Worship? No. Respect? Yes. [View all]

[paleotn]

In response to an earlier post on military worship....

First and foremost, it is a cold, cruel, dangerous world outside the comfy confines of American power and that of our allies. Spend some time in, say, central Africa, central America, parts of south Asia and enumerable other places and failed states, and one becomes well aware of the anomaly of our bubble of protection. A bubble most of us don't even notice. A rough, modern analog of Pax Romana. That peace allowed the stability for growth and a flowering of civilization, along with, unfortunately, excesses analogous today. We can argue for days about the evils of imperial expansion and I would agree with you, but still there was peace an growth within the imperial bubble.

Though the majority of US wars were for wrong headed reasons and could and should have been avoided, not all wars are like that. And our military doesn't exist simply for those wrongheaded reasons. The rise of fascism comes quickly to mind. The military industrial complex and wars for corporate greed, as evil as they are at times, exist as parasites on the body of a much greater truth. A truth we lose sight of in our comfy bubble. So, lets not dispute that truth when we show our disdain for the parasites. Humans are tribal, prone to violence and are dangerous. We've been dealing with that fact with city walls and frontiers since the neolithic and I see no change in the foreseeable future.

Thus, for the protection that they provide, at the risk of their very lives, the least we comfy folks can do is show them a little respect. Don't worship, by any means. They're still human and subject to all our foibles. But they do put their butts on the line when many of use refuse to...yet love our comfy bubble all the same.