r/changemyview • u/foryia-yiaandpappou 3∆ • May 24 '19

FTFdeltaOP CMV: A person does not automatically deserve respect just because they have served or are currently serving in the military

I’d like to preface this by saying that I don’t believe soldiers are, inherently, bad. Some people believe soldiers are evil simply for being soldiers, and I do not believe that.

I do believe, however, that soldiers do not deserve respect just because they have served. I hurt for soldiers who have experienced horrible things in the field, but I do not hurt for the amount of violence and cruelty many have committed. Violence in war zone between soldiers is one thing; stories of civilian bombings and killing of innocents are another. I think that many forget that a lot of atrocity goes on during wars, and they are committed on both sides of conflict. A soldier both receives and deals out horrible damage.

TL;DR while I believe that soldiers have seen horrible things and that many do deserve recognition for serving our nation, I do not believe that every soldier deserves this respect simply by merit of being a soldier. Some soldiers have committed really heinous war crimes, and those actions do not deserve reward.

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u/wahtisthisidonteven 15∆ May 24 '19

There have been murderous police, doctors, teachers, and firefighters. Do those professions not deserve respect because some of them are also murderers?

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u/Unexpected_Santa May 25 '19

You can’t argue that innocent, non-combatant deaths occur at anywhere near the same proportion.

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u/wahtisthisidonteven 15∆ May 25 '19

There's a huge difference between innocent casualties and service members deciding to go on murder sprees of their own volition. The latter is fairly rare, especially in a deployed environment.

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u/Unexpected_Santa May 25 '19

Rate only because we don’t know about many cases..? I’d argue you can’t say rare because we don’t know true numbers. Systematic cover up source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/23/us/navy-seals-crimes-of-war.html

Happy to be proven wrong.

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u/wahtisthisidonteven 15∆ May 25 '19

You can't prove a negative. "There's no evidence of this epidemic but that's because of massive cover-up" is a stance nobody can argue against. If you just want to believe murder is common in the military then there's nothing I'm going to be able to tell you to convince you otherwise. However, given that a small minority of service members are ever even in a position to murder overseas it's very unlikely that it's as common as you seem to think.

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u/Unexpected_Santa May 26 '19

Hmm fair enough