Redwave

[Alvin Brickrock]

If your country needed you and called upon you to defend it, would you be there? Would you fight for your country, the United States of America?

 

[Mischka]

I thought I'd help out.

Originally posted by REDWAVE
The nation which I admire the most, and in the military of which I would have gladly served, and been willing to kill and/or die if necessary, is the early Soviet Union under Lenin and Trotsky, from 1*** to 1923-4 (Lenin's final illness). It ousted the capitalists and landlords from power, and established the rule of the proletariat (urban working class) and the peasantry. It established full equal rights for the many different nationalities within the Soviet Union, in striking contrast to the Tsarist "prison house of nations," in which Great Russian chauvinism ran rampant. It also established equal rights for women, and in particular liberated the women of backward Central Asia (who have since been re-enslaved by the U.S.-backed "mujahadeen" and their successors.) It exposed the hypocrisy of the "Great Powers," by publishing the secret treaties in which they divided the anticipated spoils of victory from World War One. It called for workers' revolution worldwide. As a result, it faced the implacable hostility of the capitalist nations. Fourteen countries, including the U.S., sent troops and war materials in to aid the counterrevolutionary vermin, the Whites. In Churchill's memorable phrase, they sought to "strangle this infant in its cradle." But they failed: Trotsky built up the Red Army virtually from scratch into an effective fighting force, which crushed the counterrevolutionary scum.

The October Revolution and the early Soviet Union are the main beacons of hope, in all of human history, for the oppressed masses who currently groan under capitalist exploitation.

Of course, the betrayal by Stalin, the "gravedigger of the revolution," and the subsequent bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet Union under the relentless pressure from the capitalist world, is another story entirely.

 

[Sillyman]

I must be fucked up somehow to think that just because you happen to exist at a certain geographic location you are obligated to serve the interests of the government associated with that geographic location is odd

Then again, I don't see the point of socks.

We shall over come the tyrrannical sockocrats! Long live the sockless revolution!

 

[Mischka]

REDWAVE doesn't view populations along country-lines.

Originally posted by REDWAVE
I see the worldwide socialist revolution as starting in the less developed nations. Then, as the U.S. government, acting on behalf of the capitalist ruling class, moves in to suppress revolutions in other countries, growing resistance among the American public will eventually lead to revolution in the U.S.A. Since the U.S. is the world bastion of capitalism, propping up right-wing governments throughout the world, revolution there will mean revolution worldwide.

 

[Sillyman]

Oddly, I believe somewhat the opposite of REDWAVE. While poorer countries may have the best reasons to rebel, they ultimately lack the resources to make them stabe long term. Trotsky taught that even a communist country cannot be wholely self suffficient and must ultimately be part of a global economy. Only a fairly prosperous nation such as the U.S. for example, could hope to achieve such a state and remain prosperous and democratic. Oddly, it's the middle class who both can make the long term stability possible, and who most violently resist the same system, since in the end they "lose".

 

[REDWAVE]

If your country needed you and called upon you to defend it, would you be there? Would you fight for your country, the United States of America?

Gee whiz, a whole thread just about me. I feel so honored.


Anyway, to answer your question, Alvin, I am a veteran. I served in the Army from 1974 to 1976, although I never had to engage in combat. Now, since I'm 50 and have heart failure, hell no, I wouldn't fight. I'd definitely be 4-F. I'm too old and in too poor of health for military service.