Holy. Fuckballs.

On the other hand, this was one of the most rational discussions I have seen about the election. I would like to see all three of them at the table there, run for president.

Tl;dr - Rational guy debates bat-shit crazy guy and tries to unpick his nuttiness.

I think you will find that most veterans, and currently serving men and women, simply want a clear objective that allows them to win the conflict and return home. Unfortunately the nature of terrorism means that while we follow long held rules that prevent collateral damage, or seek to limit it, the enemy we are fighting do not.

Just as we learned to our sorrow in Vietnam, as the British learned in fighting the IRA, the Russians in fighting the Mujaheddin, and we are learning again in our current battles, terrorists do not feel the need to adhere to the laws of warfare. They use civilians to support them, protect targets, or provide them escape methods. They attack civilians gleefully, knowing we cannot respond in kind.

While I do not support Trump, I do think we seriously need to have a new Geneva Convention to clarify how to treat terrorists and their civilian supporters. I think that is what the ex-Seal meant at the heart of his argument, that fighting terrorists using the old "Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, we have rules here" is an absolute losing proposition. Even Obama found that we needed to work outside the rules sometimes to be successful, hence his invasion into a sovereign allied nation to kill or capture Bin Laden, and his current extremely heavy use of drone attacks on suspected targets.

As far as the second veteran, I feel it is absolutely valid to question his integrity. He could have claimed CO status prior to going to conflict or simply not joined the military in the first place. Instead, he decided to claim it after experiencing combat, something my friends who have served noticed happening in the first gulf war. You really don't want a recap of some of the things they called people who left the service after seeing combat.

@Mordhaus, yeah, good points. Thanks for the clarification of what lies behind the soundbite (nobody has time to explain what they really mean these days, do they?)

However (isn't there always a "however"), I don't agree with "valid to question the integrity of the second vet." Integrity? Pretty loaded word.

It presumes that someone can be gungho about something in the abstract but when confronted with the reality, can't learn something about the world and themselves they didn't know before.

You're right that he didn't know he was CO before. He learned he was.

It isn't integrity to turn away from a learning situation. To me, it is the utmost in integrity.
There are different types of bravery. The bravery to go into battle. And the bravery to decide in the closeknit world of "band of brothers" that you can't be in that particular band anymore.

Maybe it was cowardice in the face of death or maiming that he learned and he ran away. I would say, in this particular case, he honestly came to a new understanding. Otherwise he wouldn't be speaking up, right? He'd be hiding at home? Knowing what soldiers who stayed are saying about him?

War is hell. So many casualties, both physical and mental.

"We need to find out how many vets are willing to do war crimes. Jesus."

You don't really follow current events, do you?

Since the Vietnam war, American soldiers have been rigorously trained to act instead of think. It's been very successful. So successful that the US is now the best country at the world when it comes to killing your own and accidentally targeting civilians. In the first gulf war, 12 Bradley AFVs were destroyed, NINE of them were by US troops. I saw a video during that war of a spotter for an A-10. Even on the poor-quality video we could see it was a Bradley (this was while I was working with an Armored regiment). The A-10 obliterates the Bradley and all the on board were certainly dead, he calls back over the radio, "I believe that was a friendly, over." To which the spotter says, "Oh shit, I was afraid of that."

Your soldiers kill eachother without fear of repercussions. Why the hell would they worry about war crimes against other people?

Have you been to war? I know you were in the military, but were you ever in the field? I haven't. There is a lot of science about adrenaline and fear and acting in the moment.

You think that guy who blew up a friendly is back home bragging about that? If he couldn't forgive himself, it is more likely that he is one of the thousands who come home and then kill themselves. Nobody does that on purpose. "No repercussions" is a false statement.

That is all very different from thinking about it beforehand and calmly deciding that it is a correct military strategy to kill the families of our enemies. That is currently a War Crime, unless Trump gets elected. (Although there are military higher-ups who have already publicly stated they will not follow orders to commit such acts. Will soldiers on the field say the same, when their "commander in chief" gives them permission? Some will, some won't. I'd just as soon not test that, thank you very much.)

Besides. My Lai happened and My Lai was prosecuted and military training has changed. It isn't as if we can't learn.

We do need to stop invading sovereign nations for our own gain. But that is a different topic.

@bareboards2

I've been operational in a war-zone. Shot at twice, and in a Mexican standoff once, but I never fired my own weapon.

Fact is, other developed nations manage just fine (for the most part) when it comes to things like this. It doesn't help that the US has never and probably will never allow any member of the forces to be prosecuted internationally for war crimes.

I know someone who was in Italy many years ago when a US plane decided to buzz underneath the wires of a gondola (the mountain kind, not the Venice kind, obviously). The tail of the plane caught on the wire and 12 people died, including a few children. There was no criminal prosecution for the pilot, crew, or commanding officers. I mean, just look at all the Wikileaks files on war crimes committed by US soldiers, barely any of them received any kind of judicial review (if any at all did, I never heard of them) including indiscriminate killing of random civilians.

