Reply #77: I blame both.

[Union Thug]

Both bush and this dumbass soldier share the blame.

I struggle with the question you raise here all the time. In the end we make our choices, obviously some of us are more limited in our choices than others, but we make them nonetheless.

I know this about myself, if I were given the choice between going to war to fight for what amounts to the interests of the social elite, or going to jail, I would go to jail. I made this decision when I they started forcing us to register for the draft back when I was a teenager. I remember calling into the Sally Jesse Raphael late night radio show back when she did such things, and expressing this choice...and for the rest of the evening, other callers SLAMMED me for my ideas. That's fine. I knew then that I would never kill at the behest of another man. Fuck them.

So when I hear of stories like this, I know that in my heart of hearts, i would have opted for prison rather than participate in the slaughter. Now, before you go on about how I may have had more options in life than the soldier in question, let me just add that I grew up in a blue collar union household. Reagan fucked my father and there was no money for college for any of us. I was told to consider the military as a way out and to pay for school. I didn't do it. I attended college when I could, but never finished a degree. Luckily, I'm fairly quick to catch on, and with a lot of luck, I managed to land a very good job, in spite of my lack of formal education. My brother wasn't so lucky. Nor was the older of my two sisters (the younger of the two inherited the same cunning that i did, so she is doing fairly well, all things considered).

So, yeah, I hear what you are saying, but I also know that we all make choices, and choosing to kill a man for no other reason than some overzealous, underachieving frat boy from a rich family telling me to would NEVER have been an option for me.