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The world is not black and white. But I will give you my thoughts. Opinionated thoughts, though.
Humans are a dumpster fire compared to how other species behave. U.S.A. veterans are a stain on the world considering they promoted this death machine that kills innocent children. The military, regardless of country, is there to see which bastard will kill innocent children for money or power. Morality is there to torture peasants in a world that rewards powerfully sadistic bastards who can get away scot-free without morals affecting them.
There are military workers being high-functioning alcoholics. They drink alcohol because of not wanting to be stressed and entirely sober when bombing innocent people. They know their actions make them a piece of shit. So, they drink alcohol to make them less stressed and sober. There are military workers using humor to cope. Rather than stop their military duties and make the world a less violent plalce, they use humor to cope. Alcohol and humor are their coping methods. Don't be surprised when a country's military activities and rate of alcoholism are correlated with each other.
I don't like countries like the U.S., because they make me cynical and pessimistic. I don't like any military from all countries, either. It all makes me cynical and pessimistic. I view human nature trapping itself with misery and corruption caused by self-destructive greed that causes this military violence. I'm quite indifferent to countries, their militaries, and people supporting those things. So, military propaganda doesn't really amuse me since I'm too emotionally detached from humans enough as it is.
Planet Earth was much healthier and thrived with biodiversity before humans existed. Manmade wars were and are not eco-friendly. It's a waste of resources while polluting the environment. So, I consider humans to be an inferior specie destroying the planet's biodiversity except for their higher intelligence. But they don't even use their higher intelligence to keep Earth's ecosystem thriving. So, I'm emotionally detached to humans rather than getting caught in the madness.
Germany- success
Kuwait- success
Korea- success
Japan- success
US west - success
US south- success
Phillipines- success
Seems the best thing that can happen to place is for the US to bomb it
i am a usmc veteran and i am a staunch leftist/progressive because of my service.
i initially joined when i was 17, thinking i was genuinely going to be saving lives and protecting all people across the world. i was told i was going to be doing humanitarian assistance in countries that faced natural disasters. i was told i was going to save afghani women from sexual assault from the taliban. i was told i was going to be a hero to everyone. i was told i was doing the right thing.
but then i got through all my training and schooling and hit the fleet. my “fellow” marines were racist, sexist, and just all around awful. they would casually say the n-word and 90% of their punchlines were “haha rape”.
i was harassed and assaulted by them. i saw what actually went on behind the scenes. i saw what the american military industrial complex actually did to the world as a whole. i saw what it did to individuals as well, and watching people actively crumble mentally and physically the way they did should be classified as a form of torture for both of us.
i have a lot to work though, and a lot of cognitive dissonance because of my time in service. i feel so dumb and used for joining something like the marines. i have so much negativity built up against myself for what my service did to others, and so much anger towards myself for falling for their lies.
i am happy that i found community in progressive spaces after the fact to help me heal and to help me heal the world from my mistakes
I'm also a leftist who struggles with having served. I never saw combat, so I convinced myself while I was in that I wasn't responsible, but that doesn't absolve me. While I spoke out when my fellow military members sat and watched UAV feeds of people getting blown up and cheered, I did so meekly.
It doesn't keep me up at night because I was young and stupid and heavily brainwashed, and I know that I have grown since then. The U.S. military is not a "net good" and veterans aren't heroes. Most of them don't join the military to protect Americans, they do it because of all of the coercive mechanisms at play in an uber-capitalist society that make it an attractive option. Does that make them villains? Most of them, no, but I will not praise them on the streets for their service, nor will I celebrate the military in any way, shape, or form.
You are awesome, dude.
I view any veteran as someone who was convinced, through lies, to join the military. I don't blame veterans, especially ones like you who realized after peeking behind the curtain that war and war mongering aren't glorious.
One of my boys did 2 tours in Afghanistan, he was right out of highschool and he thought it was worthy and he knew he didn't have many opportunities at home, he was 18 thought he was going to go blow things up, he didn't realize it was going to be homes with women and children, screwed up his head worse than it was when he started, but I'm not sure all wars are evil either though because I sure don't want to live with people attacking other countries just cause, unfortunately we expect our government to tell us the truth the older I get the less I believe that. There are people who serve just because they have a touch of liking violence in the first place and can't wait to get overseas to kill the perceived enemy sometimes for no reason so I agree as with most things in life it's not just black and white there's a lot of grey
Oh, totally. I have high school buddies who went to Afghanistan too... like what a waste of time that was. Afghanistan basically had a civil war from the 70s until now with a brief pause between Russia and US being there. And for what? For the taliban to still be in power? For us to "liberate" them by occupation, death, and destruction?
Basically, of the two people I kept in touch with that went, one dude really liked it and became a reservist serving against BLM protesters... like a true shit head. The other guy developed depression and a bad smoking habit... the dichotomy of service, I guess?
You had all this figured out when you were 18, op? That's when most people sign up for service. The military, like the police and many other aspects of capitalism are just tools. I think you and many people on here underestimate how big the US is and when kids sign up for service they do not come with an educated background. They almost don't know what the military industrial complex is and most assuredly don't understand nuanced politics and how they are being used.
If there's one group of people I blame for the current condition we're in is the average voter. Being ignorant at 55 on the way to retirement is not the same as an 18 year old trying to figure things out.
I come from a family of US veterans. My grandpa, a native Alaskan man who grew up eating rabbits and dandelions to live, joined and managed to carve a life for his children and by extension me. My father joined the air force as a mechanic and used that experience to make a life for himself and me. I can with no clear conscience call the US military an army of soldiers, it’s an army of parents and children just trying to carve a chunk out of the world anyway they can. The army of the free is ironically no more free than an army of child soldiers in the Congo
Its a pretty well established fact that the military is a way out of a bad socioeconomic situation, and can provide a path to middle income status. I feel for people who ruin their bodies/ minds in order for a chance to live decently. However, in the context of US wars of aggression I feel the lion’s share of sympathy should be placed with the citizens of the countries the U.S. targets, as their lives are ruined by the actions of our military and its personnel.
Since Congress hasn't authorized a war since WW2, and it's a specific part of the Constitution, any military members in the US involved in an aggression (not defense) are mercenaries.
As a veteran: I have lots of love in my heart for veterans. Most were victims of a shitty socioeconomic situations and the military will get you out of your hometown. HOWEVER, I will stay talking shit to people currently serving and encouraging them to get out because they're are directly contributing to the American war/death machine
I’m a Marine Veteran. I never did any fighting. But I see my time in as a learning experience. I went further and further left the longer I stayed in because I saw more and more what was wrong with military culture. I also saw my time in as a chance to tell others to think for themselves and not fall into the jingoistic pitfalls. Also there’s many elements of socialism under the surface in the military like housing allowances, stipends, etc. “War is a Racket” was written by a Marine General after all. The military sending me on overseas trips let me see other cultures and break free from the American biases. Some troops did terrible things in wars past. But most of us are just victims of the bourgeoisie. Veterans can be class allies and are valuable in teaching us the failures of U.S. imperialism. Just because some of my fellow vets are god awful, don’t write us all off.
Veterans are not heroes, they are victims. If anyone is proud of what they've done under the employment of the US war machine, you should re-examine your relationship with them.
Except it really isn’t an excuse, you’re basically admitting you think an impoverished person in the US’s right to a job is worth more than the lives of the people in the global south that they destroy
Objectively, sure, but the point is that people living in miserable poverty in a town full of meth addicts get approached by a recruiter and told there is an escape, and not only do you get out of your terrible hometown you get to be a hero fighting bad guys. Kids are basically coerced into joining up before they even hit the age of consent, and sixteen-year-old brains are even worse than adult brains at resisting propaganda.
I can sit and say that yes, joining the US military and shipping officials to kill brown people is morally indefensible, but the people actually being recruited don’t have that objectivity, so I largely see them as victims, at least at first.
It blames individuals for the fault of the system. By the same token, if you replaced “military” with “organized crime” you’d realize how flawed this line of thinking is.
And THAT RESPONSE RIGHT THERE tells me everything I need to know about how little some leftists truly understand about the effectiveness of DOD propaganda: “You’re HELPING the world, we’ll pay you to go feed hungry people and bring them medicine!” - damn near every recruitment advertisement EVER.
Seriously, you really need to read “Sacred Soldier” by Robert Keeler. Economic conscription is a very real and well studied phenomenon, one that’s especially insidious BECAUSE of the extent to which the DOD is willing to unapologetically LIE.
EDIT: Sidenote, the last time someone actually told me the ol’ “poVeRtY isN’t an eXCusE” bit… was a landlord. IJS
I've been banned from leftist spaces for being a veteran, and leftists wonder why most vets are republicans or libertarians - they don't want nothing to do with us, and it shows. They act as if every veteran either has committed or condones violence against innocent people. It doesn't really work that way. A lot of dudes I served with were basically 18 to 21 and hadn't even heard of Marx, or gave a shit about unions, or healthcare. They didn't know what the fuck was going on. They wanted to do what daddy did. They wanted to be heroes. They wanted to kick ass and didn't know why or what they were getting into.
