B. (because there's no v in Japanese)

[ish mailian]

Rich, I may be overstating this because I have an obvious bias against the
Americans and how they conduct their wars, glorify their heroes, such as
Restrepo and  the American Sniper, the Special Forces...etc, but I think it
is impossible to sustain the soldier brotherhood **On the American side" of
these wars.**

First, an inexperienced and naive soldier who goes to war has no real
courage, his motives are not tested and so he or she is often shunned by
the experienced combat soldier, and yet, in America, to counter the defeats
in South East Asia, and the demoralized and abused soldiers and veterans of
SEA, men and women in uniform are thanked for their service, made heroic,
gathered into the family of the armed forces and told that they are part of
a brotherhood, a band of fighters who are doing important and heroic work
against terrorism, though they know, better than the American Citizen. that
the muddled missions in Iraq and Afghanistan are imitations, are not a
struggle for anything, not even for courage or brotherhood, the highest
form of courage there is, but don't even rise to the level of the naive and
inexperienced soldier's "courage" because the experienced ones know that
the shunning of the virgins is a lie because the war the wage, are
sometimes bloodied in, have friends die for, is a farce, a technologically
orchestrated theatre of absurdity wherein the best equipped Americans
simply use their superior machinery to kill without dignity or remorse.

On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 12:40 PM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:

> but you said it's impossible to uphold the band of brothers myth. that
> whole men free to love in the trenches bit in GR well thats the extreme but
> part of the same continuum of feeling. why is that impossible, men (and now
> women, too) seeking comfort from shared harsh sacrifices?
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 11:18 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> So did athletes and workers, slaves and gladiators...it's a cult, it
>> needs a myth, a  creed, with rituals and so on. Btw, just happened to watch
>> salt if the earth. The miners are not, according to the photographer,
>> slaves, exploited workers, but men who want to get rich. I have a difficult
>> time with this assertion, a cultural pathology in Brasil that romanticizes
>> the plight of the people, the mythological struggle for paradise.
>>
>>
>>
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/12/movies/wim-wenders-on-sebastio-salgado-in-the-salt-of-the-earth.html?_r=0
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, September 2, 2015, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> whatever your rationale, I think guys in combat is a bit different than
>>> working in a factory. throughout history soldiers bonded under
>>> horrific/stressful conditions; those in law enforcement as well to a
>>> certain extent. I dont believe its a myth
>>>
>>> On Wed, Sep 2, 2015 at 11:05 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> But the modern mechanical unit worker, so easily replaced with
>>>> automation, robots, is not all that different from the office worker who
>>>> sits in a cubical.  One of the most misread, or should I say, misused
>>>> texts, since by definition a classic is not read but only misused, is Adam
>>>> Smith's TWoN, a book that, ironically, is forever married to conservative
>>>> politics, and is one of the greatest arguments against the exploitation
>>>> of modern labor. In the book Smith describes work, pre-modern work. We
>>>> crossed over to modern work, as we readers of M&D know, long before Ford
>>>> and Vibe. In any event, it's impossible to uphold the band of brothers myth
>>>> on the American side. Restrepo is not a documentary of brotherhood or
>>>> courage, but a film, an imitation, pornography.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>
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