Like a lot of guys on here I served. I volunteered for the Marines back during the Iran Hostage Crisis in 1979, because I was pissed that our country was being shit on by "A bunch of ragheads." I was young and dumb and I thought I was going to do something about it. Fortunately for me I got to serve, I trained hard and I was ready, but never had to venture into battle or harm's way.

Lately I've been trying to get through the book "The Guns of August" about the history of WWI. (It's a long detailed read.) Then this week I've been watching the goings on surrounding Trump, Putin and Zelensky trying to work out a peace deal. I see these guys all shaking hands, smiling for the cameras and joking, while two of them are, in one way or another, feeding young men and women into a literal meat grinder.

Hell... In WWI, probably the greatest meat grinder of all, 3 of the main protagonists in the war, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, King George V of Great Britain, and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, were all 1st cousins. The 3 jackasses all had the same grandmother! Yet they collectively sent 10 million young men to horrible deaths. And over what? What did any of them gain from it? What positive outcome did we accomplish? Nothing! The "reasons" for starting it all were so petty it's surreal.

The land, that Putin has had a million of his own young people killed over, is smaller than the state of Pennsylvania. (It ranks 33rd in the sizes of US states.) Think about that for a minute. Close to 400,000 people dead over a piece of land the size of Pennsylvania. 44,600 square miles. That works out to 9 young people per square mile... Dead. Everything they've ever had and everything they've ever dreamed of having, it's gone.

The romanticizing and glorification of war is bullshit too. They sell this whole thing of honor and glory to young people when in reality, it is a nasty, horrible, deathly business. Yeah, but you get a medal made out of pot metal that you can wear on your uniform unless you receive it posthumously... Then I guess your widowed wife and fatherless kids get to hang it on the wall.

I understand that you have to defend what is yours, your stuff, your land, your people, your country, but war is just a bunch of powerful rich guys wanting more shit than they already have. The human race should be beyond all this crap by now. The Swiss figured this all out in 1815.

May God bless the people who have served, God bless Trump for trying to stop the killing, and may God smite the people who start this shit.

Sorry for the rant. I just needed to get that out of my system this morning.

Last edited by Irishguy; 08/19/25 05:43 AM.
"When I say ever thing I mean ever thing." - Frankie