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What do people think of American soldiers in general?
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
I spent a few hours in an airport terminal in Ireland yesterday with about 100 US Soldiers who happened to be passing through on their way to Iraq ....
It was all very surreal like watching a movie on TV to see so many people dressed in Uniform. There was also a lot more women soldiers then I expected and the majority of those were African Americans.
Was interesting to see the human aspect to it all - most were either trying to call home on the pay phones - or simply recharge their laptops somewhere. Loads of them were in the gift shop buying electrical pin converters so they could plug their laptops into the sockets.
Some of them looked like they were in a daze knowing the airport terminal was their last stop before they go into a potential war zone.
Most of the soldiers looked a lot more mature and older then I was expecting. And they were all pretty quiet and less brash then I'd have expected ..
It was all very surreal like watching a movie on TV to see so many people dressed in Uniform. There was also a lot more women soldiers then I expected and the majority of those were African Americans.
Was interesting to see the human aspect to it all - most were either trying to call home on the pay phones - or simply recharge their laptops somewhere. Loads of them were in the gift shop buying electrical pin converters so they could plug their laptops into the sockets.
Some of them looked like they were in a daze knowing the airport terminal was their last stop before they go into a potential war zone.
Most of the soldiers looked a lot more mature and older then I was expecting. And they were all pretty quiet and less brash then I'd have expected ..
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I think for many of them this will have been their 2nd or 3rd tour of duty in Iraq, so I wouldn't be looking forward to it either.
I can also imagine that they were likely to be regular troops. My brother has had experience with Regular forces and national guard units whilst on tour in the Gulf. The latter are supposed to be gung-ho idiots, who are for the most part completely unprofessional.
I dont have a very high opinion of the average american army soldier. They are just normal people though.
:yes: probably used to it by now
they are just normal people who happen to wear a uniform and have a job to do
In professional terms - usually pretty good (albeit not up to our standards), but certainly much better than the riff-raff which made up most of the NATO armies (with the exception of the Canucks and the French - who were pretty good blokes as well)
a way of seeing this is that the american army instigated a thing of looking after your own first, when no matter how incorrect it may sound, doing the right thing to represent you country comes first, not your own company of soldiers
the other thing that is different is that most of the one's you probably saw are doing their 3rd or 4th tour already, last year they lowered the physical and age requirements to join - the tour requirements are pretty bad for most soliders in the US these days, in this country most soldiers serve something 6month ACTIVE serive for every 12-18months doinf training etc in america it is like 9 month active for 12 months non active
this is a good summary of distribution of resources
http://www.guardian.co.uk/military/army/0,,749315,00.html
I hear hysterical pacificist Lefties regularly whinge that military funding in this country is too high. Oh, do me a favour! If it's too high, why do we have stories about military accommodation being a disgrace? Why do the military have equipment which is sometimes older than the youngest troops? Why are current and former generals warning that they're stretched to the limit? And still, our unreformed socialist dinosaur of a PM refuses to listen.
Doofay slated me when I said this, but I'm saying it again - I'm glad Gordon Brown's government is falling to pieces, and I can't wait for him and his useless tosspot cronies to be kicked out of office. Bring back Tony Blair, please - he may have also been a cynical liar, but at least you knew where you stood with him!
Erm, maybe because they're completely overstretched by two consecutive wars? Just stick to Afghanistan until it was done, and we wouldn't need extra funding, because our commitments wouldn't have been more than we could afford. It's like waiting until an epidemic to say that the NHS is underfunded. The military gets plenty of money until you start using them in every corner of the globe. And the basic US army is just as underfunded as ours. Don't let that spending bill fool you, because US soldiers still report their families having to buy them equipment.
You can't compare with most other countries, because you're not comparing like with like. A conscript army who goes home for the weekend, doesn't tend to need as many married quarters, for example. It also doesn't need to pay as much or cover as many pensions (and in some countries military pensions are counted in the social security not defence budget anyway).
Then you have nukes. The UK puts all its funding for nuclear under defence, France only puts its direct costs and not its research.
As a % of income we're paying a lot less than we did in the 80s.
At the same time military spending is inefficient - it has to be. Men fight under symbols - and symbolism is important. But it does add to cost to have a seperate army, navy and airforce, with some element f duplication. And the regimental system isn't cheap.
If you run a factory you know how many widgets you'll need and when - and can procure accordingly (which is cheaper). An army doesn't know how many rounds its going to fire - which is dependent on the enemy and so has to order more.
The problem isn't money - it's how society views soldiers.
And how's that? And how is it a problem?
Because many people have a view of soldiers and soldiering which bears no relation to reality - and so either think of them of supermen, who don't need help and support, or they view them as some sort of sub-human, pyschotic thug - shooting people for laughs.
And that impacts on how society treats soldiers in terms of medical care, understanding, support, even in the way your treated down the pub (after all everyone knows that soldiers kick off every time they go out and its always there fault they're jumped by locals)
And is that on the evidence of this thread, or something else?
I think many movies are giving a pretty unrealistic picture of the american soldier.
I think the film representations tend to be of drafted soldiers rather than professionals though. I watched Platoon the other night, and they were all drafted. But that was written by Oliver Stone who was out there, so I have no reason to question his experiences tbh.
I actually heard a story on the news this morning about record numbers of US soldiers going AWOL. They had an interview with one who said he couldn't put up with the "abuse" of civilians any more (he mentioned prisoners being held with bags on their heads as an example). That's only one account of one soldier, but it certainly still happens as those infamous photo's proved. As usual, Radio 1 plays a news story, and it's nowhere to be found on the BBC website though. Pisses me right off.
ETA: Here's the really small write up. Not on the main BBC website though.
Not particually this thread - some of it from this site, but more a distillation of my experience and those of many others I know.
Yes, I can see what you mean. But I think you have to distinguish between soldiers in combat and soldiers attending drills (or are in non-combat situations). I think being in combat does something to you, and unfortunately you have tragic events conserning soldiers abusing civilians and so on, but I don't think that's distinct to american soldiers only. However I don't think most soldiers are up for things like that.
I could be wrong, but wasn't Stone a volunteer. That said as a normal Vietnam era US platoon it would be made up of a mixture of draftees who'd volunteered for Vietnam, normal draftees and regulars.
Possibly - I hope its better than one the BBC did a few years ago claiming record numbers of AWOL (only for it to turn out they were lower than a few years before).
I'd also be suspicious of people who are AWOL (and fighting possible extradition) making these sorts of claims. It after all looks better for them if they said they left due to mistreatment of civilians than saying they left because they were scared and didn't want to die.
That said I'm sure there has been illegal killings, soldiers have broken rules and killed and beaten innocents. However, my any previous standards, the coalition forces in Iraq have been models of restraint - there's always going to be bad apples, but there's no evidence its endemic. And bagging prisoners in not new (nor in the scale of things that bad). Yoy can't discuss these things without either a historical context (how bad is it it compared to previous) or the context in which soldiers operate (Iraq is neither Boston nor Bristol)
The main character in Platoon is a volunteer, and I think it's intended to be semi-autobiographical, so I wouldn't be surprised if Stone was too. And yeah, the rest of the characters are draftees and veterans (I don't think it specifies whether the veterans are professionals or not though).