[sspencer]

Anecdotal rebuttal:

The soldiers I've met and interacted with are among the most varied group of people I can imagine that all do the same basic job. They show more inherent variance than any other profession I've ever seen. I concur completely with the Atlantic's letter, and sincerely doubt it was a PR plant.

Just my .02.

[Alex3917]

"I concur completely with the Atlantic's letter, and sincerely doubt it was a PR plant."

It might be, but there's no way to tell. But even if it is 'authentic', it's still coming from someone who was likely influenced by the propaganda machine.

When someone is willing to spend literally billions of dollars per year to create a one-truth world, the only safe thing is to treat basically everything you hear from/about them as bullshit. Consider the following:

"Sometimes we are [portrayed by the media as] plagued by PTSD and associated terrors. [...] The reality is very different."

Except according to statistics, roughly 50% of the soldiers coming back from overseas are on disability. And even that is an undercount because the military often denies people medical care for their injuries, lies about how people got hurt, etc.

[ygk8]

My family is from Iraq. You people who know absolutely nothing about the US's role in Iraq or elsewhere, while calling US soldiers baby killers or propagandists, are an absolute disgrace.

Our country is actually functioning with a credible economy, people aren't dying anymore due to a reckless dictator, and we have access to clean water and a rapidly improving infrastructure with the US's help. The US soldiers are helping us keep the streets safe, so we can build businesses and be productive members of society without having to look over our shoulders.

It's such a shame that people like you, with zero knowledge of the situation, can spew such hateful and ignorant rhetoric.

[logjam]

It would be interesting to know whether the 655,000 people now dead as a result of the invasion (widely acknowledged to have been predicated on false justification) would agree with your own slanted rhetoric.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_Iraq_War_casu...

We'll never know, will we? It certainly is a shame.

[ygk8]

What's funny is that you cite one survey when there are many surveys, with estimates wildly different from each other, while calling my rhetoric slanted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

The two highest estimates, if you read their Wikipedia entries, are heavily criticized by peer reviewers.

The actual death rates according to the CIA World Factbook, just to give you a comparison:

USA: http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=us&v=26

Iraq: http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=iz&v=26

Iraq isn't a war zone as many of you who have never visited might think.

[Alex3917]

This is exactly the kind of shit I'm talking about. What exactly is the methodology behind the CIA's death rates? Oh wait, they don't give one. I wonder why. Perhaps because many/most of their statistics are complete bullshit. Here is the comment I wrote about their 'literacy statistics' just a couple days ago:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2961076

[ygk8]

The same death rate figures are cited by UNICEF:

http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/usa_statistics.html#78

http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/iraq_statistics.html#78

The World Bank lists the same figures too:

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.CDRT.IN

Wikipedia also has the same death rate numbers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_United_States#D...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Iraq#Death_rate

[eavc]

>"Sometimes we are [portrayed by the media as] plagued by PTSD and associated terrors. [...] The reality is very different."

You've misrepresented what he said in that paragraph.

"Most of all, we are often portrayed as mindless automatons that are incapable of independent thought. The reality is very different."

He made no comment on the prevalence of PTSD.

edited to remove unnecessary harshness

[Alex3917]

I took him saying "the reality is very different" to apply to all the media portrayals given in the paragraph. My bad if that's not accurate.

[eavc]

I can see how you read it that way. Apologies if I was overly harsh and thanks for addressing my criticism.

[run4yourlives]

>It might be, but there's no way to tell. But even if it is 'authentic', it's still coming from someone who was likely influenced by the propaganda machine.

As opposed to your opinion, which is of course not influenced by any preconceived opinions at all...

Tell me, why are you taking issue with this job observation and not any others? Are they too products of PR departments, or is it that you just have a hate on for the military?

[Alex3917]

"Tell me, why are you taking issue with this job observation and not any others?"

Because stay-at-home dads don't have a powerful lobby that spends tens of billions of dollars per year planting pro stay-at-home-dad opinions and propaganda in the media and silencing anyone who disagrees.

[run4yourlives]

So let me get this straight:

You feel that the entire article asked all sorts of people in these professions their opinions but when it came time to ask a soldier they couldn't find one and so the opinion was supplied by the US Army Public Relations Office?

Or maybe the whole study is a propaganda stunt? The US Army itself went and interviewed all these people so that it could plant a two line sentence about how its soldiers could think for themselves! (Gasp!)

Frankly, I think what's most likely is that your absolute hatred for the military and its members is clouding your cognitive ability, causing you to see conspiracies where none exist. Sadly, I have no doubt that my comment will alter your thinking in any way.

[Alex3917]

Whether or not this particular quote happens to be true is largely irrelevant. The fact that the military is paying people to use sockpuppets to post pro-military opinions on social news sites makes me not trust pro-military opinions I read on social news sites. What exactly is irrational about that? How does that represent clouded cognitive ability?

I would trust the military a lot more if I didn't see shit like this on a regular basis:

"One use that's confirmed, however, is the manipulation of social media through the use of fake online 'personas' managed by the military. Raw Story recently reported that the US Air Force had solicited private sector vendors for something called 'persona management software.' Such a technology would allow single individuals to command virtual armies of fake, digital 'people' across numerous social media portals.

These 'personas' were to have detailed, fictionalized backgrounds, to make them believable to outside observers, and a sophisticated identity protection service was to back them up, preventing suspicious readers from uncovering the real person behind the account. They even worked out ways to game geolocating services, so these 'personas' could be virtually inserted anywhere in the world, providing ostensibly live commentary on real events, even while the operator was not really present."

Toppling of Saddam statue? Fake. Pat Tillman? Fake. Jessica Lynch? Fake.

