Ah, you are an idealist. Good on you, I tend to be more of a pragmatist in these matters and therefore think it highly unlikely that humankind will ever stop warring in one way or another.
Theres definately two sides to the argument here, and neither is completely right or wrong. IN the end there isn't likely to be a stop to warring, especially when the "developed/advanced" countries invade countries for greed.
Our governments are completely wrong to be in Iraq, really our armies should be maintained at numbers that can secure our own country or at least give any army a damn good hurting before you would hope other nations helped us. Are our soldiers wrong to go over there, well in the world the way it is, we can't really live without an army so if those guys who want to defend the country are sent to invade somewhere they don't have a huge amount of choice. Could they all refuse to go, strike perhaps, maybe. Would a huge portion of the abled body jump to the UK's defence should they be needed to though, probably.
Theres simply no clean cut answer here. Its still seen that Saddam's armies are "good" kills and civilians are "bad" kills. Frankly both are bad, we invaded another nation we have no legal right to be there in any way or form. You can't blame the soldiers for doing as they are asked, but neither can I legitimately say they are doing the right thing.
Treating anyone with disrespect is wrong at any time unless that person has personally lost your respect in dealings with YOU and YOU ALONE.
I would say there are three levels of respect with which you should deal with people. Neutral, where I would not treat anyone badly, nor be excessively respectful either. You have to earn respect through the way you behave, even if thats in minutes by being a nice, helpful polite and just generally nice person and at that point I would be more inclined to go the extra mile to be helpful. If you act like a jackass and are rude or just a nasty person in any way you lose respect. But i can't see how demanding someone remove their uniform is behaviour i would apply to a soldier even if they were a complete jackass. Thats almost humiliation, thats different to not respecting someone.
You can not respect someone, then you can show a lack of respect, two very different things.
The problem with the other problem, the should we be at war, are soldiers in the wrong for partaking in , lets be honest, a completely illegal war. Theres really not a be all and end all answer, there isn't a correct and a wrong side to this argument. IN a perfect world we wouldn't need an army, we would stockpile weapons and if anyone attacked us as a nation we would stand up and say, eat lead you ****ing commies
If there were the case our government would have a hard time conscripting people to fight an illegal war.
Frankly, a developed nation should NEVER invade a country unless a maybe predetermined number of citizens in that nation are clearly asking for help to avoid genocide and the like.
Civilised nations should really quite simply not start wars, its as easy as that. Finish them, but don't start them.
The still scary part is that we have a government who were fully willing to go in and invade for greed and nothing but. Frankly even if they had WMD's, invading on that basis is pretty awful anyway. Since when did having WMD's cause us to invade countries to get rid of them.
Theres almost a certain thought in my mind, not sure if its a good one or not. but the sooner everyone had the bomb the sooner the USA and its little puppet the UK would stop acting like they get to decide whats right and wrong, and they can kill who they want for whatever fake reason in the name of greed.
