maomao
普費斯
An RAF guy got banged up for eight months for refusing to fight in an illegal war but clearly stated he wasn't a conscientious objector:
Malcolm Kendall-Smith - Wikipedia
An SAS guy managed to get out and became a peace campaigner:
Ukraine and the Russian invasion, 2022-24
- Thread starter kebabking
- Start date
An SAS guy managed to get out and became a peace campaigner:
two sheds
Least noticed poster 2007
My dad was a conscientious objector in wwII. He said his sergeant threatened to take him outside and shoot him to which my dad told me he said 'go on then'. He ended up repairing Spitfires in Egypt, he didn't object to that, he just didn't believe in killing people. So you can still serve in non-front-line roles, which would make more sense if you've actually signed up.
nogojones
spelling is overrated
Not all the Russians fighting did sign up for this though. There's lots of evidence of Russians and men from the DPR and LPR being conscripted and used.Don't be fucking daft, they sign-up for shit, they are not called up as part of national service.
Yes, some Russians are committing war crimes, but I imagine some Ukrainians are doing that too. In the same way the British conscripts did in Malaya and Kenya and the Americans did in Vietnam.
You can hope for the swift victory of Ukraine and the end to a bloody and pointless war without othering the Russians.
maomao
普費斯
I'm not sure if you're stating the bleeding obvious or trying to suggest that people should know in advance how they will feel about killing people in (potentially) six years time.
spitfire
Walty McWaltface
An RAF guy got banged up for eight months for refusing to fight in an illegal war but clearly stated he wasn't a conscientious objector:
Malcolm Kendall-Smith - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
An SAS guy managed to get out and became a peace campaigner:
Ben Griffin (British Army soldier) - Wikipedia
And Joe Glenton, I'm half way through his book Veteranhood.
Joe Glenton - Wikispooks
In March 2010, Joe Glenton was sentenced to 9 months imprisonment having joined the British Army in 2004 and going absent without leave in 2007 after serving with the Royal Logistic Corps in Afghanistan.[2] The court martial was told that Glenton, who later campaigned against 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, had suffered from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after his first tour of duty. He was released from a military prison in Colchester in July 2010.[3]
(no idea what wikispooks is like but the article on him is accurate AFAIK.)
ska invita
back on the other side
Joe Glentons book Soldier Box is good on this... He really tried to get out of Iraq via proper channels, but basically army computer repeatedly said No, so he went AWOL.
They make it deliberately hard to refuse
Ming
I shot a man in Reno...
Ben Griffin is a real hero.An RAF guy got banged up for eight months for refusing to fight in an illegal war but clearly stated he wasn't a conscientious objector:
Malcolm Kendall-Smith - Wikipedia
An SAS guy managed to get out and became a peace campaigner:
Ben Griffin (British Army soldier) - Wikipedia
steeplejack
trapped lbw for a duck
That’s a wee shame. Putin’s charmless janitor doing foreign policy with a mop & bucket won’t be able to visit Belgrade in an attempt to stir things up over the summer.
Unlucky.
A380
How do I change this 'custom title' thing then?
There is a difference between being a conscious objector and not wanting to fight in a particular war.
Conscious objectors hold a belief that violence is never justified. A rationale and humane position to take ( although not one I do) after the horror of the First World War various countries set up mechanisms by which people conscripted could argue for conscious objector status.
It’s hard to see how anyone could argue they were a conscious objector and yet still join a voluntary military. One could make arguments about your belief in the relative merits of individual wars. But if you take the shilling it does come with the requirement to follow orders you are given.
The Nuremberg defence over Afghan and Iraq doesn’t really apply as, for all sorts or reasons, no international competent tribunal has ruled them unlawful. Ska Invictus’s massive intellect not really balancing The Hague or the IWCT in the world of international jurisprudence.
Conscious objectors hold a belief that violence is never justified. A rationale and humane position to take ( although not one I do) after the horror of the First World War various countries set up mechanisms by which people conscripted could argue for conscious objector status.
It’s hard to see how anyone could argue they were a conscious objector and yet still join a voluntary military. One could make arguments about your belief in the relative merits of individual wars. But if you take the shilling it does come with the requirement to follow orders you are given.
The Nuremberg defence over Afghan and Iraq doesn’t really apply as, for all sorts or reasons, no international competent tribunal has ruled them unlawful. Ska Invictus’s massive intellect not really balancing The Hague or the IWCT in the world of international jurisprudence.
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Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
they'll just have to make do with microsoft teams or zoom like the rest of us
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
poor sergei. but are you sure you're on the right thread?
Dystopiary
putting up a hook to hang my hopes upon
ska invita
back on the other side
Were those wars lawful? No. Rulings are neither here nor there
DaveCinzano
WATCH OUT, GEORGE, HE'S GOT A SCREWDRIVER!
Seems to be a problem with standing under
gosub
~#
actually he wasn't at that one. At Chequers, writing his book probably
not-bono-ever
meh
Cholera in mariupol it seems. FFS
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
I dunno. It's all very well maundering on about the morals of war, but that's really a bit of a case of worrying about whether the stripes on the deckchairs on the Titanic are lining up nicely. Wars happen. It appears to be an essential quality of humanity (in particular, other animals aren't exactly blameless on this front, they just lack the technological prowess to lay waste to everything....oh, and rhododedrons 
).
The fact is that aggressors exist, and probably always will. NO WARS won't stop them from their aggression. We have to descend to their level (remembering that, whoever "we" are, we were probably once the aggressor ourselves) in order to beat them. Fighting fire with fire, quite literally. I can't think of any other way.