Like it or not, that's a part of the US military culture and they worked hard to make things that way. In Vietnam it was estimated that one in a million shots fired from small arms actually HIT an enemy combatant. They learned it was because fewer than one in ten soldiers even TRIED to hit.

On top of that, the pay is so terrible, it's mostly those desperate to lift themselves and their family out of abject poverty that apply for enlisted positions. They are not well-educated and they are certainly not (for the most part) intelligent, hard-working individuals. The US chooses to spend the vast bulk of military spending on technology, rather than people (after all, it's easier to give kickbacks to your political donors that way).

Well, this is the result. A military with no fear of repercussions unless you're one of the poor scapegoats at Abu Ghraib (and if you think they represent even one tenth of the total personnel involved, you're out to lunch) and you're dumb enough to take pictures of yourself, there's pretty much nothing you can do to the 'enemy' that will get you in serious trouble.

Why do you think the Brits insisted on their own zones of Iraq for the second gulf war? In the first one they fought alongside Americans and suffered more casualties from American fire than they did from Iraqi fire. I talked to a Brit armored officer who was in the first gulf war. He went to introduce himself to the colonel of the American unit next to them, the Colonel stared in amazement at the Scorpion light tank and said, "What the hell kind of Bradley is that?" I can guarantee you, every soldier, from Private to the Colonel of my regiment could have identified every armored vehicle on the battlefield.

As I recall, it was the Iraq war that deployed so many soldiers that the military had to drop their educational and intelligence requirements for enlistment, as well as no longer rejecting convicts, so you're right, many are now enlisted because it was the only job they could get, not because they wanted to serve and fight if needed, and certainly not because they are our best and brightest....sadly.

If he left because of his conscience, doesn't that lend some credence to his claims? I mean, if he disagreed with what was happening out there and stayed anyway, he'd definitely have no integrity.

This isn't the 1900s - if a person objects we don't instantly assume cowardice or questionable integrity. We can forgive people knee-deep in the shit for calling him a few names over it, but we can't be so glib about it in a debate or on here. Or maybe you didn't mean that and you can clarify why his integrity is questionable.

I don't know if it is or isn't, but in the debate above it was clearly an attempt to discredit the person rather than the argument; he literally discredited the person because he was losing the argument.

War crime laws are an interesting concept. They're ignored when a real war is fought, and pretty much exclusively applied to the losing side alone afterwards. They serve as a tool to demonize and justify military action after the dust has settled, allowing the victors to say that they had just cause in committing all of their own atrocities. I'd be curious (and likely horrified) to see how far the US would go if it actually had to fight a war it had a chance of losing.

When you veer into talking about changing the Geneva Conventions I think your argument loses logic. Without getting into whether military action is actually justified in the first place, maybe it's worth admitting that there are some thing the US military simply can't do and therefore shouldn't try to?

To suggest that the US should forego international norms to achieve its goals feels like it's channeling the neo-conservative myth of the US as this omnipotent superpower that it never was, and certainly isn't now. What evidence is there that acting like the terrorists (which once you give up international norms you will eventually get to) would actually help achieve its objectives in the first place?

The Bush administration basically took that approach with torture (the "well they did it to us!" approach). When the news of secret rendition, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo broke (as it inevitably would), we know that almost certainly recruited a whole bunch of new terrorists. Meanwhile torture confessions led to a whole bunch of wild goose hunts.

Civilian resistance has been around since the dawn of armies invading foreign lands. International norms geared around state v. state warfare don't really address them, not because they didn't envisage them but because occupying and pacifying foreigners was never a good idea in the first place. Drone strikes, surgical strikes on the likes of Bin Laden should be a rare exception but once you start 'normalizing' them, and giving occupying soldiers wider latitude with civilians that's when you start getting into serious trouble.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/This-Veteran-Has-Had-Enough-of-Trumps-Selfishness

This Veteran Has Had Enough of Trump's Selfishness has been added as a related post - related requested by bareboards2.

The Pro-Trump guy: "I'm in favor of doing what it takes.."
oh boy.
That's terrifying.
Episodes of "24" and the fervid imagination of the Hollywood notwithstanding ---
Torture isn't usually a good idea.
And killing EPWs (Enemy Prisoners of War) is NOT the way to get people to surrender to you. Which, if you want the other side to collapse, is exactly what you want them to do; surrender; give up; leave the battlefield. Not seek vengeance for the rest of their lives and their descendants.

Some advice for the Anti-Trump guy, who I otherwise tended to agree with:

Don't interrupt the Pro-Trump guy. He's respectfully listening to everything you say, and giving blunt, honest answers back. You don't agree with those answers, and neither do I, but blunt honest answers are extremely helpful to demarcate your respective stances.

Basically, I think that his (Pro-Trump's) answers will persuade more people to your (our?) side than your own thoughts and statements. Especially when you act so threatened to the point of feeling the need to constantly interrupt him, whereas he comes off as completely confident and secure enough to let you dominate the speaking time.

my favorite part is when Lemon literally says, "Are you certain of the words you just said?"

Here's a hint you probably royally screwed up - if the moderator in a debate asks if you purposefully meant what you just said, you probably just sat on your own balls.