Lest We Forget

[alexjrgreen]

So young they were, so young, so very young,
Full of life's laughter, eager for the fight,
Broad chested, tough, clean shaven, such a sight
As in new khaki all our heartstrings wrung
To see them. Rank on rank, their rifles slung
Across one shoulder, easy in the might
Of war, their buttons glinting in the light
Proud it was they for whom the tocsin rung.

How can I hope to comprehend their love
Who walked through Hell, full willing, for my sake?
How could I in this world, still less above,
Even part payment for that ransom make?
For rank on rank their pallid tombstones lie
And there, but for the grace of God, go I.

[MSimon]

You can donate to a group who helps wounded soldiers here:

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... aiser.html

Younger and more sensitive viewers should avoid watching the video.

[IntLibber]

As a veteran myself, I personally prefer the Guy Fawkes rhyme... Guy Fawkes, the last man to enter Parliament with honourable intentions...

Remember, remember, the fifth of November
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot.
I know of no reason
the gunpowder treason
should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent
To blow up King and Parli'ment.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England's overthrow;

[MSimon]

As a veteran myself, I personally prefer the Guy Fawkes rhyme... Guy Fawkes, the last man to enter Parliament with honourable intentions...

Cracked me up.

[alexjrgreen]

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori:
mors et fugacem persequitur virum
nec parcit inbellis iuventae
poplitibus timidove tergo.

"How sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country:
Death pursues the man who flees,
spares not the hamstrings or cowardly backs
Of battle-shy youths."

Horace Odes III.2.13

[alexjrgreen]

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!–An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen

[MSimon]

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

John Stuart Mill

[chrismb]

I agree with Mill, but not strictly in context. We need not physically fight any more. There is now so much scope for us to do battle using our wits against worthy adversaries such as the intellect of others, or the technical challenges that await us in an ever greater expansion of our capabilties and understanding (e.g. fusion energy) that we need not fight by means of destruction, but fight as in a sport, in which to win is to better ourselves rather than to defeat the other.

And, indeed, to fail to pick up the intellectual challenges to exercise our brains is, truly, an act to be despised.

I always think that the first stage of the process of becoming civilised is State torture. Sounds contradictory, but that is the stage at which those capable of physical violence are threatened by those who have ideas and knowledge that are a yet greater threat. The next stage is the surpression of people exercising their ideas and knowledge. The Western world is generally going through this stage still (America seems to still have a foot in the earlier stage, so I gather ). I would suggest that as States mature, so their lust for violence subsides for they know it is ideas that are the greatest weapons of war.

Not wishing to dishonour the nature of the thread, I pay respect to all those who knowingly put themselves in harm's way. There is no finer accolade than to excel here and to eschew hiding away in the shadows when the situation calls them. However, the phrase I will bring to the thread is "lions lead by donkeys".

[AcesHigh]

everything posted here is valid both ways you know... the moment you think its honorable to die for your country or beliefs, you are also justifying your own enemy actions.

[93143]

everything posted here is valid both ways you know... the moment you think its honorable to die for your country or beliefs, you are also justifying your own enemy actions.

You might want to study some just war theory.

In a way, though, it can be true. If a man fights for what he believes is a good cause, one that genuinely requires him to fight, he can easily come into direct conflict with another man who believes the same thing. All that's necessary is for one of them to be mistaken.

We need not physically fight any more.

"It needs but one foe to breed a war, not two... And those who have not swords can still die upon them." - J. R. R. Tolkien, WWI veteran

[Betruger]

everything posted here is valid both ways you know... the moment you think its honorable to die for your country or beliefs, you are also justifying your own enemy actions.

You might want to study some just war theory.

In a way, though, it can be true. If a man fights for what he believes is a good cause, one that genuinely requires him to fight, he can easily come into direct conflict with another man who believes the same thing. All that's necessary is for one of them to be mistaken.

That doesn't "justify the other's mirror action". Unless both are right, on the issue fought over. Which ought to be exceptional, not a rule.

[93143]

everything posted here is valid both ways you know... the moment you think its honorable to die for your country or beliefs, you are also justifying your own enemy actions.

You might want to study some just war theory.

In a way, though, it can be true. If a man fights for what he believes is a good cause, one that genuinely requires him to fight, he can easily come into direct conflict with another man who believes the same thing. All that's necessary is for one of them to be mistaken.

That doesn't "justify the other's mirror action". Unless both are right, on the issue fought over. Which ought to be exceptional, not a rule.

