[vollmond]

> It’s simple to sit there behind the desk reading articles and history when you’re not one making the decisions, good or bad.

We are participants in those decisions, on both sides. We are part of the targets of those decisions (eg domestic spying, provision of military equipment to local and regional police forces), as well as tacit supporters of those decisions (or do you think an American civilian can travel the world without being blamed for those mistakes? I have heard of a lot of Canadian flags being added to travel luggage...).

Our tax money pays to kill children in deserts. Our tax money pays to destabilize governments. Our parents and children and brothers and sisters who ARE veterans directly participate in executing those bad decisions. And then many of them commit suicide. My father shot himself three years ago, near his 50th anniversary of shipping out to Vietnam, because of the mistakes he was part of there and later which stayed with him for so many decades. I don't think our second-guessing of those decisions taken in our name is at all inappropriate.

> Yeah, a lot of mistakes have been made. Many of them will continue to be made.

There must be a threshold of "too many" or "too heinous" mistakes at which point one stops trying to improve an organization and instead withdraws support, right? Otherwise it may as well be a religion.