[vachi]

Must read. Was told to read it by a former Army pilot. Been telling everyone to read it since.

Reading the comments below, I come to understand that many are missing the point of the essay, or speech as it was intended originally.

For modern readers, Butler's words are not to be taken directly but in context. Butler's point is that war is a racket. That is it. Funny right. If you are to ignore all the details about the casualties and who said what and who did what, you are still left with the essence of the speech. War is a racket. Repeat after me :) If you instill the mindset that war is a racket then all the pieces fall into place. It becomes very clear that war has no regard for human life. That it is detached from reality of life and death.

"Eliot A. Cohen, an official in the George W. Bush administration who is now a professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University, said that Mr. Obama’s trips to Walter Reed may have been the reason, and that future presidents should avoid such visits.

“A president has to be psychologically prepared to send people into harm’s way and to get a good night’s sleep,” Mr. Cohen said. “And anything they do that might cripple them that way means they’re not doing their job.”" -- http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/us/politics/obama-walter-r...

"they’re not doing their job" --- their job being what?

Be smart, war is a racket, and suggesting a president should not be worried about the lives of the people he harms is fucked up. Additionally, presidents should visit hospitals in Syria maybe. Maybe then they will not make the same actions.

[twblalock]

> "they’re not doing their job" --- their job being what?

At some point, a US president may need to send soldiers into a situation in which they will very likely die, in order to win a war. It has happened before, and it may happen again. If the president allows visits to wounded veterans to weaken his resolve, the consequences could be very bad. That's what Eliot Cohen is alluding to. He is not suggesting that the president should not care -- he is suggesting that the president needs to do what is necessary to win a war if one happens.

> Be smart, war is a racket, and suggesting a president should not be worried about the lives of the people he harms is fucked up.

Nobody suggested that the president should not worry about the lives of soldiers. Your interpretation is unreasonably uncharitable and is in fact a straw man.

[qznc]

> the president needs to do what is necessary to win a war if one happens

Not all wars can or should be won. For example, the war on drugs cannot be won, just like the war on alcohol was a mistake.

Sometimes, the greatest things a leader / president can do, is to acknowledge that he was (we were) wrong. However, pride prevents that. Once you decided to enter a war, you are entirely focused on winning it.

[ptaipale]

The war on drugs is not a war that soldiers fight. It's a figure of speech.

The war on terror is so-so.

[humanrebar]

> The war on drugs is not a war that soldiers fight.

There are a lot of decapitations and mass graves for something that isn't a war. If the people fighting aren't soldiers, what are they?

[ptaipale]

Criminals.

(By the way, soldiers generally don't decapitate enemies these days; doing so is a war crime.)

[natermer]

Carrying out and enforcing immoral laws makes you as much of a criminal as anybody.

The police state doesn't carry out showy public executions like the cartels do, but they have ruined many people's lives for no good reason and they have put plenty of otherwise innocent people in a grave.

And guess what? The American people pay for both sides. They pay for the cartels and they pay for the police state.

If the war on drugs never existed there wouldn't be any cartels in the first place. It's pure idiocy compounded with greed and profiteering on other people's misery.

You can't have the one of the highest percentage of the population in prison and call yourself a free country. It's bold faced contradiction. The USA beats out Turkmenistan FFS.

[humanrebar]

Fair point. Though calling those actions war crimes strengthens the point that there is actually a drug war going on.

[qznc]

> The war on drugs is not a war that soldiers fight

Debatable. The police men / DEA involved probably feel like soldiers sometimes. The drug lords and governments in south america certainly have soldiers involved.

[eponeponepon]

They're being trained to think of themselves as soldiers. This will inevitably lead to them being soldiers, and that eventually ends in bog-standard straightforward war, indistinguishable from any waged by "real" soldiers.

[tracker1]

Most soldiers throughout history were not career soldiers or warriors. Most are people brought into the conflict without any intent to be a soldier before whatever brought them in.

[lostboys67]

paintball weekend warriors probably think that to but real soldiers consider them "walts"

[pjc50]

It certainly is in Mexico.

[twblalock]

> Not all wars can or should be won. For example, the war on drugs cannot be won, just like the war on alcohol was a mistake.

I'm talking about real wars, not metaphorical wars.

[qznc]

Yeah, the choice of war was not optimal. I'm looking for a war, which is mostly uncontroversial (on HN). Maybe Vietnam? The crusades?

[joslin01]

Vietnam is a great example that proves original OP right, actually. We should have never been in that war. It was a main driving force in the anti-war attitude of the 60s and 70s.

[arethuza]

Uncontroversial and Vietnam (or indeed the Crusades) aren't words that you see together very often!

[joslin01]

I like to think he was being slightly facetious asking what their job is -- like he's saying, "their job is to keep the racket going" which I agree with. He's saying "a president should not be worried.." in the context of a racket. I doubt a legitimate threat to humanity would stop a president or the people from going after it. That's just obvious and not really worth discussing.

[tdkl]

> order to win a war.

What war ? That's the war Butler is talking about. There's no winning or loosing endgame in that kind of war, because the most positive (for the initiators) is being done with prolonging it.

[fsloth]

I suppose this can be understood in the context where the entire fate of a nation actually depends on the president being able to sleep well and do what is needed. There have been instances in world history were this has been the case for various nations. Not so often for US in past centuries, though.

That a president should be a callous bastard and just do what's good for the military industrial complex sounds pretty insane.

[LeifCarrotson]

There are three kinds of wars. It's right in the first paragraph of the article:

> There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.

If the president needs to win a war to defend our homes or for the Bill of Rights, then (according to this reasoning) they should not go to Walter Reed. War is usually a racket, yes, but it's hard to know exactly when the cure is worse than the disease. Probably is right now, sure, but the Revolutionary War? Civil War? Fought for economic reasons, yes, but also for some correct reasons.

[natermer]

> "they’re not doing their job" --- their job being what?

Their job is to carry out their orders like good little figure-heads of state that they are.