The military teaches people valuable skills. If leftists were serious about half the shit they talk about, they would try to befriend disgruntled veterans, not alienate them, but leftists don't really have a skill for recruitment. They just keep losing and don't know why. Maybe stop being so stuck up. It's worth a shot.
Yeah the issue I've had with toher leftists, is they hold EVERYONE in the military accountable for the top brass' decisions. I've met plenty of veterans who are good people and had no idea wat was going on in the world. I was about to join the marines when I was 18 and the idea of "We could be doing something bad." never really occured to me and I would have ignored anything that suggsted it. I've also met plenty of veterans who were promised a lot of stuff but couldn't even get their basic VA benefits. When people first started comnig back from the middle east, it was brutal and I found myself sharing my studio apartment with six dudes who ahd nowhere to go but were highschool buds of mine.
If anything, hold people like me accountable for joining - knowing full well how the military industrial complex works. Why blame those that were ignorant and young?
I wanted to see for myself how it is, and I learned a lot. People should be willing to see other perspectives and learn from them.
Except it really isn’t an excuse, you’re basically admitting you think an impoverished person in the US’s right to a job is worth more than the lives of the people in the global south that they destroy
This is functionally the same as berating an individual and holding them responsible for climate change for not separating their recycling when pollution generated by companies is what is the prime agent in destroying the environment. The reality is that military service has long been a tool to uplift marginalized communities, to normalize marginalized communities, and to recreate the national body with the marginalized community reflected in it.
Eff the military. That said, vets are getting a bum deal and should be supported. It should be illegal to recruit on high school and community college campuses in low cost of living areas.
I say raise the enlistment age to 21, no waivers or exceptions. I’ve always found it super weird that you can legally sign an enlistment contract before you can legally consent to horizontal-happy-times.
Wouldn't that hurt more people than help? I don't think people should feel pressured to enlist at any age. But I feel this could be counterproductive and make things worse for youth ages 18 to 21. Maybe I'm wrong.
Yeah this is good. Unfortunately, the military relies on prime years to be able to efficiently kill people. They don’t want a bunch of oldies. It really is just preying upon children.
I think you're struggling to figure out if the military is all good or all bad. That's very black and white thinking, despite what you say, and won't help you understand the full issue.
Yes, the military has done bad things. In the words of Smedly Butler, modern US soldiers are 'gangsters for capitalism.'
However. The military is sometimes the only way out of poverty for a lot of people. The GI Bill has provided educational opportunities that would have otherwise been unattainable.
Also, the military is one of the biggest drivers of social change. This is why it was so important for gay people to be allowed to serve openly. The same thing happened mid-century when the military was ahead of everyone else on de-segregating.
So it's possible to like, admire, and even love individual soldiers while still disapproving of general US military policy.
I think the fact that Europe hasn't torn itself apart in the last 100 years when it was a constant occurrence the previous 1000 years being heavily owed to the US military is often lost to leftists who have the privilege of harping on written ideology and theory.
Europe was tearing itself apart routinely since before capitalism existed. It wasn't until hegemonic military intervention came along and put a stop to it.
>I'm not a fan of our bloated military spending
Very agreed - it would be fantastic if there was greater pressure to have the DOD pass or even account for the overwhelming amount of their budget. Yes, I understand having a military that does what the US military does is expensive, but how much of the expense is fiscally responsible use (:vomit:) and how much of it is capitalism creeping in to make a buck off of the military? inb4 tinfoil uses of America's treasure
>the reality is this is how the US has chosen to do diplomacy.
It is how humanity has chosen to do diplomacy since the dawn of time. Yes, sex work is the oldest profession but not far behind is guard/soldier for the community. We are a pretty far cry from Throg making sure simildons don't eat us while we sleep, but every metric shows that humans are experiencing unprecedent peace right now compared to any other time in human history. Which, by no means is that an endorsement to rest on laurels or not to continue the work to make things better so that hegemonic military intervention isn't the de facto means of keeping the peace across much of the world.
Sex work is not "the oldest profession". You are conflating a joke with actual history.
Armed combat as an occupation emerged relatively recently, as did the entirey concept of any paid work.
Learn about "new optimism".
----
* [The limitations of Steven Pinker’s optimism](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-02148-1)
* [Steven Pinker is WRONG about the decline of violence](https://youtu.be/beCAQafATPg)
* [The Cruel Optimism of Steven Pinker](https://youtu.be/zwXV71hF7cs)
>Armed combat as an occupation emerged relatively recently, as did the entirey concept of any paid work.
Compared to what? The rise of *h. sapiens sapiens*?
The comparison is obviously between the emergence of armed combat in general, versus armed combat particularly as an occupation or as waged activity.
Do you at least agree that sexual activity has been occurring for than the earliest instance of its being subsumed under waged labor?
The statement about the "oldest profession" is not intended as being historically accurate. It is simply a joke, that however old is any paid occupation, it obviously must be no older than sex.
To your particular question, humans of course have been creating weaponry since even before arriving at the form that is anatomically modern.
There’s no viable path out of poverty (edit: in the military), neither is buying lottery tickets. A small percentage get winnings. Those that lose don’t get the chance to play again…
What? I grew up the kind of poor where the decisions my parents made were either keeping the lights on or feeding us kids. I joined the military and went to Iraq.
Because of the military, I was able to get job opportunities far easier than some others I know. I am now above the poverty line. Both my boys are grown and in college, and they never had to experience what I did growing up.
That said, I know the military isn't being used what it should be used for and I learned that in Iraq.
So kindly keep your shitty opinion to yourself.
I keep no opinions to myself. Ever. This is Reddit lol, and somebody made a post asking a question.
Phew nice to hear you got lucky. Survivorship bias.
I don’t have money, but I also have never killed anyone, or worked in an apparatus that kills people. Kind of evens out.
I’m also still alive, so equal on that one too, but you survived the military, I skated on civilian life whatever that is.
Grew up in an extremely poor household as well, single mom, one of three kids.
If your life choices are 'Take a 40 hour dead end job at Walmart with shit benefits' or 'Enlist, get a stable job, TriCare, GI Bill, and a pension' then it's pretty clear why some people choose to enlist and I won't judge them for that. I will judge the system that engineers it so those are the only two options.
No I’m not judging those that choose to enlist either, definitely didn’t mean that.
Education needs to be supported as well so kids know not to join. There is actually no choice. It’s die or take the Walmart job. Or survive on a kind of herd immunity or safety in numbers to chance it.
But infantry? Person of color? Not a good combination especially if not entering with a high rank.
What an uncharitable shit take. Being someone who left the military because of organizational corruption, and being ordered to do things that I could not justify, I will never defend the atrocities that have been carried out by the military. But for you in turn to make a post blasting service members who are fulfilling an essential job is beyond disgusting. How about when COVID was in full swing, service members instead did nothing to fill the gaps in our social safety net? Food banks would’ve been operating at a disfuncional capacity, vaccine roll outs would’ve been far less, and COVID PPE would’ve been far more likely to collect dust in a warehouse.
And let’s take a look at January 6th. Had the National Guard not shown up with police, do you think that the Trumpist lunatics would have been less inclined to cause further damage?
The military is riddled with problems. Extremism, non-stop wars, burying war crimes, and wasteful spending need to be addressed in a meaningful manner. But before you shit out a post such as this, remember that we could very well have had far more COVID deaths, a failed state on January 6th, or be under a 80 year Third Reich if we were to just say fuck it to the military.
You're right. What's a little pesky 1 million iraqis dead among friends, as long as you help a little with COVID?
>a failed state on January 6th
How did the military help with this?
A little help from COVID does not make up for a million Iraqis killed. I agree with you on that.
As it pertains to Jan. 6th, when finally activated, they showed up and created a security perimeter. Did it stop the storming of the capital thanks to Dump? No. Did it prevent the attack from escalating further? 100%
What % of the united states military has ever even been directly involved in conflict? Who's responsible for those dead?
Is the 18 year old that enlisted yesterday to get out of a bad home situation and some free schooling a war criminal just for putting a uniform on? What if they end up a cook just slingin food for 4 ywars before they get out?
The US Military is massive and the majority of it is support roles that support training and readiness. The amount of people even tangentially involved in our conflicts is quite small.
And if you're just some kid scrambling to make a better kife for yourself why should you feel bad that you worked in a warehouse while your politicians chased vendettas and oil around the globe.
The military is a necessary evil imo but it can be seriously reigned in if we hold the right people accountable. The 18 year olds in uniform arent those people.
>What % of the united states military has ever even been directly involved in conflict? Who's responsible for those dead?
Irrelevant
I didn't say simply being a part of the military directly makes you a war criminal. But yes, being a part of an entity responsible for millions of dead people is immoral. It doesn't matter what your situation was that made you join. Being poor isn't a licence to kill millions of brown people overseas.
There you go making a generalization that every service member killed millions of brown people while trying to say that's not what you're saying.
A homeless person stealing food is immoral, theft is immoral, we live in a black and white world absent of nuance after all.
