US Politics on Sidechat | I feel like most Americans have very disturbing skewed views about combat deaths. They view US soldiers as if they were civilians, foreign civilians as if they were soldiers, and foreign soldiers as if they weren’t human.

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US Politics 3w

I feel like most Americans have very disturbing skewed views about combat deaths. They view US soldiers as if they were civilians, foreign civilians as if they were soldiers, and foreign soldiers as if they weren’t human.

Anonymous 3w

Like in so many wars our own soldiers are treated as if they are the only people that matter. They are treated as the only victims, even if they are the ones invading another country at the behest of their government.

Anonymous 3w

Respectfully, I don’t see much evidence of that. Are you familiar with the R9X Hellfire missile? It’s literally a missile attached to six katanas designed specifically to kill a single person in a car or a building. You don’t go through the trouble of developing something like that if you don’t care about others. And actually if anything, it’s the foreign soldiers we don’t regard as human—mostly because in the GWOT era, they were technically terrorist. In Iran’s case, the IRGC deserves to die…

Anonymous

OP 3w

Take the Venezuela intervention for instance, everyone was saying it was perfect because no U.S. soldiers died. But 2 innocent Venezuelan civilians died. Does that not matter? Around 70 Venezuelan and Cuban soldiers were killed. Is that not horrible? They were only “serving their country” just like we say American soldiers are. Do their lives not matter?

Anonymous

OP 3w

And we have an entire national genre of Vietnam movies about “it made our soldiers so sad to massacre those villages :(“ Is that not crazy??? That we focus more on the plight of the ones doing the massacres rather than the ones being massacred?

Anonymous

OP 3w

Like somehow we view it as if someone being a foreign soldier completely devalues their life, while infantilizing our own soldiers, and treating random non-military civilians as if they are acceptable collateral.

Anonymous

OP 3w

I think those two innocent lives matter. What makes me fell better about it is that I know the US didn’t do it on purpose. We don’t strike civilian targets the way Israel does. Venezuela was a very beautiful operation, which isn’t the case for other conflicts. Now when it comes to the treatment in Vietnam, oh boy that was terrible. I do agree though I definitely do look at other countries soldiers as not human in a way? I do see them as humans but like I don’t have much regard for them.

Anonymous

#2 3w

I said American people, not combat policy. And I specifically said it was the foreign soldiers who are dehumanized. Why are they dehumanized while our soldiers are infantilized? They are just “serving their country” like our soldiers are. Do you think soldiers of other countries weren’t trying to get military benefits or lift themselves out of poverty like our soldiers are? Many of them are serving unethical governments, but so do American soldiers.

Anonymous

OP 3w

Every time our soldiers participate in an unjust war it’s “they just wanted to pay for college” and “they were just serving our country” and “they were victims of our own government.” So they aren’t expected to have any ethical responsibility for what our government does, but foreign soldiers are?