I always just think about what it would mean to have a fuctioning national party that spent any significant part of its capabilities to enact and convey excommunication for huge swaths of the population (whichever set you like). It's just utterly without strategy or thought for the consequences.
To expand:
What is gained by resolving that soldiers are permanently stained as people?
What does that mean in practice?
What is the result if this practice is undertaken?
Is this result conducive or not to making a better world, (hopefully one where there aren't so many soldiers)?
What are the consequences of not resolving so, from not undertaking this practice, or from undertaking a different one?
These are the kind of questions we need to discuss to have any kind of useful turning over of the subject, otherwise we're all just jerking off over whether soldiers are good or bad, how bad, and if they can ever be good.
What is gained by condemning soldiers is the same as what's gained by condemning cops, and everything you've said here could be said just as easily about cops. What's gained is that a clear and unequivocal condemnation helps establish a message that is absolutely vital to any leftist movement - that we will condemn and oppose injustice, and stick up for the poor and vulnerable, even when it is costly to do so. Even when the expected gain is less than the expected cost.
Lots of people under capitalism feel alienated and are skeptical of any organization that it will actually come to their aid when the chips are down. Minority groups understand that they will be thrown under the bus the moment it becomes politically convenient, because they are, well, a minority. The "rational self-interested" thing for a political party to do is to serve the people with the most money and power, while paying lip service to the poor and desperate, on the assumption that they will accept empty promises and pocket change because they have no better options.
It behooves any leftist organization or party, therefore, to establish that they are not careerists and that they serve an actual ideological agenda that will benefit everyone - yes, even you. And to do that, it is vital to consider the concerns of people who are regarded as subhuman, to give voice to the voiceless. And the voiceless, in this case, are the victims of imperialist wars of aggression in the Middle East and elsewhere.
If we're not going to do that, then what the fuck are we doing here? Just become a self-serving political careerist, call up an oil company and promise to do whatever they say if they fund your campaign, tell the poor "we see you, we hear you, we offer you our thoughts and prayers" and call it a day. If you're going to pursue a politically self-interested strategy, you can't half-ass it or the sociopaths who are willing to play the game will play it better and beat you. The only way a leftist project succeeds is by leaving the rich and powerful to the careerists and building solidarity and trust with a mass movement of the poor and vulnerable. And that means calling the people who murder the poor and vulnerable for money what they are.
I always just think about what it would mean to have a fuctioning national party that spent any significant part of its capabilities to enact and convey excommunication for huge swaths of the population (whichever set you like). It's just utterly without strategy or thought for the consequences.
To expand:
These are the kind of questions we need to discuss to have any kind of useful turning over of the subject, otherwise we're all just jerking off over whether soldiers are good or bad, how bad, and if they can ever be good.
What is gained by condemning soldiers is the same as what's gained by condemning cops, and everything you've said here could be said just as easily about cops. What's gained is that a clear and unequivocal condemnation helps establish a message that is absolutely vital to any leftist movement - that we will condemn and oppose injustice, and stick up for the poor and vulnerable, even when it is costly to do so. Even when the expected gain is less than the expected cost.
Lots of people under capitalism feel alienated and are skeptical of any organization that it will actually come to their aid when the chips are down. Minority groups understand that they will be thrown under the bus the moment it becomes politically convenient, because they are, well, a minority. The "rational self-interested" thing for a political party to do is to serve the people with the most money and power, while paying lip service to the poor and desperate, on the assumption that they will accept empty promises and pocket change because they have no better options.
It behooves any leftist organization or party, therefore, to establish that they are not careerists and that they serve an actual ideological agenda that will benefit everyone - yes, even you. And to do that, it is vital to consider the concerns of people who are regarded as subhuman, to give voice to the voiceless. And the voiceless, in this case, are the victims of imperialist wars of aggression in the Middle East and elsewhere.
If we're not going to do that, then what the fuck are we doing here? Just become a self-serving political careerist, call up an oil company and promise to do whatever they say if they fund your campaign, tell the poor "we see you, we hear you, we offer you our thoughts and prayers" and call it a day. If you're going to pursue a politically self-interested strategy, you can't half-ass it or the sociopaths who are willing to play the game will play it better and beat you. The only way a leftist project succeeds is by leaving the rich and powerful to the careerists and building solidarity and trust with a mass movement of the poor and vulnerable. And that means calling the people who murder the poor and vulnerable for money what they are.
By my ledger, the observed gain is merely in internet points.