Ex Dame Pansi wrote on May 27^th, 2012 at 10:10am:

I wasn't being serious

Quote:


I was told by a preacher (anglican) that my wife is in hell.

SOB

bobbythefap1 wrote on May 27^th, 2012 at 9:50am:


Puppet, what is your political agenda? I have seen you say a lot of messed up things, but still have no idea where you are coming from.

Wait, you mean a hair over a decade of combat operations, overseas deployments away from family and friends, and all the psychological strain that entails correlates to a higher rate of psychological problems, some of which result in suicide? 

Really?


Also, that video is friggin' hilarious.  Death is wrong... No poo? If we equate "wrong" as "bad" that daffy woman is essentially saying "suicide is bad because, um, dying is bad, m'kay".  The fact that there are people that weapons grade stupid out there wasting our oxygen is a much greater existential threat to humanity than global warming, nuclear weapons proliferation, cancer, and clowns combined.

mozzaok wrote on May 27^th, 2012 at 9:08am:


It makes me think, that maybe people shouldn't spend all their time in the military if they work in it. It should be a part-time profession. There should be no full-time soldiers except during a real war. You should spend three days training and two days in the city doing community service. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. If they lock you up in that world with no chance of experiencing anything else, you'd freak out.

The military life is a world of violence, murder and bodily mutilation whereas the civilian life is full of fun things like iPhones, movies, soap operas, candy and teddy bears. If you knew there was a world where people had fun fooling around playing with iPhones, watching movies and soap operas and enjoying candy and teddy bears but you were trapped in a world of violence, murder and bodily mutilation, you'd go crazy.

There may well be a ruthless enemy out there who wants to threaten this sweet candy and teddy bear society, but that day is far, far away. Full-time soldiers are a recipe for disaster in a society with high living standards.

mozzaok wrote on May 27^th, 2012 at 9:08am:


To do so would completely undermine the entire point of having an all volunteer military like we have in the US. It all comes down to a cost/benefit analysis. It's simply cheaper and more efficient to have full-time professionals who retain and pass on their experience over a longer period than it is to keep retraining soldiers ever two years at a much lesser experience level.

Also, we already have part-time soldiers.  It's called the National Guard and (insert branch here) Reserves.


mozzaok wrote on May 27^th, 2012 at 9:08am:


Again, if we did that we'd lose a lot of time and money on constantly retraining soldiers, only now a war breaks out you don't have a large non-commissioned officer corp's collective experiences with the last war to draw upon.


mozzaok wrote on May 27^th, 2012 at 9:08am:


Yeah, so three days of training that doesn't even cover the most basic of subjects in detail and a bunch of smiling pretty for civilians at the cost of having good comprehensive training.  Ever wonder why it is that the US military is so damn good at a stand up fight?

The more you sweat and bleed in training, the less you die in combat.


mozzaok wrote on May 27^th, 2012 at 9:08am:


No poo, Sherlock.  That's the entire point of having a military, to kill people and break their stuff, os as Conan said it...

Crush your enemies, drive their people before you, and listen to the lamentations of their women.

That's the only operational reason to have a military, to enforce your will on others by killing their people and breaking their stuff.  Anyone that says different wasn't paying attention during BCT.

Mnemonic wrote on May 27^th, 2012 at 5:51pm:


The "basics" are just that, they are basic concepts. It takes quite a bit of more advanced training to make a soldier proficient at any given task, and it also requires constant practice to retrain skills. THt's what a lot of time is spent on, constant training. 

As far as the US military goes, and this is just for enlisted personnel, the turn over rate is usually determined by the length of their enlistment contract, generally between two to six year enlistments.  At the end of each enlistment the soldier can usually re-enlist and continue their career, and there's usually a good bit of incentives offered for re-enlisting (signing bonuses, preferential postings, preferential training programs, etc.). It's how we keep people with experience in their job and leadership ability in their field around.


Mnemonic wrote on May 27^th, 2012 at 5:51pm:


Losing ones mind can happen any time.  What would actually help would be to remove cultural stigmata attached to someone seeing the Mental Health specialists and better pre-enlistment screening processes to weed out people that have a prior history of mental health issues.


Mnemonic wrote on May 27^th, 2012 at 5:51pm:


To some extent you're right. Most of our (by that I mean the US) training revolved around fighting a war that wasn't going to happen any more (turning the Fulda Gap into a wasteland in order to throw back a horde of angry vodka-swilling communists). We really aren't set up for counter-insurgency operations, and as far as Iraq and Afghanistan goes, our civilian leadership either didn't understand this or simply didn't really care.  Doesn't have anything to do with mental health issues though, that's all operational doctrine stuff.


Mnemonic wrote on May 27^th, 2012 at 5:51pm:


Well, that "trained to kill" thing applies to every kind of conflict, really. If you don't try to instill that mindset into your soldiers, especially your infantry, then come wartime they'll hesitate and end up getting themselves killed, which would be incredibly counter productive.  Again, that's operational doctrine issues that don't actually touch on why it is we've been having higher rates of mental health issues over the last ten years.

You see this stuff happen every time there's a war. We saw it after WWII, we saw it after Korea, we saw it after Vietnam, and we saw it after Desert Storm. We're seeing it again now and I'm fairly certain that we'll see it again in the future the next time someone decides to rattle their sabre a little to hard and a war breaks out. This will happen regardless of if you let your soldiers be free-range chickens in peace time or if you constantly poke them with sticks while making them watch Rambo movies.  All you can really do is try to mitigate the problem, and that goes back to better pre-enlistment screening practices and making sure that soldiers receive proper mental healthcare without any social or career consequences for seeking that help.