Here we encounter the difference between invincible ignorance and culpable, or vincible, ignorance. If you think you're doing the right thing, and due diligence has not given you any reason to suspect otherwise, then you are not guilty of any wrongdoing. That's invincible ignorance. Actions taken out of invincible ignorance can be honourable and laudable, even if they are objectively wrong given all the facts.

Vincible ignorance is when you should have known. In an important matter like war, the failure to attempt to determine the truth is entirely blameable, as is acting on a doubtful conscience if the doubt is significant. Obviously it's difficult to be completely certain of the truth in all cases, but there is a level of uncertainty beyond which you shouldn't just do whatever your leader says.

If you do know your cause isn't just, or at least have grave doubts... well, using deadly force when you don't have a good reason to believe it's justified is pretty serious. Of course, if the penalty for not doing so is being shot, that can mitigate the offence quite a bit, and the same goes for the previous paragraph...

I feel relatively confident in declaring it theoretically impossible for both sides in a violent conflict to actually be objectively in the right. Though it's perfectly possible for both of them to be in the wrong...

[MSimon]

everything posted here is valid both ways you know... the moment you think its honorable to die for your country or beliefs, you are also justifying your own enemy actions.

You might want to study some just war theory.

In a way, though, it can be true. If a man fights for what he believes is a good cause, one that genuinely requires him to fight, he can easily come into direct conflict with another man who believes the same thing. All that's necessary is for one of them to be mistaken.

That doesn't "justify the other's mirror action". Unless both are right, on the issue fought over. Which ought to be exceptional, not a rule.

So the one that starts a fight automatically wins? I don't like those odds.

[AcesHigh]

You might want to study some just war theory.

In a way, though, it can be true. If a man fights for what he believes is a good cause, one that genuinely requires him to fight, he can easily come into direct conflict with another man who believes the same thing. All that's necessary is for one of them to be mistaken.

That doesn't "justify the other's mirror action". Unless both are right, on the issue fought over. Which ought to be exceptional, not a rule.

Here we encounter the difference between invincible ignorance and culpable, or vincible, ignorance. If you think you're doing the right thing, and due diligence has not given you any reason to suspect otherwise, then you are not guilty of any wrongdoing. That's invincible ignorance. Actions taken out of invincible ignorance can be honourable and laudable, even if they are objectively wrong given all the facts.

Vincible ignorance is when you should have known. In an important matter like war, the failure to attempt to determine the truth is entirely blameable, as is acting on a doubtful conscience if the doubt is significant. Obviously it's difficult to be completely certain of the truth in all cases, but there is a level of uncertainty beyond which you shouldn't just do whatever your leader says.

If you do know your cause isn't just, or at least have grave doubts... well, using deadly force when you don't have a good reason to believe it's justified is pretty serious. Of course, if the penalty for not doing so is being shot, that can mitigate the offence quite a bit, and the same goes for the previous paragraph...

I feel relatively confident in declaring it theoretically impossible for both sides in a violent conflict to actually be objectively in the right. Though it's perfectly possible for both of them to be in the wrong...

the nazis were pretty sure they were doing the right thing... the notion that fighting and dying for your nation and beliefs was widely used by Hitler and Stallin.

[93143]

the nazis were pretty sure they were doing the right thing...

Far be it from me to judge the hearts of the German soldiers during WWII, especially in a single indiscriminate lump, but I think you made that statement much too hastily. Humans quite often do things they know they shouldn't.

And even if it were true, so what? They weren't doing the right thing. The question (for each individual case!) then becomes: was it invincible or vincible ignorance? If the latter (possibly more likely in an obvious case like Nazism, but collective psychology is a strong influence and constitutes a mitigating factor at the least), was it perhaps affected ignorance (where you deliberately avoid finding out if you're wrong because you don't want to stop doing something)? Crass, or supine, ignorance (where you expend no effort whatsoever to learn the truth)?

We aren't the ones who have to judge that.

Our job is only to make sure we don't end up like they did - on the wrong side of a war.

...I trust you aren't going to attempt a defence of total moral relativism in the face of the Holocaust?

Or are you merely trying to assert that Churchill shouldn't have broken Chamberlain's peace? Or that there's no way to tell who was right and who was wrong during that war? Or perhaps that we can tell now that the Nazis were wrong, but they somehow couldn't tell then?


Affected ignorance, by the way, should not be confused with outright doublethink...

the notion that fighting and dying for your nation and beliefs was widely used by Hitler and Stallin.

And?