The meme isn’t wrong but “westoid”? Only the terminally online could have dreamed up a term like that.
Former Marine here. This illustrates the prevailing excuse endemic to the whole imperialist war machine. Every bloody cog has some way of passing blame up the chain. I fixed electronics so I never had to personally pull a trigger but the electronics I fixed helped fix aircraft whose pilots and aircrew were responsible for atrocities I can only imagine. I used to rationalize that this separation erased my culpability but now I understand it actually enhanced it. At the level of maintenance I was at a broken twidgit tip unaccounted for could ground an entire air wing for several days.
If you have made the massive mistake of joining the military please use your power of being a rusty cog. Report every chip on every tool to maintenance control, send every piece of gear missing a screw or emp braiding in for parts/DRMO don’t run to the hardware store for a quick replacement, CDI time is valuable and limited so make sure to never skip a CDI verification step and ask for their opinion on every anomalous reading, if you drop a torque wrench or break a cal seal ground that gear and send it back to the shop, take your time and verify every measurement, don’t gundeck MAFs, and follow all procedures to the letter. Don’t be afraid to involve maintenance control to make sure your shop is fully compliant and not taking shortcuts. If you had just sat on your rack and refused to work you would just get replaced, now you have weaponized the regulations and bureaucracy in a way that covers your ass for the rest of your enlistment while crippling the whole air wing. You can now get out and try to make amends for the catastrophic damage you have done to the world. However if you reenlist fucking die in a fire.
I regret every day that I joined and wish I was aware of the evil the system I was a part of was perpetrating. The few times I talk about my time in the Marines in the last few years is to warn people about how fucked up it is, how they brainwash and strip the individuality from recruits, and most importantly the reality of what the US Military does to innocent people all over the world and the environment.
There is a reason that 18 is a prime recruiting age - not enough life knowledge to know better.
It’s pure exploitation by the state of the ignorance and naivety of the average recruit as well as the capitalist system weaponizing its own failings. Most people in my boot camp platoon were under 20 and the vast majority of us came from disadvantaged backgrounds. I didn’t know the term at the time but most people joined for the hope of class mobility along with getting the fuck out of wherever they came from. It also showed the strength of the US propaganda machine, especially in the immediate wake of 9/11, where the media was complicit in a massive coverup of US/ISAF atrocities and a whitewashing of the savage inhuman brutality that is implicit in war.
That does not excuse our ignorance since millions of people our age marched against the wars, especially Iraq. In retrospect we unconsciously chose cowardice and selfishness and cloaked it in a delusion of honorable sacrifice.
Prefrontal cortex stops developing at 23 to 25. Let that sink in as you remember all the decisions you made prior to 23.
The capitalist version of the Nuremberg excuse… “We all have a mortgage to pay”
Just following orders
The point of the Latuff cartoon is valid, I just really dislike the smell of the word “westoid”.
“I was just following orders” is what all the Nazis said.
I yearn for the day that American soldiers are put on trial and hanged for their crimes against humanity.
The US has given itself permission to invade the Hague before allowing that to happen.
I believe that should not be a valid defense, ever.
If you’re not OK with what you’re ordered to do, you should not do it (and we should have a system of justice and social support which honors that).
If you actually do something you’re responsible for that deed, ie possibly culpable.
If you’re being pressured/manipulated/… the person doing so is responsible for that, so culpable as well - but not in place - if applicable.
German law actually contains an apologetic first step in this direction, called ‘Remonstration’. I think we can all guess how it wound up in that particular legal system.
Besides being able to point at the article and say “see, we fixed it”, I’m not aware of a single (let alone significant) case where it was actually/successfully used.
In somewhat interesting contrast, German law does not codify protection of whistle blowers, for example.
Disagree. One of the main purposes of military training (in most, maybe all, cases) is to strip everyone of their individual autonomy.
If you’re not OK with what you’re ordered to do, you should not do it
The problem with this that soldiers are explicitly trained to not even consider their own judgement of their orders. They don’t stop, judge, then pull the trigger. They just pull the trigger. If they disobey an order, they’re court martialed. It’s the military’s justice system that then gets to decide if the order was unlawful. The system is designed to strip soldiers of their power.