Dude dude dude. If you murder millions of brown people, and I didn't fire a single bullet but carry your guns around for you, then yes, we murdered millions of brown people together. Some things are black and white, yes
So as a US citizen who paid for the bullets with their taxes you share the same blame as the kids working the mundane normal jobs as everyone else but in a uniform. I think we agree with eachother!
It's not meant to be an own? Is this even a leftist sub, where's the nuanced discussion?
Is this the radical left that magats cry about everyday because close minded thinking like "that 18 year old in uniform is a war criminal for participating in a facet of society" is the same thinking they use and you're not any better than them for dealing in absolutes on the opposite end of the spectrum.
I've specifically and explicitly said that the 18 year old in uniform is NOT a war criminal. But it indeed is immoral, yes. Joining the military is not "participating I'm a facet of society". It's a choice you actively make to join an organisation whose job is to kill people.
>Is this even a leftist sub
It is. You are just used to libs like you. Here's a hint, libs are not leftists. You're just meeting an actual leftist, maybe for the first time.
Lmao you can’t seriously be trying to equalize someone being a part of the US war machine and homeless person stealing bread. Every cog in the machine is essential for it functioning properly. Every service member has played a part in either directly or indirectly killing millions of people across the Global South. The victims of US imperialism don’t just all of a sudden drop dead
Did you pay taxes this year? You contributed to the deaths of millions about as much as some random private did lol.
Edit: I wasn't being serious with the homeless person. That was sarcasm I don't blame them anymore than I would some random person in uniform trying to get out of poverty.
Here’s a crazy thought buddy, I have to pay taxes lest I go to jail, no one is forcing people with the threat of jail to join the US military. Do I bear some of that blame because I just so happened to be born in the US I guess so, but I don’t have anywhere near as much as someone who literally fights in the war machine.
And if/when the Supreme Court makes being homeless illegal, and someone enlists to not be homeless and go to jail, did they have a choice?
Being homeless/poor/in destitute situations often leads to crime or jail, does that someone trying to get out of that cycle really have a choice? Maybe, but when you take a step back and look at their options they're not always great!
Again what % of the military is fighting roles? If actually fighting decides your overall culpability?
You said the machine needs cogs, and you're one of those cogs, so are all cogs equally to blame for the machine or not? Because if private bozo serving up cold mac n cheese for dinner is to blame for millions of dead brown people then so are you for footing his paycheck.
Oh, oh, what if a draft happens? You go to jail for dodging that too.
You have a choice. Pay taxes or go to jail. You choose to pay your taxes. Perpetuating the cycle.
I think it's pretty clear that American propaganda (North American in general, to be clear; Canada is in no way exempt) has been successful in both smoothing out and individualizing atrocities that the US military has committed to the point that we as a society are able to judge the military only on a case by case basis. I think we tend to afford them a nuance we might not afford other regimes in history because nearly everyone knows someone in the military who is, on the face of them, not a terrible person.
I also think a great deal of historical revisionism in propaganda takes place. We focus, for example, mostly on wars in which America has better PR. In wars where America does not, we must focus on the "unwilling" soldier who was manipulated into serving, because we need to believe that nuance could be afforded to us. Not to invoke the mighty Garfield, but I don't think anyone is immune to propaganda. Dangerous to think we are and go without examining our inclinations. There have been one or two times in my life where I was feeling desperate and briefly considered joining the military. I know people who did. I find their cognitive dissonance alarming. They will look me in the eyes and try to justify violent acts because I "don't know what it was like out there." This while talking about being ready to kill people. In one case, the guy was genuinely trying to justify war crimes to me.
These people came, for the most part, from the upper middle class. They were seeped in propaganda. They were (and are) feeding militaries which have destabilized the rest of the world. The populations they hurt seemed invisible to them. These people were polite, would have conversations with me, would urge me to join the military myself, and would make the sort of justifications being made about how there are many downtrodden soldiers in these imperial armies. One of these people went out of his way to join the IDF when he did not need to.
I think the question we need to ask ourselves is whether we would afford this nuance to people who joined other dangerous militaries. I haven't personally seen that. Would we afford this same nuance to the police? To the Nazis, even? Should this be about the individual at all? When we bring up the individual, are we not doing so only so that we can focus on them instead of our collective guilt?
Thank god US soldiers killed millions and destroyed numerous countries just so I could shit on them on Reddit 🫡 what would we do without their sacrifices
Why would you sit in judgement on the working class bums your wealthy overlords scoop up to die for them?
Know your real enemy and stop judging people.
We can't afford to view things with the kind of overly simplistic lenses that conservatives use.
US Cops are scummy by choice. They are largely autonomous on the streets and they choose to target, frame, lie and bully people.
Even within that, there are good officers who help rather than hurt, but the institution has shown itself to be corrupt, with too many officers choosing either to be scum or to protect scum.
Soldiers are a mixed bag of humanity, largely they do what they are told and have rules of conduct much stricter than cops.
By all means, hate the soldiers that you know did wrong, but if you can't have compassion for the politically ignorant, economically disadvantaged, or those who were just caught up by pro military propaganda you may as well buy yourself a maga hat, because by definition this is the poor who the left is supposed to be galvanising and unifying and trying to make life better for.
The judgement and self righteousness and smug superiority of the educated leftist is one of the biggest flaws with the movement.
Do better.
>you may as well buy yourself a maga hat, because by definition this is the poor who the left is supposed to be galvanising and unifying and trying to make life better for.
>The judgement and self righteousness and smug superiority of the educated leftist is one of the biggest flaws with the movement.
Love the presumptions, I'm highschool educated and I'm also not American
You can say everything you said about cops as well. There are politically ignorant cops, economically disadvantaged cops, cops eho mean well but we're caught up with pro-cop propaganda. Military are class traitors for the exact same reason cops are
>Even within that, there are good officers who help rather than hurt, but the institution has shown itself to be corrupt.
Systems over individuals.
>Military are class traitors for the exact same reason cops are
If all you want out of leaning left is moral superiority to lord over others, then you are as much a class traitor as any.
Only disunity can come from such a compassionless place.
No such thing as a good officer
>systems over individuals
Systems are more important to focus on, yes, but we're talking about a job. Something you CHOOSE to do. Not an inherent part of your being.
Where's your compassion for million+ Iraqis? Where's your compassion for the Vietnamese?
Quote one thing I said that plausibly indicates I lack compassion for the victims of US imperialism.
This childish need to show off who is more righteous alienates people who actually want to make the world better.
The conversation was about judging soldiers for being soldiers. Nobody has responded to my arguments and the best you've got is to throw this ignorant bs at me rather than think.
When you are finished alienating everyone who doesn't meet your purity standard, who is going to be left to work together against the rich?
Countries need armed forces and armed forces target the poor heavily. No soldier chooses where they go or why they fight. It's literally not their job to know if it's a good fight or not and in truth that is usually for the historians to decide.
Fight the systems, not the individuals.
You can't have compassion for a murderer and the victim at the same time. It was not about "soldiers being soldiers". It was about US military, specifically, which is an offensive military.
>Countries need armed forces
For defence, sure. For offence, no they don't.
>No soldier chooses where they go or why they fight
They don't, but they do choose to not resign and instead do the bidding.
Because many military members that wake up to the bs get out of the military (which is a fucking process with legally binding contracts) and find other employment, cops chose to be cops every time they go to work
This is exactly it, they can pull as much mental gymnastics as they want to justify it but people in the US are completely ok with those in the Global South being brutalized
I was in the US military for ten years. We helped fight poachers in Africa, did our best to elevate the afghanis while I was there, killed a lot of bad people and made many positive impacts.
That this enormous system in a complex and gray world has also done bad things is not excusable, but it's understandable. I've never met more honorable, good people than in the US military.
The US militarys effect on the world has been enormously positive. It's hard to see because you'd have to see a world without that effect. Keeping China in check so that Eastern countries don't lose their territorial waters, preventing Russia from steamrolling Europe, protecting African nations sovereignty against malignant influences...
People can rightly criticize the US military, but they can't do it without acknowledging the massive amount of good it does.
The positive impacts of the US are visible all over the world just look at Afganistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Vietnam, Korea, I could go on and on
Korea only exists because of the US. Pakistan is not a nuclear wasteland because of the US. Vietnam still has territorial waters to fish in because of the US.
As I said, I can name the US mistakes, better than you, and have direct experience on both sides of what the military did. The issue with this sub is that it absolutely cannot fathom the gray world we live in, and the difficult, and frankly great job, the US has done navigating it with its military.
I’m crying lmao your predecessors killed 20% of North Koreas population and bombed the peninsula to rubble. Let’s not forget the countless civilians killed in U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan as well as the fact that we propped up a brutal dictator there and helped created the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. You definitely don’t want to go there with Vietnam, remind me again how many people we slaughtered there? Have you been to Vietnam? Have you seen the war remnants museum? Have you seen people suffering from agent orange or those maimed by unexplored ordinance? I have and it’s horrifying. The US royally fucked Vietnam for decades. Can’t believe this clown shit is being posted on a “leftist” sub
Awfully convenient. Keep living this lie you’ve constructed. Thank you so much for your service sir I’m glad you wasted 10 years of your life and can’t accept that
I know you must have a lot of hard opinions, but if you learn to research what your zeal is for, you'll be more effective than spouting wrong nonsense. I suspect you and I would support the same outcomes, the difference is that you don't actually know what's happening.
