it's true, you have no idea what the hell you are talking about. if you want to talk about this with me, we'll take it into the d&d. the serbian people opposed what dictator milosevic was doing. i happen to be serbian, and you happen to be an ignorant ****. when people make stupid comments like this, it's really my pet peeve. dont talk about things you don't know anything about.
Its not and your are not. We know little about the true effects of war, at least people that are younger than 45, because we truly have not been apart of a major war, such as WWII and I reluctantly put Vietnam up there, not that its an unlegitamate war, but rather the public perception of it. Also when was the last time mainland USA was invaded and had cities fall. Thats true war, when your life is interupted by fighting/invasion. . . . .in your neighborhood. Americans are extremly lucky in that we have never had to deal with an invading force.
DO YOU PEOPLE KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE SAYING?? friggin peeps....you guys are nutz!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was more of a religous battle (Divac situation)....but when your own army attacks its people that is called being in a WAR first hand...my good friends cousin (14 years old) was killed for being in the streets playing....he was sniped from a mountain...the army was killing its own army members for being of another religion .....Tanks were firing into houses from the hills....do you know how that feels?...HELL NO!!! ANYONE(General Public) IN THE UNITED STATES HAS NOT SEEN ANYTING CLOSE TO WAR OTHER THAN WHAT'S ON TV. Pearl HArbor was a long time ago and not very big compared to other country's being attacked on home soil..... anyways my point being ... try to learn some history and some facts before you make your comments... cause you will only sound silly when you say otherwise....Divac statement is valid and he has the right to say what he did.
You equate first hand experience as the only way to have knowlege of something. But that's simply not true of anything. Let alone war. Ironically your statement helps me to make my point. If I have facts and I know history it is entirely possible to have knowledge of war. The kind of knowledge that someone on the front lines doesn't have. Often times the person closest to the situation has the least amount of knowledge about it. They are blinded by it. If you're in the forest, can you see all the trees? Do you have a knowledge of the forest? Or don't you?
It's not the only way, but it is a hell of a difference. Experience is miles ahead of empathy, logic, reasoning and in some cases understanding. I think you just can't relate to Divac's quote, no offense PSJ. Have you ever talked with a war vet? Vietnam, even Iraq. Even guys who understood they were going into a military background. They will tell you they had no way of understanding what awaited them. Funny...this thread happened today, when I saw an old high school friend who went Army about six years ago. Been in there since about two years after HS. He had always planned on going career, sticking in it for the long term. He was very much a military man. He spent a year in Iraq. That changed everything. We *do* know something about war. We do have some idea of it. But we are nothing close to the people who live with that kind of violence day in and day out. And I think there are many people who assume they 'understand' war automatically, without ever having experienced it. There is a huge, huge difference.
Some of you need to look up the words sympathy vs empathy relate them to knowledge vs understanding, then come back to class and report.
pcheung..............hahaha...nice.....i actually had to look that up. PhiSlammaJamma...........look man you have not experienced what it was like....i have....i would know the difference....you can not read about or gain knowlege about war.... it is something you have to experience.... it's kinda like sex. now you understand?????
Man, that is insane. I kept telling my friends that I feel for the Jews, the holocaust was atrocious. But the crap that happened to China and especially to nanking massacre was just as bad and there is absolutely no peep made about it anywhere. But even so, we should all forgive and move on. But that wont happen and we'll still have wars.
Most Americans have no real understanding of war. Some Americans understand what it is like to go to war. America has not had to fully understand war since the Civil War. War is not just, as is our experience, something that happens 'over there'. Those who went 'over there' understand what it's like to go to war, which is horrific enough. But to actually understand war, you have to have it come to you. You have to have your neighbourhoods as battlegrounds, the park you played in as a kid a POW camp, the church you were baptised in bombed into rubble, your highschool truned into a makeshift hospital/refugee camp, and friends and family killed while eating dinner. And more than that, you have to experience the knowledge that more of the same will happen today, tommorrow, etc. etc. To say that America understands war is to be innaccurate. To say we understand it as much or more than anyone is ludicrous.
At this point, you are only making semantic shifts to avoid the actual debate. KG's War: Based on his comments I assume it is some combination of experiences which include watching television coverage of the Gulf War and other similar conficts, growing up in a bad neighborhood with gang violence, and general interest in weapons. Vlade's War: Seeing death and destruction over a period of time and having that directly impact yourself in the form of loss of family members, friends, and personal property. Your War: Reading history books and watching cable news. Basically, Vlade's war experience trumps everyone else's war experience on an emotional level since he is a surviving victim of it. His comments were based on that kind of understanding, which very few people in the US have. Only a percentage of US military veterans who have fought in foreign wars would know and understand the things Vlade does in brutal detail and personal emotional pain. So when Vlade says that, it makes sense. You can make a semantic argument, but you can't tell me that Americans understand Vlade's War.