If a 28yo enlists, they share some responsibility simply by knowingly joining an immoral organization. But most new recruits are in high school. They don’t know what the hell is going on.
All this to say: the leaders who have stripped young boys of their autonomy in order to have them commit horrific acts that will scar them for life in order to protect their own regime, they’re the real villains. I see the individual soldiers as victims.
I have mixed feelings on the matter. When the state can force you to comitt atrocities each person is going to have to weigh at what point are they willing to forfeit their own lives.
If your military is committing war crimes then they’re probably not above imprisioning you for a very long time or just executing you. So at what point does your morals outweigh your innate drive to survive? This gets more complicated if you have a family back home.
Of course this goes away when you are looking at a voluntary military. Part of the reason the US went this route. They can grab the desperate/poor and feed them into the war machine. The average citizen then ignores the suffering and the country never creates ladders out of poverty so they can keep a steady supply of soldiers.
All in all it’s pretty fucked
Had someone from the IDF explain to me why they are the most moral army in the world.
He told me that they are ordered to disobey illegal order (wow,really? like every army in the world technically does?)
He then explained that they have absolute trust in orders because it is the most moral army in the world, and defying an order is a crime, because the order cannot be immoral or illegal because the IDF is the most moral army in the world.
I think I stopped the conversation around there, because I doubt they can understand basic logic that goes beyond propaganda.
Last I heard of him he was sad because he got alcoholism from doing minor war crimes in gaza, just casually talking about the things he looted, which he considers “rescuing” from the rubble.
German law does not codify protection for whistle blowers
gross. Although in the US the law is pretty much useless, so I guess at least Germany is honest? 🤷♀️
How is this “westoid” logic? As if no other country does this kind of bullshit.
We only have a chance at peace when ALL soldiers refuse to invade foreign lands.
not every other country is the usa, and not every other country is meddling in every world situation and creating world situations.
sit the fuck down redwhiteandblue underwear, this comment wont hurt you.
Ahem take a look at Russia right now ahem. Or Israel, or China…
Whataboutism
Doesn’t this same also fit for example Russian troops too
And here comes the whataboutism.
I mean sure but also way less people disagree with that and I don’t see how it’s relevant to this meme.
Yhea, but I think it is more important to criticise “your” side for doing that. I hate when russians do that, but I am not going to call or write my Kremlin representative? I am in Michigan and so I call and write to my representatives and hope they are primaried the fuck out.
Like the BS of “do you condemn Hammas”? yhea, i did, I called my Hamas representative and gave them a mouthful? you see? condemning the other side, especially if you only condemn the other side is just BS propaganda. Condemn your side for the crimes your representatives are supporting and your taxes pay for.
love how this rustled some westoid jimmies.
Lol, almost all the comments are “but whatabout Russia!”
“No you can’t mention America anytime we call out Russian crimes or China’s dictatorship.”
Same people the minute you say America did war crimes in the last ~5 minutes:
“BUT WHAT ABOUT RUSSIAN WAR CRIMES?!”
“Our Glorious Eastern Soldiers”
“Their heathen rapist genocidal evil brutish westoids”
The message is good, the title is needlessly inflammatory, as if ANY major country has clean hands.
because god forbid we point out the crimes of the west without going “but these orientals are still bad tho!!!”
People down voting this makes me puke
Probably for the “westoid” part - as if eastoid (lol) soldiers have never “just followed orders”
Eastern soldiers are not infantilized the same way as western troops. American soldiers are just naive boys that got tricked by evil Washington. It’s okay they killed those innocent people because they got free college for it.
Additionally, when you look at the military actions of the west vs east in the 21st century, it’s a pretty silly comparison.
Ok sure man you’re right, no eastern army has ever been brainwashed into atrocities
Saying “westoid” makes you look like a manchild on 4chan regardless. Not a word a serious person users lol
westoids’ feelings were hurt, i see.
My feelings are hurt? At least I’m allowed to have them without a trip to a re-education camp.
at least i’m allowed any education instead of being sent straight to slave-labor prison camp for my opinions.
You mean the ‘education’ that teaches you how to report your neighbors, build the re-education camps, and thank Dear Leader for the privilege of not being sent there yet?
