What's the difference between a soldier and a junkie?

[rory_20_uk]

I understand that Norway is a frigid dump whose only redeeming feature is that it floats on oil. Since the need for U-boat pens has passed any other use for the country has long passed.

In the UK with the starting salary of 16k, they get to go to war often without adequate equipment, and some die because of this.
They are not book smart, but they are not idiots. They often know the risks yet they still go and die. Some even die whilst trying to save their friends.

There are many different soldiers, and their motives are bound to differ, in the same way that people undertaking any other job do.

I admire someone who apparently is there for the good of all mankind yet who is prepared to rely on hope to solve conflicts - not contribute money and certainly not place his own life on the line. Some might view this as moral hypocrisy or cowardice, but I am impressed how one can maintain these two points of view simultaneously.

Norway's only real contribution to modern warfare was the term "Quisling", and if you're a representative of the populace I can see why.

[Fragony]

Oh common don't be so sensitive no free pass for anyone

[Viking]

Norway's only real contribution to modern warfare was the term "Quisling", and if you're a representative of the populace I can see why.

If he was, the term 'Quisling' wouldn't actually mean anything, would it?

[Sasaki Kojiro]

According to google, 35 billion NOK is ~6 billion dollars.

If that's right:

[miotas]

According to google, 35 billion NOK is ~6 billion dollars.

If that's right:

The population of the country is less than 5 million, if they were as populous as the US, then it would be more like 360 billion USD.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

The population of the country is less than 5 million, if they were as populous as the US, then it would be more like 360 billion USD.

Fair enough, I had no idea norway was that tiny.

I think some of our planes cost six billion though, more depending on how many toilet seats they have. And defense spending is about a trillion all told. And we don't even have socialist taxes :p

[Major Robert Dump]

What is a junkie? Are those those dirty, oily guys who you talk to when you need an obsolete part for your Gremlin, or somewhere to secretly burn your old tires?

[HoreTore]

What is a junkie? Are those those dirty, oily guys who you talk to when you need an obsolete part for your Gremlin, or somewhere to secretly burn your old tires?

That would be a hobo, I believe....

[Brenus]

I was a professional soldier and I find this funny.

The difference is you can recover being a junky; you never recover having been a soldier.

The sheer arrogance, the pride, the sense to be better, to be part of an elite (feelings shared by others professions) to be part of a team never really vanish after you take the uniform off.

When I was a soldier we had in France a campaign by anti-militarists stating that soldiers are not aiming at targets in wood but are killing people. They were right. They are right.

Where they and I disagree is sometimes you have to kill.

And they take the superior moral ground because they won’t, and no matter what dangers vulnerable others can face, they still think they are right. They think it is better to let others you don’t know being killed, raped, their houses destroyed and to kill the ones who do this is bad.

Confronted to the reality, like look at Rwanda, Hitler’s Germany, Yugoslavia, theirs answers are basically, it can’t happened any more. Even in this thread it was said.
“If somebody come to kill me and my family, I don’t fight I go to another country”. Well, right, you can flee until the Northern Pole and pretend it is the moral thing to do; some others will have to stop the barbarians.

They also ignore the reality. Did you see how welcome in our countries refugees are welcome? How much warm is the welcome? Did they ever saw a refugee, in the “alternative” accommodations, camps, or shelters? Did they ever think of the smell of tired, wet, hungry, angry, miserable refugees gathered in an icy, smelly, dark hotel corridor in a dark, snowy, extremely cold night? Do they know what is the lost of all you had, not the car, not the work, not even the new washing machine, no, the lost of what makes you, what matters to you. The black and white picture of you parents or grand parents, the diary of your teen-age daughter, your pictures (me and my then girlfriend at the sea side in Toulon) spread on your abandoned and now looted former home…
Do you they even imagine the shame and the despair of grow-up adults loading their parents and their kids in buses with only one plastic bag in each hand, the feeling it gives because you failed to protect them?
No. This is because they speak without knowing, acknowledging the reality, only in theory. They think; they are not.

So, the difference is if some soldiers will do bad things, a junkie will never do good things. A soldier think (if they can, of course) in term of collectively (within a reasonable expectation for himself, but same thing can be said for working in Charities/NGO), the junkie is per definition self-centred and selfish…

[Hax]

As I said, if you want to pay the teachers more, then cut your BS socialist programs and you will be able to afford to. What good does having a well paid teacher do you if you are conquered by Nazi Germany (to use a historical example) and those teachers are then made to teach Eugenics to children?
The military should not exist solely for killing people, it should exist for exactly the opposite reason: saving people. As I said, the best military is one so powerful that it is never used. Better not to have an institution devoted to that though and then have another country come in with a butterknife and take you over, and then draft you into their military anyway, right?

Saving people by shooting others. I wonder about the exact difference. People will suffer, whatsoever. Also, the Nazi Germany analogy is worthless, since we are not living in the Europe of 60 years back. I mean, be honest, what European country would attack another at this point? We're not exactly living in a tense area, so to say. Now, if there was a nutjob rightwing political party on the rise (like the PVV here, but that's not suitable for this topic), we're talking about a different situation. At the moment it's simply not feasible.

As I said, if you want to pay the teachers more, then cut your BS socialist programs and you will be able to afford to.

What "BS socialist programs" are you talking about, exactly? Healthcare, public transportation, subsidizing sports clubs, that kind of stuff? Because honestly, I think it's a brilliant idea. You should try it once.

Think of it like this. If you live in New York, would you always keep your windows open and your doors unlocked when you were away? No, of course not, because someone could steal your stuff. It is sick that you have to worry about that, but making yourself defenseless to it is not going to make it stop happening, it will only drastically increase the chances of it happening.

See, the thing is, the Netherlands is incomparable to New York. The Netherlands is comparable to a little house in a friendly village in southern Alabama (save the lynching of black people and the country music, of course).

[Strike For The South]

You Europeans are lucky we pay for NATO.

I mean I don't mind if you get rid of your militaries if you let us put bases wherever we want.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Wow, what a giant and ignorant trolling.

CR

[Fisherking]

The entire Norwegian Armed Forces wouldn’t fill a football stadium even with all their civilian employees.

I don’t think that it is the money that ticks him off. He is lashing out because he had to spend 6 months or maybe even a year playing army and he may have gotten wet and cold for a few days and got too little sympathy from his leaders....hence he imagines them all to be sick baby killers.

[Ice]

Wow, what a giant and ignorant trolling.

CR

CR, I thought the same thing.

lol at this entire thread.

[The Stranger]

they only like the roman army, and the roman army kicks ass! besides everyone knows the roman (republican) army wasnt paid and after that they werent paid much... so... continue men

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Ah yes, the british soldiers... I've met a few of those, are there any of them nowadays who are not criminals?

I have friends in the British Army, they are good men, some have wives and families; some are now dead.

Your comment is mean spirited and flattly unfair. I think you should apolagise.

[The Stranger]

what enemies does norway have? :P