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

[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…

[Major Robert Dump]

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…

Very well said.

Now, I think some of you "defensive" types are mixing up the OPs specific opinion about his military with that of military in general. For example, unless I am missing something, nothing yet has been said to rail the US military, yet US people chime in and act like they are "OMGZ" affronted Glenn Beck style. I realize he made some tacky comments about the UK military in response to others....but really....he is from a small country with different needs, different ideals, and different lifestyles that I for one do not understand -- for example, the idea of involuntary conscription -- which we obviously don't have here in the US. Look at his post from the perspective of his nationality and his country's history and maybe, just maybe, it will fall into context, without the need for all the retarded "cut ur social programs lolz" comments.

Now, if I were in his neck of the woods, I would be for a strong military due to certain religious/immigration considerations I won't mention here because it may get me a warning. But as a US citizen, and a member of the US armed forces, I am not offended by his post in the least.

[HoreTore]

If you are in the NATO you must be able to make a fist, a certain percentage of your budget.

That's another thing, I want out of NATO. It looks like it works for Sweden, don't see why it shouldn't work for us.

Very well said.

Now, I think some of you "defensive" types are mixing up the OPs specific opinion about his military with that of military in general. For example, unless I am missing something, nothing yet has been said to rail the US military, yet US people chime in and act like they are "OMGZ" affronted Glenn Beck style. I realize he made some tacky comments about the UK military in response to others....but really....he is from a small country with different needs, different ideals, and different lifestyles that I for one do not understand -- for example, the idea of involuntary conscription -- which we obviously don't have here in the US. Look at his post from the perspective of his nationality and his country's history and maybe, just maybe, it will fall into context, without the need for all the retarded "cut ur social programs lolz" comments.

I don't care how you people spend your tax money. But I do care about how my own are spent. And I really don't see the need for a military in Norway; we will be bankrupt if we are to build an army strong enough to deter any attackers, and I'm against wars like the one in Afghanistan.

If we are to get invaded again, if 1940 happens again, then there is still no need for our army. The one we have now is cannon fodder, the only chance we have to make a contribution in WW3 is the same we did in WW2, run to the forests and start a guerrilla war to make the enemy keep a strong garrison here so he can be beaten somewhere else. But why not just skip the part where our army is slaughtered, and go straight for the guerrilla thing? It'll be a lot cheaper, both in terms of money and lives.

[Boohugh]

The single biggest flaw I see in HoreTore's initial argument and, reading through the rest of this thread, one that nobody else seems to have picked up on, is the assumption that members of the armed forces are either fighting or doing nothing.

This ignores the fact that the armed forces of nations also take part in lots of humanitarian activities, along with other necessary tasks such as enforcing international law and acting against non-state actors who would otherwise thrive without their intervention.

A few examples:

1) You say junkies are a drain on society? Well why don't we try to reduce their number by limiting the availability of drugs through drug enforcement?

2) How about trying to secure some of the world's most important trade routes against piracy? Ok, you may argue that delivering aid to Somalia and trying to rebuild the country is a more effective method of preventing piracy, but oh look, those aid ships need to be escorted against those same pirates (see towards the bottom of that article). I don't suppose it needs to be mentioned that it was a Norwegian warship doing the escorting...

3) I don't suppose I need to mention the role of the a nation's navy in the enforcement of their fishery policy. I'm sure a Norwegian would have no interest in such things as fish products are only Norway's second biggest export commodity.

Those are just a few examples of what armed forces do other than fight. I can add other links such as the provision of disaster relief to victims of natural disasters such as hurricanes or earthquakes but hopefully you can see my point by now. I could even go into further detail of relatively small acts, such as a ship's crew painting a local schoolhouse or rebuilding the only bridge into a village when they stop off at various places (both things I know Royal Navy vessels have done recently).

Members of the armed forces can and do therefore contribute to society, which is why they are more useful than junkies. If you aren't happy with the role your armed forces take, then that is perhaps a question you should pose to your local politician and campaign for them to take part in even more humanitarian activities, but saying that members of the armed forces of all nations make the same contribution to society as junkies is naive at best...

[Banquo's Ghost]

As might have been expected, the extraordinary troll presented by the original post has accomplished its aim.

There may well be a point to be made, but this is not the way to do it in this forum.