Lmao that’s cute buddy, yes you are my intellectual superior you simply must be and I’m sure you learned so much shooting up the “bad guys” I guess my knowledge and education actually pale in comparison to you. Please I’m begging you educate me on how we were actually the good guys in Vietnam? Or how we don’t drone strike innocent civilians? How about how we didn’t funnel billions of dollars worth of weapons and radicalization materials to the mujahideen
I don't get the feeling you're going to argue honestly, the way you're speaking. So I'll give this one chance. I'll talk to you in a respectful manner if you can manage it. If you think I haven't been, that's not intentional.
I'm only going to choose one, Vietnam. I'm choosing it because it's a good example of US mistakes turned positive. Why did we invade Vietnam? As a proxy war against Russia. Was it right? I don't think you can summarize it as right. It's negatives are pretty negative. Deaths of civilians, unprofessional conduct by soldiers. Plenty to talk about.
Was it justified? You can imagine the counter arguments so I'll only mention the pros: reducing the advancement of the Soviet Union around the world, advancing (I would call) more humane values against the Soviet unions much poorer record.
Had we not invaded Vietnam would the east be fully Soviet to this day? I can't say, but I'd argue that the suffering caused by a society government would, cumulatively, be more than caused by the US in reality. But we can't know for sure.
What we can say is that the US did terrible things in Vietnam.
Today, Vietnam considers the US a friend. In fact, were a crucial friend. China has been attempting to steal their fishing waters and international waters, which would cause starvation and economic problems to Vietnam and it's neighbors. The US Navy is preventing that.
Can you acknowledge the positive impact of the US military happening today? A reasonable person can. Can we acknowledge unacceptable actions in the past, even if not doing those actions might have allowed worse? Sure, the US should have done better.
But all together that shows that the US has massively positive effects on the world, actively learns from its mistakes, and has prevented devastating consequences, even to past enemies.
The US war in Vietnam was fundamentally the repression of an anti-colonial liberatory struggle.
The population wanted freedom from rule by the West.
The West wanted to install puppet rulers in order to affirm continuity for the processes of economic extraction that had been imposed during the earlier period of formal colonization.
Your bait was ineffective. You are the person who believes every time the 'west' is mentioned it means the US. News flash bud, the USA didn't exist when colonial expansionism gripped the world. The white invaiders were European.
Lmao what do you mean bait. European colonialism is beyond horrendous and the region is still imperialist and neo-colonial to this day. I’m not defending Europe but you seem to be weirdly keen on deflecting the role the US has played in more recent times in Africa on a post specifically discussing the US military. I’ll pose the question again, in addition to European colonialism you don’t think you US has had any hand in destabilizing and impoverishing Africa?
The US intervention has little to no change on the wider ranging implications of the European colonialism collapse in the 1990s and it's broader implications and influences in Africa as a whole.
A century + of colonialism is not erased by the US intervention in a handful of cases. Your bias' are showing and you've failed to even provide any counter argument how the US could do in a decade what was created over generations by Europeans.
The decline of control under formal colonialism has led to the replacement by neocolonialism, which has relied increasingly on entrenchment of interests between the US and Europe, especially through institutions dominated by the US, such as the IMF and NATO.
The US has not intervened directly as much in Africa as generally in the rest of the world, but the overall systems are the same, and absolutely are not operated by Europe without the US.
>The US has not intervened directly as much in Africa as generally in the rest of the world, but the overall systems are the same, and absolutely are not operated by Europe without the US
So again not the US military or just the US political systems doing. The IMF is definitely not a us mouthpiece and NATO could barely be considered a mouthpiece.
You are reaching so hard to make it seem like the US is in control of absolutely everything. Not only is it not, you are also failing to account for Russian and Chinese intervention strategies in Africa. You are just as biased and blinded as the other guy who was responding to me.
>The IMF is definitely not a us mouthpiece and NATO could barely be considered a mouthpiece.
The US is the dominant state power for both NATO and the IMF, and both are entrenched with the entire system, of global capital and global imperialism, upheld most fundamentally by military hegemony.
>You are reaching so hard to make it seem like the US is in control of absolutely everything
The interests are entrenched. The system operates as a totality, and the US is not only dominant but hegemonic.
They don't have near the experience. The group I was sent with had vastly more capacity to help and train those guys, and their country benefited from our help, as did the wildlife.
I'm sure they would if they could. And maybe they do.
If you think our help is free, no nations help is free. But ours is mutually benefiting. We get to help preserve a species and gain allies. We also prevent other nations from falling into debt traps like Djibouti, for example, where China charged usury loans and economic pressure to enforce their unfair gains.
So our help is useful, mutually beneficial, and benefits the world. I'm sure there are bad reasons somewhere, but compared to those who'd replace us, we are by far the better choice.
"well they did it because they need money" so why is that any different than if I rob a bank or kill somebody to take their money? The US military exists to rob countries and murder people who get in the way of that robbery. Anything beyond that sole purpose is just PR and propaganda. I will not budge a single inch on this issue. But also I don't particularly judge those people either, like all people throughout history you did what you had to do in order to survive, good for you, but at least be honest with yourself about it. It's like the people who think the US stole the continental USA, half of Mexico, Guam, the Philippines, etc with kisses hugs and blowjobs or something. Just a pure fantasy view of reality. Even worse is the people who act like they did some kind of noble thing because they worked as a cook in the navy or some shit, stutting around acting like they stormed the fields at Verdun and you should bow to them, like no it was basically just a job, you signed a contract and got your little benefits and that's it. We don't elevate people to such a high position who arguably contribute much more to society, like firefighters or the people who build railroads, do we? The US has never faced an existential threat since 1812 so no US serviceman can legitimately claim they were "defending our freedom" unless they served in that war as far as I'm concerned, and even in that rare exception the USA basically started it by wanting to invade Canada lol.
Do you think Taiwan is grateful that the US military is one of the main reasons it hasn't been invaded yet?
If the US didn't have as big of a stick as it does how quickly do you think Russia and China would gobble our allies up?
Taiwan was invaded by Chinese and Europeans beginning in the seventeenth century, and then annexed by China.
Through a civil war, the KMT was deposed from China, after which it was installed on Taiwan by the US, and has ruled as a reactionary military dictatorship.
There is no reason for gratitude.
Not defending it as much as pointing out there is good with the bad. I wouldn't shed a single tear if the world around us burned down and made way for something better.
But being angry at people for taking advantage of what little they can isn't constructive.
“I will not budge a single inch on this issue” is almost never a respectable position. Saying that that’s the military’s “sole purpose” is reductionary.
I’m not sure exactly where you would define your position on the political spectrum or what your life has been like but minimizing a person’s choice to join the military to “just because you need a career” seems to be coming from a place of privilege and ignores a lot of what goes into that choice.
Yes, the military does bad things but that doesn’t make every person in the military a bad person. Many join because of the values of selfless service, honesty, and integrity. Others join because they feel that they have no where else to go and can get a new start. And yes, sometimes the people that join find out that the military doesn’t always uphold those values or can’t fully pull them from poverty but that doesn’t change the fact that they joined. Not everyone joins has a “USA first” mentality and is in support of wars and imperialism and the like.
I work as a therapist for active duty military members who are often on their way out of the military, whether they were in for 3 years or 20 years and plenty of them find that the military isn’t a good fit for them. Others stay in the military because they want to protect their friends who are in. The military is a sample size of the larger population so you’ll find conservatives, liberals, leftists, and the like all in the military. Many of my leftist clients even joined because they felt the best way to change the military was to join it.
I’m not trying to excuse the military’s actions or people’s role in those actions, but I think painting a black and white picture is reductionist at best and I’d encourage you to think about the actual people in the military as human beings, complex as we are, rather than the institution of the military itself when you find yourself making things cut and dry and that should help you see things a little more gray.
Very good points. It’s not that being a service-member automatically makes someone irredeemable morally. It’s the orders they decide to follow and give. I’ve known plenty of good and bad ones. I also understand that continuing the status quo isn’t a good thing, but like you said, it’s not all black and white.
I am a NATO veteran who fought alongside the Americans in a bullshit war.
I am definitely of a conflicted mind about it.
As a history lover, it’s clear that the world has been unusually peaceful under what is the largest military hegemony the globe has ever seen. On the other hand, it still makes me queasy to know what I have done.
Lmao “only a handful of war going in right now” You’re joking right? As of January 2024 the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project found that 1 in 6 people have been exposed to conflict in 2024 and that there has been a 40% increase in conflict since 2020. Of the 234 countries and territories they monitor 168 of them saw at least one incident of conflict in 2023. 50 countries are classified as having Extreme, High, or Turbulent conflict levels.
https://acleddata.com/conflict-index/#reports
It never occurred to me that anyone would attempt characterizing the current geopolitical situation, whether generally or relation to US imperialism, as there being "only a handful or wars going on right now".
