don\'t think we should have stuck around so long, far too many people are dying. As for the US going into pointless wars since WW2 I dont think thats entirely true. Vietnam was fought to prevent south vietnam from being taken over. When we first went into IRAQ it was to save kuwait. Kinda funny how everyone seems to bitch about the way the US does things, but when it comes time to save someone\'s ass who do they always look to. The US. Would I fight and die for IRAQ tho, I would imagine so. Most iraqis are very grateful we took sadaam out of power, but those people feel the same way I do. We are staying around for far too long. As for bush, I dont really like him for one reason, he never sticks to what he says. Like others have stated, its one thing to criticise a leader of a country, but to look down upon a country full of people who care about the freedom and safety of the innocent is just plain wrong and a not very well thought out decision.