I don't celebrate the deaths of individual Russian human beings. But when I am watching an unprovoked war of aggression against a country which does at least seem to be trying to move away from the ingrained behaviours of its neighbour, it is pretty hard for me not to - at least statistically - think that every dead Russian is one fewer in the overwhelming tide of the flower of Russia's (and client republics) youth being flung into a pointless, immoral, and ultimately futile battle to seize someone else's land.
I may not experience any sense of moral purity about it, but I'll freely admit that for every video I watch of some homebrewed drone dropping a 60 year old grenade on a BMP and blowing it to kingdom come, I experience a frisson of righteous justice. Because each one of those that explodes, along with its crew/passengers, assists Ukraine stand a slightly greater chance of resisting an aggressor who, if they aren't stopped now, will in all probability feel entitled to extend their claims ever further westward.
).The fact is that aggressors exist, and probably always will. NO WARS won't stop them from their aggression. We have to descend to their level (remembering that, whoever "we" are, we were probably once the aggressor ourselves) in order to beat them. Fighting fire with fire, quite literally. I can't think of any other way.
I don't celebrate the deaths of individual Russian human beings. But when I am watching an unprovoked war of aggression against a country which does at least seem to be trying to move away from the ingrained behaviours of its neighbour, it is pretty hard for me not to - at least statistically - think that every dead Russian is one fewer in the overwhelming tide of the flower of Russia's (and client republics) youth being flung into a pointless, immoral, and ultimately futile battle to seize someone else's land.
I may not experience any sense of moral purity about it, but I'll freely admit that for every video I watch of some homebrewed drone dropping a 60 year old grenade on a BMP and blowing it to kingdom come, I experience a frisson of righteous justice. Because each one of those that explodes, along with its crew/passengers, assists Ukraine stand a slightly greater chance of resisting an aggressor who, if they aren't stopped now, will in all probability feel entitled to extend their claims ever further westward.
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
It was probably inevitable, miserable as it is for Mariupol's survivors.
8ball
Ejected from the secure unit
I dunno. It's all very well maundering on about the morals of war, but that's really a bit of a case of worrying about whether the stripes on the deckchairs on the Titanic are lining up nicely. Wars happen. It appears to be an essential quality of humanity (in particular, other animals aren't exactly blameless on this front, they just lack the technological prowess to lay waste to everything....oh, and rhododedrons
The fact is that aggressors exist, and probably always will. NO WARS won't stop them from their aggression. We have to descend to their level (remembering that, whoever "we" are, we were probably once the aggressor ourselves) in order to beat them. Fighting fire with fire, quite literally. I can't think of any other way.
I don't celebrate the deaths of individual Russian human beings. But when I am watching an unprovoked war of aggression against a country which does at least seem to be trying to move away from the ingrained behaviours of its neighbour, it is pretty hard for me not to - at least statistically - think that every dead Russian is one fewer in the overwhelming tide of the flower of Russia's (and client republics) youth being flung into a pointless, immoral, and ultimately futile battle to seize someone else's land.
I may not experience any sense of moral purity about it, but I'll freely admit that for every video I watch of some homebrewed drone dropping a 60 year old grenade on a BMP and blowing it to kingdom come, I experience a frisson of righteous justice. Because each one of those that explodes, along with its crew/passengers, assists Ukraine stand a slightly greater chance of resisting an aggressor who, if they aren't stopped now, will in all probability feel entitled to extend their claims ever further westward.
I’m not buying the “human nature” element here.
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
Perhaps I'm just a cynic, but I think that human nature is capable both of acts of the deepest kindness and beauty, and those of unbelievable despicability. And I don't think the line between them is all that impenetrable.
Humberto
The human race is becoming a disgrace
They use and employ 'Western' culture-war right-wing tropes. I doubt they believe it just as those who forment them don't. The tragedy is those caught in the middle, those given the 'hidden truth (for your woes) and now panic' strategy.
Armchair as fuck but the playbook is old now.
Armchair as fuck but the playbook is old now.
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
Jesus
www.independent.co.uk
Ukraine’s president ‘very happy’ that PM survived no-confidence vote
Volodymyr Zelensky gives prime minister a boost, saying: ‘I am glad we have not lost a very important ally’
www.independent.co.uk
8ball
Ejected from the secure unit
Jesus
Ukraine’s president ‘very happy’ that PM survived no-confidence vote
Volodymyr Zelensky gives prime minister a boost, saying: ‘I am glad we have not lost a very important ally’
Well, he's got a guy who is on side and supplying gear - can see how he would feel it's good that that doesn't change right now.
Dystopiary
putting up a hook to hang my hopes upon
Yeah really, what else would Zelenskyy say? "Oh shit, I can't stand that lying, duplicitous cunt, who's been toadying up to rich Putin-aligned Russians for years"?
He couldn't really say anything else and not look ungrateful or even jeopardise his "relationship" with the Brit authorities to be fair.
He couldn't really say anything else and not look ungrateful or even jeopardise his "relationship" with the Brit authorities to be fair.
8ball
Ejected from the secure unit
Well, yeah, human potential is a big old mixed bag of stuff.
You seemed to be doing the old thing of blaming all the bad stuff on it.
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
Where else can the blame for the bad stuff lie?
prunus
Tick tock.
A big boy made me do it and ran away.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
that's got a very good rhythm to it
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
I tell you I didn't do it 'cause I wasn't there
Don't blame me, it just isn't fair
You listen to their side, now listen to mine
Can't think of a story, sure, you'll find me sometime
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