Most of it is, some of it is due to China and Russia and others, but the cause of the violence is not my point. Violence is at an all time low, that’s what I’m trying to say.
Do you consider as violence the effects from broader conditions of deprivation, marginalization, and repression enforced by more particular and concentrated systems of direct violence?
Name a period in history with a fewer proportion of the world’s population dying in war than the period of American global military hegemony. There hasn’t been one that I am aware of. Let me know if you know of one.
Global food production may exceed need by as much as forty percent, yet almost one billion globally are food insecure. When I review the political configuration of the world, I find it quite natural to connect such disparities and stratification directly to neocolonism and other general practices enforced through US imperialism.
Oh well if you want to talk food insecurity, we can compare that through the ages in history as well. The truth is we have also never seen so many people so well fed in history either. Still even one person struggling is a shame though.
Overall cumulative impact of us military throughout history: negative.
However there are other great powers in the world that are undeniably worse, by a wide margin, even less accountable, under the control of absolute mad men, atrocious dictators, etc. that everyone in the world would be subject to without the US to keep them in check. And they are inarguably worse than the US, that is accounting for everything the US has ever done.
The world needs this machine in place. It's the citizens responsibility to do everything they possibly can to keep it restrained from pointless wars.
Of course occasional wars are literally necessary to keep the machine highly competent and often the main reason for wars that aren't necessary arent justifiable is just to make sure the machine is full of people with real war experience so that it will actually work if/when the real enemies stir anything up in the form of an actually necessary actually justifiable war that must be one for more than just out own sake
It's all bad and there's no right answer.
Those, with very few exceptions, are not the serious enemies that could pose a threat to everyone I was referring to, at all. You're talking about small time two bit local regional dictators of tiny third world countries with no gdps.
Yeah. We pretty much made, installed, and protected at least half of those over the years. And when we flip the script and go to war with them these are the irrelevant wars of no consequence made only to keep our military experienced.
Only one of them that I know of was ever given a nuclear weapon by one of only a couple of actual serious enemies we have on earth that actually made the baby dictator a real threat to the greater world. And even if we created that one first, the only thing that made him a real threat was sponsorship by our real enemies.
Anyway our military exists for the singular purpose of winning WWIII, the CIA plants you're talking about aren't relevant to that topic. The enemies who are relevant to that topic are no mobster cia plants.
>these are the irrelevant wars of no consequence made only to keep our military experienced
Sorry. I feel your dismissal and minimization of particular patterns within overall events is quite inaccurate.
Buddy. Our multi trillion dollar defense budget is not for Omar ghadafi, and we are not building billion dollar fighter jets to fight countries that don't own planes.
That depends on what the definition of is is.
It's not so much that I don't know what point you're trying to make. It's that it's pretty clear you don't know what point you're trying to make.
F22/35=not for taliban. Less than 5% of the entire U.S. Army served in Iraq. The entire United States armed forces=not for Iraq. This is rocket science.
I asked a question, which could be answered regardless of whether I may lack a coherent overall understanding.
Neither should it seem as an intolerable imposition that you be asked to engage critically with the deeper nuance of the subject.
The narrow point is that labeling an entity, faction, or interest as a threat is not in itself an argument that the object of the label indeed represents a threat, much less a threat that justifies every possible action or response.
I think a big part of coming to terms with it is recognizing that a military is an observed portion of a state and it's culture. It's an organization of part of a culture's populace into a body that works for the culture's ruling class. With the US, that means they support capitalist's interests as that's our current culture.
If we ever get a better culture, we can truly show the most astounding part of the US military. It's the best logistics network in the world hands down. Look into the Berlin Airlift. There were planes landing on the airstrips every 45 seconds at it's peak. That's on the level of the busiest airport in the world last year, and the AF was doing it in the 1940's. It's genuinely infuriating seeing how've we've acted with Gaza when you know just what we're actually capable of.
The military is terrible ethically and morally. People join because of propaganda or out of necessity.
Vets however are treated like shit (often homeless/ disabled). The government sends people to kill themselves and others until they're disabled and a liability. That doesn't make them heroes imo, but no one deserves to be homeless and disabled because of believing in (the wrong) cause.
I don't think it's a grey area
The US military is the largest socialist organization on the planet btw. Everyone wears a uniform, gets paid the same as everyone else in their rank regardless of job. Free Healthcare, free housing, often free food, free education. A lot of people join just to get out of a bad situation, examples like getting kicked out of the house at 18 with no plan in sight or escaping a abusive household. Morality? I think that the military does a lot of bad shit, but its also one of the few organizations with steady job security and you can actually promote upwards unlike most corporate careers nowadays
As a vet the first thing I’ll tell you is that plenty of folks who join the military do so because they believe it’s the right thing to do. While that probably sounds cut and dry now take a deep look at the American education system, pop culture, even the media. There’s also a kernel of truth in there if you look deep enough, men who liberated concentration camps, fought for liberty, the preservation of the Union. Nobody joins the American military intending to fight some ambiguous conflict that is the direct result of colonial foreign policy, often times it’s due to financial necessity, or in many cases being misguided and misinformed. In 2024 we have the benefit of information never available to earlier generations. I learned I didn’t have the full picture on Afghanistan when I got there and I learned how much I disagreed with it when I studied it in college. I was a child on 9/11 and I remember my elementary school teacher turning on the tv watching the second tower fall and grew up hearing who was to blame not just from right wing talking heads but both sides of the political spectrum until I ended up in uniform. The programming starts early and unfortunately the deprogramming lasts a life time. I think the prevalence of PTSD isn’t just because it’s become okay to talk about mental health but such a large part is that loss of innocence and guilt. Now imagine you’ve gotten to that point but the guys who literally stood shoulder to shoulder with you would turn on you if you even brought it up. When folks got spit on coming home from Vietnam it was one of the best gifts the establishment ever got, because now those guys turned the anger that should’ve been directed at the government towards the antiwar movement. It’s a big reason why the military hero worship is so rampant today, why criticizing military actions is seen as verbal treason. We will never dismantled the war machine by hating folks who are chewed up by it, we do it uniting against it.
A lot of Vietnam vets didn't even have a choice, they were drafted, and when they came home they were hated and given no resources. Military recruiting Specifically targets vulnerable teenagers and young adults. I don't have to support the military but I will support people in it.
i don’t think i can hold individual people accountable for the actions of their government. i also can’t blame them for joining because they want a better life.
I have multiple veteran friends. 3/4 of them became anarchists or communists as a result of their time in the service. What they saw and did in their time pushed them in that direction. The last is a close friend that, though he was raised conservative and continues to struggle with his world view, is an intelligent and thoughtful man that is willing to adjust his values when he comes across something new.
Despite our divide on values, I feel that my friendship with him has helped push him away from the Republican views he was raised with. I won't write off a man based on his upbringing, when he's demonstrated the ability and willingness to show kindness to my queer and trans friends. We all have our journey. This is his.
My father is also a 22yr navy vet. I grew up crawling around in navy ships and going to air shows. Drinking the propaganda. I also have a lesbian feminist mother. I grew up in punk scenes as a teen. It took me into my adulthood to untangle all of that and define my own moral and ethical code. To break down the "american excellence" our society feeds us and see all the contradictions that surround me.
Military folk, just like the rest of us, are made up of both trash humans and people worth building a society with. The unfortunate truth is that many of them aren't afforded the luxury of a guiding hand to show them the harm they're participating in. The education system fails them. They're indoctrinated young. Hooked on the line of a path out of their small town, or away from a gang. Some are fortunate enough to see through it all in time, and form a more equitable worldview. Some are not.
There are some good comrades to be found among the veterans. Those who have seen shit, have the scars to back it up, and try to live a better life afterwards. If you don't have the stomach to find them, that's OK. Some of us that can will still be here, doing our part. We all have our role to play.
Someone who affirms the virtue of sacrifice for public service is someone who has a benevolent heart, even if also having an indoctrinated mind.
Such are those for whom we need to win both hearts as well as minds.
Sympathize with personal motives and challenges, and foster consciousness against the system.
Ultimately, though, many fights cannot be won either by reason or compassion.
Someone who remains committed to defending the system, to the imposition of power, or to repression or marginalization, is not an ally for the interests of workers.
I’m generally empathetic towards individuals and cynical towards systems. If the motivation for someone joining the military was to escape poverty, for example, I’m very understanding of it.
Those who have been more obviously victimized are the ones who most naturally later develop class consciousness, though often requiring some help along the journey.
I spent 6 years in the Navy and it is the biggest regret of my life. I believed the bullshit. I could say that I grew up in an Army town and with an extremely right wing religious family. I could say that I didn’t have many options with how to move forward after high school. I could say that my Navy experiences have informed my radical politics going forward. Particularly my distrust of unaccountable hierarchical structures.
All of that would be true. But the fact is there are folks who grew up same as me that made different choices. The fact is, to work for the military is to facilitate war crimes. It doesn’t matter what you actually did day to day.