They have spent literally hundreds of millions of dollars producing fake TV segments alone which have been broadcast on the U.S. media as independent news: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/16/opinion/16wed1.html

[Helianthus]

while you have obviously abandoned our other thread, I should point out that the toppling of the Saddam statue is not so much fake as much as it is ambiguous, a sort of dreamlike happenstance between media, military, and Iraqi civilian all preying on each other's expectation.

In other words, it is exactly the sort of delicious nexus of unpredictable behavior that makes for an interesting symbol--but such subtleties of intent on all parties involved is lost on your black-and-white thinking.

[Helianthus]

>It might be, but there's no way to tell. But even if it is 'authentic', it's still coming from someone who was likely influenced by the propaganda machine.

News flash: all communication can be cast as propaganda. The right to free speech guarantees that people will try to convince each other of things.

Which is to say, this man could be completely honest and correct and speaking of his own free will, and I would still accept that that counts as propaganda--I just wouldn't get my panties in a bundle over it. Propaganda is neither good nor bad--it is merely someone trying to convince you of a viewpoint.

Perhaps by using an uncited statistic that presumes the real statistic is something worse, that makes an assertion about a culture that the speaker is _not_ part of. You yourself are part of the propaganda machine: as long as you are unaware of it, however, as long as you do not see how your free speech is also society's voice in you, you will just be arguing talking points.

Real dialogue comes from accepting that motivation and bias must necessarily accompany fact, and drawing bounds thereof.

[Alex3917]

>Perhaps by using an uncited statistic

"With almost 50 percent of returning troops eligible to receive some level of disability payment, and more than 600,000 treated so far in veterans' medical facilities, we now estimate that future disability payments and health care costs will total $600 billion to $900 billion. The social costs, reflected in veteran suicides (which have topped 18 per day in recent years) and family breakups, are incalculable."

http://www.slate.com/id/2302949/

"You yourself are part of the propaganda machine"

Really? Where are my millions of dollars? Where is my government-issued sockpuppet management software?

"All communication can be cast as propaganda. The right to free speech guarantees that people will try to convince each other of things."

Again, you are leaving out the part where the government is paying millions of dollars so that soldiers can downvote and drown out any comments that are critical of the military on social news sites like this one. Do you really not see any difference between having a conversation where neither party is paid for their opinion, and a conversation where one side is unpaid and the other side has a billion dollar warchest to drown out any dissent? That's not exactly the same as two neighbors having a chat.

[jackfoxy]

Alex3917,

You are arguing some very abstract terms (albeit, citing statistics along the way). As someone else who has known well many professional military persons in my life (although I never served), I can also attest the blurb in the Atlantic article reflects what I have seen. Yes, this is anecdotal information, however for certain purposes (like judging individual people) the weight of anecdotal information becomes important. It seems at least some others are coming to the table with similar information.

How many professional military (defined as in for at least a full hitch, and preferably longer) do you know? What kind of anecdotes do they provide?

EDIT: Let me change my definition of "professional" to mean officers Captain or higher (Navy full Lieutenant), NCO, or warrant officer.

[Helianthus]

I'm going to perform the minor rudeness of predicting his response; if he knows military personel, I expect they will have been those that support his opinion: the lower-class more readily exploited for their service, those who came into conflict over money matters with the military establishment and felt (whether rightly or wrongly) cheated via some form of bureaucracy, and in general a selection not fully representational of the military as a whole.

I'd give myself bonus points if he included some visceral anecdote.

[jackfoxy]

That's OK. The point I wanted to make is this article is about what people in this job are like and what may be surprising to people who don't know much about it. I think anecdotal information becomes interesting in this case when it illustrates a trend, and it is about "professional" military, not about short timers and those who should never have entered the military.

[Helianthus]

>http://www.slate.com/id/2302949/

Why is it that you don't think of this as propaganda? At what point does a person expressing their opinion become a mouthpiece? The answer is not so simple as "when they are paid for it," because belonging to a viewpoint is not so simple as being given money.

>Really? Where are my millions of dollars? Where is my government-issued sockpuppet management software?

What is the source of your ideas? Do you really think you have any special provenance on fact?

>That's not exactly the same as two neighbors having a chat.

It is _exactly_ the same. The battlefield is over the opinions held in people's hearts and minds. Once a viewpoint owns a man, it doesn't matter whether that purchase was made with cash, with returned loyalty, with loudness, with calls to idealism, with calls to righteousness, or even with calls to "fact" (perhaps the most laughable--fact's provenance as 'truth' makes it the most important to manipulate and therefore the most manipulated).

You are owned wholesale by your viewpoints because they define who you are. You were _purchased_, and while it might matter to _you_ what coin was used, you are simply _not cynical enough_ if you think you haven't been manipulated.

You say "where is my government-issued sockpuppet management software," but the fact is that you are providing arguments that are very much sockpuppet arguments: the soundbytes we've all heard that don't end in a workable solution, which provoke exactly the generic irrelevant soundbytes that we've also all heard before ("You people who know absolutely nothing about the US's role in Iraq or elsewhere, while calling US soldiers baby killers or propagandists").

Maybe your software doesn't come from the government, but it sure as hell comes from somewhere, and I don't get the feeling that you know where.

[kapilash]

[Not a contribution to the discussion] >It is _exactly_ the same. The battlefield is over the opinions held in people's hearts and minds. Once a viewpoint owns a man, it doesn't matter whether that purchase was made with cash, with returned loyalty........

hear hear! Much appreciated

[koudelka]

Perhaps because anybody's son will do. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DShDaJXK5qo

[arethuza]

Is it really accurate to describe it as the "same basic job" - there are an awful lot of different roles in any modern force.