[Pelham]

That’s always the case. Professional military is usually a good deal more realistic.

Only two Senators voted against Johnson’s Gulf of Tonkin resolution that would directly send US combat troops into the Vietnam War.

Gruening of Alaska was one of the two no votes. See if his warning doesn’t sound prophetic in hindsight:

“That means sending our American boys into combat in a war in which we have no business, which is not our war, into which we have been misguidedly drawn, which is steadily being escalated. This resolution is a further authorization for escalation unlimited. I am opposed to sacrificing a single American boy in this venture. We have lost far too many already”

[robowombat]

Why do Americans feel the need to wallow in cheap sentimentality about military operations and the members of the armed forces. I remember telling one of my mothers female friends that while I was a member of the US armed forces I was not a ‘boy’ and it was deeply insulting to be so referred to, A boy means the military personnel are callow, weak, silly and immature. Soldiers engage in the most consequential actions a nation can perform. Organized acts of mass violence and destruction against another nation or people. The military executes the armed and violent will of the nation it serves. For that reason only the most impelling reasons should call for its use. Once ordered imtp action the armed forces kill and destroy n the name of the nation. Soldiers are the nation's professional killers and as such are not the Salvation Army with guns, or the Peace Corps with tanks and attack helicopters. The comfortable lies, and much Americans love to believe that some how American soldiers don't really kill and destroy and are just sort of Boy Scouts in a different uniform are repulsive and tell more about the citizenry's desire to be lied to so they can deny their country is actually really doing violent things to other nations to defend the presumed interests of those prefer the comfortable lie,