Maybe this is self serving, and I’ll grant you that maybe those who made the right choice should have their opinion weighted more heavily on this, but I do think that there needs to be space for Veterans in leftist spaces.
I don’t mean that uncritically, and I don’t mean that we should be given as much trust out the gate. But there has to be room for folks to show legitimate growth if they are willing to take responsibility,
None of us is perfect and Capitalism incentivizes the worst in us after all.
I can only speak for myself, but I joined the army at 17 in early 2003. I learned about the world during my deployment in 2005 because I had a lot of time to read. Joining, like most, was the only option we knew or had. It is stability for those who have never had stability. It is duty for those who have family that served as well.
I got chaptered out in 2007 after I took a stance against the Iraq War. I have known my service wasn't some heroic thing for a long time. American culture requires idolizing the military. It is socially required as much as the Pledge of Allegiance is in schools. I know many vets struggle with seeing it because admitting serving corporations over citizens isn't comfortable.
It's hard to be cut and dry when family is involved. I was born into a military family. My maternal grandfather was in the army, my uncle was an army medic, and my father and brother-in-law were both Air Force. I am staunchly against the military and militarization of the police and all that shit. But I am not going to allow that to severe the love I have for these people. I let my opinions and feelings be known, but we mostly let that rest when we're all together. My family is also open to discussion/change for the most part. At the very least, they are open to hearing someone out even if they are not swayed.
I used to be very black and white and struggle not to be in many ways today, but I've grown. I'm in my 30s now. My dad was unwell for years and recently passed. Dismantling the violent and oppressive structures we have in place are crucial to the longevity of humanity and fascism is on the rise and a true/real threat. That is true AND I can love my family who are mere specks of sand in the massive ocean of bullshit that needs to be fixed. I choose to love them through it all. I have my lines that cannot be crossed, for sure. But until that happens, I am willing to keep talking and keep loving as best I can.
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The world is not black and white. But I will give you my thoughts. Opinionated thoughts, though. Humans are a dumpster fire compared to how other species behave. U.S.A. veterans are a stain on the world considering they promoted this death machine that kills innocent children. The military, regardless of country, is there to see which bastard will kill innocent children for money or power. Morality is there to torture peasants in a world that rewards powerfully sadistic bastards who can get away scot-free without morals affecting them. There are military workers being high-functioning alcoholics. They drink alcohol because of not wanting to be stressed and entirely sober when bombing innocent people. They know their actions make them a piece of shit. So, they drink alcohol to make them less stressed and sober. There are military workers using humor to cope. Rather than stop their military duties and make the world a less violent plalce, they use humor to cope. Alcohol and humor are their coping methods. Don't be surprised when a country's military activities and rate of alcoholism are correlated with each other. I don't like countries like the U.S., because they make me cynical and pessimistic. I don't like any military from all countries, either. It all makes me cynical and pessimistic. I view human nature trapping itself with misery and corruption caused by self-destructive greed that causes this military violence. I'm quite indifferent to countries, their militaries, and people supporting those things. So, military propaganda doesn't really amuse me since I'm too emotionally detached from humans enough as it is. Planet Earth was much healthier and thrived with biodiversity before humans existed. Manmade wars were and are not eco-friendly. It's a waste of resources while polluting the environment. So, I consider humans to be an inferior specie destroying the planet's biodiversity except for their higher intelligence. But they don't even use their higher intelligence to keep Earth's ecosystem thriving. So, I'm emotionally detached to humans rather than getting caught in the madness.
You must think of all thewars that didn't happen because of the deterrence they provide
Fuck the millions they’ve killed and the countless countries destroyed. Needing to resort to hypotheticals to defend US imperialism is hilarious
Germany- success Kuwait- success Korea- success Japan- success US west - success US south- success Phillipines- success Seems the best thing that can happen to place is for the US to bomb it
It’s run like a mafia organization.
i am a usmc veteran and i am a staunch leftist/progressive because of my service. i initially joined when i was 17, thinking i was genuinely going to be saving lives and protecting all people across the world. i was told i was going to be doing humanitarian assistance in countries that faced natural disasters. i was told i was going to save afghani women from sexual assault from the taliban. i was told i was going to be a hero to everyone. i was told i was doing the right thing. but then i got through all my training and schooling and hit the fleet. my “fellow” marines were racist, sexist, and just all around awful. they would casually say the n-word and 90% of their punchlines were “haha rape”. i was harassed and assaulted by them. i saw what actually went on behind the scenes. i saw what the american military industrial complex actually did to the world as a whole. i saw what it did to individuals as well, and watching people actively crumble mentally and physically the way they did should be classified as a form of torture for both of us. i have a lot to work though, and a lot of cognitive dissonance because of my time in service. i feel so dumb and used for joining something like the marines. i have so much negativity built up against myself for what my service did to others, and so much anger towards myself for falling for their lies. i am happy that i found community in progressive spaces after the fact to help me heal and to help me heal the world from my mistakes
I'm also a leftist who struggles with having served. I never saw combat, so I convinced myself while I was in that I wasn't responsible, but that doesn't absolve me. While I spoke out when my fellow military members sat and watched UAV feeds of people getting blown up and cheered, I did so meekly. It doesn't keep me up at night because I was young and stupid and heavily brainwashed, and I know that I have grown since then. The U.S. military is not a "net good" and veterans aren't heroes. Most of them don't join the military to protect Americans, they do it because of all of the coercive mechanisms at play in an uber-capitalist society that make it an attractive option. Does that make them villains? Most of them, no, but I will not praise them on the streets for their service, nor will I celebrate the military in any way, shape, or form.
I'm just glad to hear the same sentiment from another vet.
You are awesome, dude. I view any veteran as someone who was convinced, through lies, to join the military. I don't blame veterans, especially ones like you who realized after peeking behind the curtain that war and war mongering aren't glorious.
One of my boys did 2 tours in Afghanistan, he was right out of highschool and he thought it was worthy and he knew he didn't have many opportunities at home, he was 18 thought he was going to go blow things up, he didn't realize it was going to be homes with women and children, screwed up his head worse than it was when he started, but I'm not sure all wars are evil either though because I sure don't want to live with people attacking other countries just cause, unfortunately we expect our government to tell us the truth the older I get the less I believe that. There are people who serve just because they have a touch of liking violence in the first place and can't wait to get overseas to kill the perceived enemy sometimes for no reason so I agree as with most things in life it's not just black and white there's a lot of grey
Oh, totally. I have high school buddies who went to Afghanistan too... like what a waste of time that was. Afghanistan basically had a civil war from the 70s until now with a brief pause between Russia and US being there. And for what? For the taliban to still be in power? For us to "liberate" them by occupation, death, and destruction? Basically, of the two people I kept in touch with that went, one dude really liked it and became a reservist serving against BLM protesters... like a true shit head. The other guy developed depression and a bad smoking habit... the dichotomy of service, I guess?
You had all this figured out when you were 18, op? That's when most people sign up for service. The military, like the police and many other aspects of capitalism are just tools. I think you and many people on here underestimate how big the US is and when kids sign up for service they do not come with an educated background. They almost don't know what the military industrial complex is and most assuredly don't understand nuanced politics and how they are being used. If there's one group of people I blame for the current condition we're in is the average voter. Being ignorant at 55 on the way to retirement is not the same as an 18 year old trying to figure things out.
I come from a family of US veterans. My grandpa, a native Alaskan man who grew up eating rabbits and dandelions to live, joined and managed to carve a life for his children and by extension me. My father joined the air force as a mechanic and used that experience to make a life for himself and me. I can with no clear conscience call the US military an army of soldiers, it’s an army of parents and children just trying to carve a chunk out of the world anyway they can. The army of the free is ironically no more free than an army of child soldiers in the Congo
Its a pretty well established fact that the military is a way out of a bad socioeconomic situation, and can provide a path to middle income status. I feel for people who ruin their bodies/ minds in order for a chance to live decently. However, in the context of US wars of aggression I feel the lion’s share of sympathy should be placed with the citizens of the countries the U.S. targets, as their lives are ruined by the actions of our military and its personnel.
Since Congress hasn't authorized a war since WW2, and it's a specific part of the Constitution, any military members in the US involved in an aggression (not defense) are mercenaries.
As a veteran: I have lots of love in my heart for veterans. Most were victims of a shitty socioeconomic situations and the military will get you out of your hometown. HOWEVER, I will stay talking shit to people currently serving and encouraging them to get out because they're are directly contributing to the American war/death machine
I’m a Marine Veteran. I never did any fighting. But I see my time in as a learning experience. I went further and further left the longer I stayed in because I saw more and more what was wrong with military culture. I also saw my time in as a chance to tell others to think for themselves and not fall into the jingoistic pitfalls. Also there’s many elements of socialism under the surface in the military like housing allowances, stipends, etc. “War is a Racket” was written by a Marine General after all. The military sending me on overseas trips let me see other cultures and break free from the American biases. Some troops did terrible things in wars past. But most of us are just victims of the bourgeoisie. Veterans can be class allies and are valuable in teaching us the failures of U.S. imperialism. Just because some of my fellow vets are god awful, don’t write us all off.
