☆ ˢᵗʳᵉᶰᵍᵗʰ & ᶜᵒᵐᵖᵃˢˢᶤᵒᶰ

I honestly think that the reason a lot of people don’t understand Steve’s side of the Civil War is that most of Tumblr is very young and weren’t alive during the draft and their parents are probably young enough that they, also, escaped the draft.

Here’s the thing, my father fought in Vietnam but felt, until his dying day, that we, as a country, had no business being in that war. Same for my uncle who served in the Korean war.

If we look at the timeline for what would have been Sam Wilson’s service, it would have put him right smack in the middle of the second Iraq invasion in the early-2000s, were most of the troops AND we as a country knew the WMD excuse for invading Iraq was utter bullshit. And was later proven to be utter bullshit.

Once you sign up for the service, if you’re assigned to a tour, even one you think is wrong, wrong, wrong, you have to go or risk a court martial and dishonorable discharge at best. And no one will hire anyone who has been dishonorably discharged, that crap will follow you for the rest of your days.

It seems a lot of people look at the Accords and say, well, 117 countries want oversight, seems reasonable. I, the daughter of a vet, look at it and think ‘I’m glad Sam and Steve had the option of choosing retirement, something they didn’t have in the comics, instead of signing up to follow orders they may not agree with, once again’.

Despite the overwhelming faith people seem to have in the UN, their overseas track record has not actually been sterling, so sayeth someone who was alive during the 90′s and still has her Bosnia relief concert CD featuring Pavarotti, U2, Duran Duran,  and the Cranberries (Miss Sarajevo is such a good song). 

Anyway, I can totally get why both Sam and Steve were wary coming from a service background. 

Yes Bosnia was bad and Rwanda was worse, at least that was the opinion of Amnesty International.  There was major UN culpability in Rwanda when in 1994 members of the Hutu ethnic majority murdered up to 800,000 people, mostly of the Tutsi minority.

If you want a good scholarly run-down on the UN involvement in this disaster, I recommend Eyewitness To Genocide by Michael Barnett who was attached to the UN at the time.

He tells about the sins of omission AND commission by the Security Council, the Secretariat, and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (but not it’s field force). At every level except that of the field operation, he outlines a pattern of “willful ignorance and indifference” toward Rwanda and a bureaucracy that turned it’s back on the obligations set forth in the 1948 Genocide Convention.

Or if you don’t feel like reading a book - there’s the movie, Hotel Rwanda.  Very hard to take but brutally accurate.

Reblogging for @feliciates excellent addition because yes, god, what happened in Rwanda was so awful. Such a terrible, terrible atrocity *shudders*. That movie, Hotel Rwanda, staring our very own Don Cheadle no less, haunted me for months after viewing it, hell, it still haunts me.

Russia literally just vetoed a resolution expanding the investigation into the gas attacks in Syria. The UN does a lot of good, but if we assume a system in the MCU similar to the real one, there is absolutely no way I would put myself under the control of a panel appointed by the Security Council, and I bet a lot of Steve’s critics on the Accords would not submit to their lives being controlled by Russia, China and the US. Retirement was a completely legitimate option that WAS IN FULL COMPLIANCE WITH THE WILL OF 117 COUNTRIES. Guess the other 1/3 of UN countries don’t have a will that matters to anyone because no one mentions them. Ahem.

Then Zemo happened and almost everyone, including Tony and T’Challa, start breaking the Accords they literally just signed. T’Challa for nothing more than vengeance. Not to save the world or help people, but vengeance.

This is a work of fiction and we have to hand wave some stuff, but if you really can’t see Steve’s position about submitting to a politicized authority with its own agenda run by people like Ross, little Ross, Pierce, the Vice President who was compromised by the Mandarin, Stern and the WSC that tried to nuke NYC, then I don’t know what to tell you. I mean, you can believe Hydra infiltrated the US and Russia and just those two members of the Security Council setting up this panel, and never got involved at the UN and none of that is concerning, but I have some lovely waterfront land in central Florida to sell you.

Reblogging for @sabrecmc‘s excellent addition because yes.

how are you so quiet about it? your sadness i mean. how do you hold it in your chest, in your eyes, in your teeth without letting it speak; how does it stay still?

elithien:

sometimes i get distracted by my own cleavage like… nice…….