Why I Choose the Gun - By the Leader of the Military in the Netherlands

M

MTT TL

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This is a fascinating video if a bit long. He starts to lose me a little around the 11 minute mark but till then I am fairly rapt. The argument has good appeal to me as career military and makes a good argument against the anti's if you can get them to suffer through it.

It is a tough sell these days for a military in Europe. People seem to have forgotten what it was like as it has been so long.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjAsM1vAhW0
 
While some European armies are a little old on the average (meaning their servicemen are older), they still manage to get out now and then. My mother-in-law corresponded with a Dutch penpal since before WWII, starting when they were teenagers I guess. Her penpal's granddaughter actually served in Afganistan around the same time that my son was in Iraq.

They (my mother-in-law and her penpal, that is) finally met but they're both nearly 90 now and no longer write.
 
I started to cringe when the speaker praised the government's "monopoly on force."
Click to expand...

There were more than a few cringe moments in the video for me too, however he does make a good argument that a disarmed (or poorly armed) nation is merely the next victim. The Eurocentric view point that he expresses is what passes for far right wing in Europe these days.

As a side note I should mention that he lost a son in combat in Afghanistan a while back.
 
The gentleman is charming and eloquent, so his audience misses his logical error. Not all governments are both effective and benevolent enough to exercise a monopoly of force on behalf of their citizens. That should have been apparent to him from his experience in Afghanistan and the Balkans, if not from watching the news at night.
 
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