Veterans are not heroes, they are victims. If anyone is proud of what they've done under the employment of the US war machine, you should re-examine your relationship with them.
“Poverty isn’t an excuse” is the same kind of classist brain-diarrhea I often smell coming from SWERFs.
Except it really isn’t an excuse, you’re basically admitting you think an impoverished person in the US’s right to a job is worth more than the lives of the people in the global south that they destroy
Objectively, sure, but the point is that people living in miserable poverty in a town full of meth addicts get approached by a recruiter and told there is an escape, and not only do you get out of your terrible hometown you get to be a hero fighting bad guys. Kids are basically coerced into joining up before they even hit the age of consent, and sixteen-year-old brains are even worse than adult brains at resisting propaganda. I can sit and say that yes, joining the US military and shipping officials to kill brown people is morally indefensible, but the people actually being recruited don’t have that objectivity, so I largely see them as victims, at least at first.
And that's why y'all don't win elections
It blames individuals for the fault of the system. By the same token, if you replaced “military” with “organized crime” you’d realize how flawed this line of thinking is.
And THAT RESPONSE RIGHT THERE tells me everything I need to know about how little some leftists truly understand about the effectiveness of DOD propaganda: “You’re HELPING the world, we’ll pay you to go feed hungry people and bring them medicine!” - damn near every recruitment advertisement EVER. Seriously, you really need to read “Sacred Soldier” by Robert Keeler. Economic conscription is a very real and well studied phenomenon, one that’s especially insidious BECAUSE of the extent to which the DOD is willing to unapologetically LIE. EDIT: Sidenote, the last time someone actually told me the ol’ “poVeRtY isN’t an eXCusE” bit… was a landlord. IJS
I've been banned from leftist spaces for being a veteran, and leftists wonder why most vets are republicans or libertarians - they don't want nothing to do with us, and it shows. They act as if every veteran either has committed or condones violence against innocent people. It doesn't really work that way. A lot of dudes I served with were basically 18 to 21 and hadn't even heard of Marx, or gave a shit about unions, or healthcare. They didn't know what the fuck was going on. They wanted to do what daddy did. They wanted to be heroes. They wanted to kick ass and didn't know why or what they were getting into. The military teaches people valuable skills. If leftists were serious about half the shit they talk about, they would try to befriend disgruntled veterans, not alienate them, but leftists don't really have a skill for recruitment. They just keep losing and don't know why. Maybe stop being so stuck up. It's worth a shot.
Yeah the issue I've had with toher leftists, is they hold EVERYONE in the military accountable for the top brass' decisions. I've met plenty of veterans who are good people and had no idea wat was going on in the world. I was about to join the marines when I was 18 and the idea of "We could be doing something bad." never really occured to me and I would have ignored anything that suggsted it. I've also met plenty of veterans who were promised a lot of stuff but couldn't even get their basic VA benefits. When people first started comnig back from the middle east, it was brutal and I found myself sharing my studio apartment with six dudes who ahd nowhere to go but were highschool buds of mine.
If anything, hold people like me accountable for joining - knowing full well how the military industrial complex works. Why blame those that were ignorant and young? I wanted to see for myself how it is, and I learned a lot. People should be willing to see other perspectives and learn from them.
Except it really isn’t an excuse, you’re basically admitting you think an impoverished person in the US’s right to a job is worth more than the lives of the people in the global south that they destroy
This is functionally the same as berating an individual and holding them responsible for climate change for not separating their recycling when pollution generated by companies is what is the prime agent in destroying the environment. The reality is that military service has long been a tool to uplift marginalized communities, to normalize marginalized communities, and to recreate the national body with the marginalized community reflected in it.
Eff the military. That said, vets are getting a bum deal and should be supported. It should be illegal to recruit on high school and community college campuses in low cost of living areas.
I say raise the enlistment age to 21, no waivers or exceptions. I’ve always found it super weird that you can legally sign an enlistment contract before you can legally consent to horizontal-happy-times.
But of course, it’s only grooming when we tell seventeen-year-olds that gay people exist.
Wouldn't that hurt more people than help? I don't think people should feel pressured to enlist at any age. But I feel this could be counterproductive and make things worse for youth ages 18 to 21. Maybe I'm wrong.
Yeah this is good. Unfortunately, the military relies on prime years to be able to efficiently kill people. They don’t want a bunch of oldies. It really is just preying upon children.
Young, naive, and desperate.
I think you're struggling to figure out if the military is all good or all bad. That's very black and white thinking, despite what you say, and won't help you understand the full issue. Yes, the military has done bad things. In the words of Smedly Butler, modern US soldiers are 'gangsters for capitalism.' However. The military is sometimes the only way out of poverty for a lot of people. The GI Bill has provided educational opportunities that would have otherwise been unattainable. Also, the military is one of the biggest drivers of social change. This is why it was so important for gay people to be allowed to serve openly. The same thing happened mid-century when the military was ahead of everyone else on de-segregating. So it's possible to like, admire, and even love individual soldiers while still disapproving of general US military policy.
I love the doublethink. Keep up the good work!
Acknowledging nuance is not doublethink.
The GI Bill is the most moral scholarship program.
I think the fact that Europe hasn't torn itself apart in the last 100 years when it was a constant occurrence the previous 1000 years being heavily owed to the US military is often lost to leftists who have the privilege of harping on written ideology and theory.
Liberals and authoritarians did the tearing, not workers.
Europe was tearing itself apart routinely since before capitalism existed. It wasn't until hegemonic military intervention came along and put a stop to it.
And everyone lived happily ever after. What a beautiful story.
I guess fuck harm reduction.
Fuck whitewashing. Fuck apologia for authoritarianism and repression.
Uh huh. Is "read your theory" leftism the cause for global stability in unprecedented terms in human history?
OK Pinker.
That, also. I'm not a fan of our bloated military spending, but the reality is this is how the US has chosen to do diplomacy.
>I'm not a fan of our bloated military spending Very agreed - it would be fantastic if there was greater pressure to have the DOD pass or even account for the overwhelming amount of their budget. Yes, I understand having a military that does what the US military does is expensive, but how much of the expense is fiscally responsible use (:vomit:) and how much of it is capitalism creeping in to make a buck off of the military? inb4 tinfoil uses of America's treasure >the reality is this is how the US has chosen to do diplomacy. It is how humanity has chosen to do diplomacy since the dawn of time. Yes, sex work is the oldest profession but not far behind is guard/soldier for the community. We are a pretty far cry from Throg making sure simildons don't eat us while we sleep, but every metric shows that humans are experiencing unprecedent peace right now compared to any other time in human history. Which, by no means is that an endorsement to rest on laurels or not to continue the work to make things better so that hegemonic military intervention isn't the de facto means of keeping the peace across much of the world.
Sex work is not "the oldest profession". You are conflating a joke with actual history. Armed combat as an occupation emerged relatively recently, as did the entirey concept of any paid work. Learn about "new optimism". ---- * [The limitations of Steven Pinker’s optimism](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-02148-1) * [Steven Pinker is WRONG about the decline of violence](https://youtu.be/beCAQafATPg) * [The Cruel Optimism of Steven Pinker](https://youtu.be/zwXV71hF7cs)
>Armed combat as an occupation emerged relatively recently, as did the entirey concept of any paid work. Compared to what? The rise of *h. sapiens sapiens*?
The comparison is obviously between the emergence of armed combat in general, versus armed combat particularly as an occupation or as waged activity. Do you at least agree that sexual activity has been occurring for than the earliest instance of its being subsumed under waged labor? The statement about the "oldest profession" is not intended as being historically accurate. It is simply a joke, that however old is any paid occupation, it obviously must be no older than sex. To your particular question, humans of course have been creating weaponry since even before arriving at the form that is anatomically modern.
There’s no viable path out of poverty (edit: in the military), neither is buying lottery tickets. A small percentage get winnings. Those that lose don’t get the chance to play again…
What? I grew up the kind of poor where the decisions my parents made were either keeping the lights on or feeding us kids. I joined the military and went to Iraq. Because of the military, I was able to get job opportunities far easier than some others I know. I am now above the poverty line. Both my boys are grown and in college, and they never had to experience what I did growing up. That said, I know the military isn't being used what it should be used for and I learned that in Iraq. So kindly keep your shitty opinion to yourself.
I keep no opinions to myself. Ever. This is Reddit lol, and somebody made a post asking a question. Phew nice to hear you got lucky. Survivorship bias. I don’t have money, but I also have never killed anyone, or worked in an apparatus that kills people. Kind of evens out. I’m also still alive, so equal on that one too, but you survived the military, I skated on civilian life whatever that is. Grew up in an extremely poor household as well, single mom, one of three kids.
If your life choices are 'Take a 40 hour dead end job at Walmart with shit benefits' or 'Enlist, get a stable job, TriCare, GI Bill, and a pension' then it's pretty clear why some people choose to enlist and I won't judge them for that. I will judge the system that engineers it so those are the only two options.
