Seth speaks: On military and other statist lies

One of my frequent commenters, Seth, left a comment in reply to another one on my ever-popular “Fuck the troops!” posting.

I thought it was important enough to repost here (with minor edits), for those who aren’t diligently following the nostate.com comment feed.

[W]ith a kill ratio of something upwards of 75:1, members of the U.S. [military] are doing the lion’s share of the killing [in Iraq]. It would not surprise if these criminals are also engaging in their share of rape, kidnapping and theft.  And torture  (Abu Ghraib?)

Many members of the military “are simply doing it to make money” (or college money) as they are too weak-willed and/or stupid to make an honest buck.

Instead they choose to get paid to serve an organization whose primary purpose is to threaten and, “if necessary”, carry out acts of aggressive violence against mostly hapless people caught in the crossfire between the US government and the “enemy” du jour.

Governments are always trying to redefine their crimes out of existence by taking a common criminal act and attaching a new label to it. Thus, armed robbery becomes “taxation” and kidnapping becomes “arrest”, etc.

Thinking people see through these lies. If there are people in the military that are responsible for 4 or more deaths is a single event, those people are in fact mass murderers.

Whether or not their crimes are sanctioned by the same government they are killing for is wholly immaterial. Governments themselves are the largest criminal organizations, so to expect any type of moral behavior out of these organizations is foolish at best.