William S. Lind :collection (merged thread)

[TheCurmudgeon]

My country never handed medals out for running to cover. If we had, almost all of my grandparent generation would have had the medal since almost all of them had to run to a bunker hundreds of times. They had to put up with hostile fires - literally fires- on a regular basis.

Fuchs,

I apologize for inferring your lack of service or commitment. At this point it would seem that we are talking past each other. Since part of the problem is inter-generational shifts in values, comparing today to the past makes the case that things have changed today.

In any case, I think I am just going to have to disagree with you and leave it at that.

[Fuchs]

We may agree to disagree, but let me first explain WHY I discuss this at all.


Soldiers in general aren't that much different from civilians. Their organisation is a bit more authoritarian, but even this is not always true.

Soldiers deployed in a war zone live an altogether different life - about as much different from other soldiers (even those in 'the rear' or in 'camps') as from civilian relatives who live in safety.
Yet this applies to civilians in a war zone as well.
The odds of sacrificing much - including life - were much higher for a German civilian in 1944 than for an American soldier on occupation service in Iraq, ever.
So the difference isn't that much between military and civilian, but between war and peace.

The attitude of some (many) soldiers that they are meeting higher standards than the general population, have more 'values' (which often sounds a lot like 'higher morality') goes hand in hand with the perception that they deserve 'much', and regularly 'more'.

And that's an attitude shared by almost all military forces staging a coup d'tat.

Attitudes are a matter of freedom of speech and freedom of thought and generally not to be cared about - unless there's good reason to believe they might turn harmful. And this is the case when a military thinks it's better than the civilian world. Then it's about time to set the record straight.
Military personnel merely do a different job, they're no better or more deserving people than civilians.

The same applies to journalists. They tend to assert that they deserve many privileges. Nonsense.


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It shouldn't surprise that this is coming from a German. To Germans, war is about the entire nation, not something delegated to a fraction of the population. We also don't have any kind of 'veteran' cult, so I only write that "I was in the military" or "I was in the Luftwaffe" and never claim to be a "veteran" or something. I also never mention my time in uniform to Germans unless asked specifically.
There's simply no value in 'having served' here. Right after WW2 everybody had served in uniform or suffered from bombing raids or more. Everybody had seen battle. Later on "I have served" was merely a code for "I am no leftie" and wasn't really about the military per se. This 1970's code fell out of use long ago, though.

The debate whether soldiers are distinct, superior, different, more moral et cetera is only provoked by anglophone sources. It is really a speciality, not a global phenomenon.
Some German troops of our time were infected with this school of thought because it's so flattering to them, of course.