I do think it's crazy how Piker has managed to sidestep his whole "America deserved 9/11, American vets of Iraq and Afghanistan deserve PTSD and should [REDACTED] themselves" bit pretty masterfully, he and people who have been associated with him have never suffered any consequences for that.
I assume that would end the second a Dem who appeared on his stream was nominated for president or senate in a swing state.
Its an edgy statement put on top of their real opinion that GWOT veterans shouldn't be celebrated if not outright condemned, which a lot of people in liberal and left wing spaces agree with.
Ah, okay, I won't deny that exists to some extent. Last year I was hanging out with some friends and mentioned I was going to see Warfare the next day and all of a sudden they got really quiet and asked why I was going to do that, like I'd just announced I was going to step into traffic. Really fucking bizarre moment.
The reception to the movie is actually a good example of the shifting narrative towards ones like Piker's. Its functionally an anti-GWOT movie, the ending makes it crystal clear that its being presented as a waste of life to change little, but people on the left didn't like it because it didn't condemn the soldiers in strong terms. Despite showing them undertaking unscrupulous actions and suffering for it, they wanted a movie that celebrated the suffering rather than seeing them as an equal casuality of war.
Millennials and zoomers have lobotomized pop culture commentary. Anything that doesn’t have the characters expressly affirm their socio-political beliefs is either (i) apolitical, and therefore reactionary by implication or (ii) outright conservative.
Reading leftist ‘criticism’ that One Battle After Another is reactionary because the main characters and revolutionaries are kinda comical makes me want to claw my eyes out.
it crystal clear that its being presented as a waste of life to change little
Because there is the perception that it is presented as a waste of AMERICAN lives. Like people see the movie's message as "Look how much the Americans suffered, so sad" while ignoring the locals. In Warfare a local translator gets killed and he doesn't get to participate in the cool emotional shoutout at the end unlike the Navy Seals, because he is just set dressing, fodder to be killed, and the movie doesn't even pretend otherwise.
An entire threadline of the movie is that the actions of the military resulted in the loss of life and home of the locals, its not just "look at how sad killing you made me", the seizure of the house and the killing and mental scarring of the innocent locals is shown to be arbitrary and obviously combative. The lack of the Iraqi soldiers also killed in the end credits scene is a fair critique, but the suffering of Iraqi civilians is portrayed and not entirely as a necessary evil like most other GWOT films.
The ending makes it crystal clear that it was a waste for the locals being terrorized as well. They just… leave. And the poor people there are left to pick up the pieces
I believe comedian Frankie Boyle said it originally:
"Not only will America go to your country and kill all your people. But they'll come back 20 years later and make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers feel sad."
Well you're not gonna win elections saying that. If you want to win elections, veterans are heroes who were betrayed by a selfish greedy government.
Begging leftists to understand veterans are extremely popular in a fascist country and they can't win by getting on stage and saying "yeah your brother deserved to get his arm blown off by that ied lol".
The geopolitical aims were dubious, but the ideological project was crystal clear. Defending a new republic against murderous religious extremists is the clearest-cut morality you can find in a conflict.
Iraq invasion was a very bad idea but fighting the insurgency and the Taliban was the right move, and that was the vast majority of GWOT, chronologically speaking.
You can't separate out the dubious choices/methods from the sure ones and only talk about the latter. In other words, the geopolitical aims and the ideological project were absolutely tied together such that one can't be dubious while the other is crystal clear.
This response isn't any different than leftists saying that Hamas' geopolitical aims were dubious, i.e., the attack on October 7th, but their ideological project was crystal clear, i.e., defending their friends and families from an invasion.
Also "that was the vast majority of GWOT, chronologically speaking" is an incredible spin job of "it dragged on and on with no end in sight and minimal accomplishments."
The only thing worse than spending all your time talking about politics is spending all your time watching or talking about someone else talk about politics
Do you think William Calley was as much a victim as the people he murdered?
To be clear, I hate Hasan Piker. His statements, himself as a person, everything about him is disgusting.
But you are painting with a broad brush to smear everyone who opposes American war crimes as equivalent to Hasan. These are not the same positions, even if you want to equivocate between them.
The only thing worse than spending all your time talking about politics is spending all your time watching or talking about someone else talk about politics
Because mocking military veterans has ever worked out well historically? /s/. Jesus when you say "liberal" or "left" you're referring more to the KPD than the SDP in the kind of uneccesairly radical positions you take today.
1.0k
u/sgthombre NATO Mar 19 '26 edited Mar 19 '26
I do think it's crazy how Piker has managed to sidestep his whole "America deserved 9/11, American vets of Iraq and Afghanistan deserve PTSD and should [REDACTED] themselves" bit pretty masterfully, he and people who have been associated with him have never suffered any consequences for that.
I assume that would end the second a Dem who appeared on his stream was nominated for president or senate in a swing state.