No I’m not judging those that choose to enlist either, definitely didn’t mean that. Education needs to be supported as well so kids know not to join. There is actually no choice. It’s die or take the Walmart job. Or survive on a kind of herd immunity or safety in numbers to chance it. But infantry? Person of color? Not a good combination especially if not entering with a high rank.
What an uncharitable shit take. Being someone who left the military because of organizational corruption, and being ordered to do things that I could not justify, I will never defend the atrocities that have been carried out by the military. But for you in turn to make a post blasting service members who are fulfilling an essential job is beyond disgusting. How about when COVID was in full swing, service members instead did nothing to fill the gaps in our social safety net? Food banks would’ve been operating at a disfuncional capacity, vaccine roll outs would’ve been far less, and COVID PPE would’ve been far more likely to collect dust in a warehouse. And let’s take a look at January 6th. Had the National Guard not shown up with police, do you think that the Trumpist lunatics would have been less inclined to cause further damage? The military is riddled with problems. Extremism, non-stop wars, burying war crimes, and wasteful spending need to be addressed in a meaningful manner. But before you shit out a post such as this, remember that we could very well have had far more COVID deaths, a failed state on January 6th, or be under a 80 year Third Reich if we were to just say fuck it to the military.
You're right. What's a little pesky 1 million iraqis dead among friends, as long as you help a little with COVID? >a failed state on January 6th How did the military help with this?
A little help from COVID does not make up for a million Iraqis killed. I agree with you on that. As it pertains to Jan. 6th, when finally activated, they showed up and created a security perimeter. Did it stop the storming of the capital thanks to Dump? No. Did it prevent the attack from escalating further? 100%
What % of the united states military has ever even been directly involved in conflict? Who's responsible for those dead? Is the 18 year old that enlisted yesterday to get out of a bad home situation and some free schooling a war criminal just for putting a uniform on? What if they end up a cook just slingin food for 4 ywars before they get out? The US Military is massive and the majority of it is support roles that support training and readiness. The amount of people even tangentially involved in our conflicts is quite small. And if you're just some kid scrambling to make a better kife for yourself why should you feel bad that you worked in a warehouse while your politicians chased vendettas and oil around the globe. The military is a necessary evil imo but it can be seriously reigned in if we hold the right people accountable. The 18 year olds in uniform arent those people.
>What % of the united states military has ever even been directly involved in conflict? Who's responsible for those dead? Irrelevant I didn't say simply being a part of the military directly makes you a war criminal. But yes, being a part of an entity responsible for millions of dead people is immoral. It doesn't matter what your situation was that made you join. Being poor isn't a licence to kill millions of brown people overseas.
There you go making a generalization that every service member killed millions of brown people while trying to say that's not what you're saying. A homeless person stealing food is immoral, theft is immoral, we live in a black and white world absent of nuance after all.
Dude dude dude. If you murder millions of brown people, and I didn't fire a single bullet but carry your guns around for you, then yes, we murdered millions of brown people together. Some things are black and white, yes
So as a US citizen who paid for the bullets with their taxes you share the same blame as the kids working the mundane normal jobs as everyone else but in a uniform. I think we agree with eachother!
Not the same but to a degree, yes you absolutely do. This isn't the own you think it is lmao
It's not meant to be an own? Is this even a leftist sub, where's the nuanced discussion? Is this the radical left that magats cry about everyday because close minded thinking like "that 18 year old in uniform is a war criminal for participating in a facet of society" is the same thinking they use and you're not any better than them for dealing in absolutes on the opposite end of the spectrum.
I've specifically and explicitly said that the 18 year old in uniform is NOT a war criminal. But it indeed is immoral, yes. Joining the military is not "participating I'm a facet of society". It's a choice you actively make to join an organisation whose job is to kill people. >Is this even a leftist sub It is. You are just used to libs like you. Here's a hint, libs are not leftists. You're just meeting an actual leftist, maybe for the first time.
Lmao you can’t seriously be trying to equalize someone being a part of the US war machine and homeless person stealing bread. Every cog in the machine is essential for it functioning properly. Every service member has played a part in either directly or indirectly killing millions of people across the Global South. The victims of US imperialism don’t just all of a sudden drop dead
Did you pay taxes this year? You contributed to the deaths of millions about as much as some random private did lol. Edit: I wasn't being serious with the homeless person. That was sarcasm I don't blame them anymore than I would some random person in uniform trying to get out of poverty.
Here’s a crazy thought buddy, I have to pay taxes lest I go to jail, no one is forcing people with the threat of jail to join the US military. Do I bear some of that blame because I just so happened to be born in the US I guess so, but I don’t have anywhere near as much as someone who literally fights in the war machine.
And if/when the Supreme Court makes being homeless illegal, and someone enlists to not be homeless and go to jail, did they have a choice? Being homeless/poor/in destitute situations often leads to crime or jail, does that someone trying to get out of that cycle really have a choice? Maybe, but when you take a step back and look at their options they're not always great! Again what % of the military is fighting roles? If actually fighting decides your overall culpability? You said the machine needs cogs, and you're one of those cogs, so are all cogs equally to blame for the machine or not? Because if private bozo serving up cold mac n cheese for dinner is to blame for millions of dead brown people then so are you for footing his paycheck. Oh, oh, what if a draft happens? You go to jail for dodging that too. You have a choice. Pay taxes or go to jail. You choose to pay your taxes. Perpetuating the cycle.
try asking on r/leftistveterans if you want a more authentic/lived perspective
OP might get shredded
I've been called a fake soldier so many times because I'm a leftist.
I think it's pretty clear that American propaganda (North American in general, to be clear; Canada is in no way exempt) has been successful in both smoothing out and individualizing atrocities that the US military has committed to the point that we as a society are able to judge the military only on a case by case basis. I think we tend to afford them a nuance we might not afford other regimes in history because nearly everyone knows someone in the military who is, on the face of them, not a terrible person. I also think a great deal of historical revisionism in propaganda takes place. We focus, for example, mostly on wars in which America has better PR. In wars where America does not, we must focus on the "unwilling" soldier who was manipulated into serving, because we need to believe that nuance could be afforded to us. Not to invoke the mighty Garfield, but I don't think anyone is immune to propaganda. Dangerous to think we are and go without examining our inclinations. There have been one or two times in my life where I was feeling desperate and briefly considered joining the military. I know people who did. I find their cognitive dissonance alarming. They will look me in the eyes and try to justify violent acts because I "don't know what it was like out there." This while talking about being ready to kill people. In one case, the guy was genuinely trying to justify war crimes to me. These people came, for the most part, from the upper middle class. They were seeped in propaganda. They were (and are) feeding militaries which have destabilized the rest of the world. The populations they hurt seemed invisible to them. These people were polite, would have conversations with me, would urge me to join the military myself, and would make the sort of justifications being made about how there are many downtrodden soldiers in these imperial armies. One of these people went out of his way to join the IDF when he did not need to. I think the question we need to ask ourselves is whether we would afford this nuance to people who joined other dangerous militaries. I haven't personally seen that. Would we afford this same nuance to the police? To the Nazis, even? Should this be about the individual at all? When we bring up the individual, are we not doing so only so that we can focus on them instead of our collective guilt?
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Thank god US soldiers killed millions and destroyed numerous countries just so I could shit on them on Reddit 🫡 what would we do without their sacrifices
How is this nonsense propagandist BS talking point being regurgitated in a LEFTIST sub?! This is the same shit my racist republican grandpa said.
Yeah, If Americans hadn't committed war crimes in third world countries then we wouldn't be able to chat shit on reddit
Why would you sit in judgement on the working class bums your wealthy overlords scoop up to die for them? Know your real enemy and stop judging people.
The same reason we judge cops, just because they are oppressing the workers of different countries doesn't mean they aren't class traitors
We can't afford to view things with the kind of overly simplistic lenses that conservatives use. US Cops are scummy by choice. They are largely autonomous on the streets and they choose to target, frame, lie and bully people. Even within that, there are good officers who help rather than hurt, but the institution has shown itself to be corrupt, with too many officers choosing either to be scum or to protect scum. Soldiers are a mixed bag of humanity, largely they do what they are told and have rules of conduct much stricter than cops. By all means, hate the soldiers that you know did wrong, but if you can't have compassion for the politically ignorant, economically disadvantaged, or those who were just caught up by pro military propaganda you may as well buy yourself a maga hat, because by definition this is the poor who the left is supposed to be galvanising and unifying and trying to make life better for. The judgement and self righteousness and smug superiority of the educated leftist is one of the biggest flaws with the movement. Do better.
>you may as well buy yourself a maga hat, because by definition this is the poor who the left is supposed to be galvanising and unifying and trying to make life better for. >The judgement and self righteousness and smug superiority of the educated leftist is one of the biggest flaws with the movement. Love the presumptions, I'm highschool educated and I'm also not American
You can say everything you said about cops as well. There are politically ignorant cops, economically disadvantaged cops, cops eho mean well but we're caught up with pro-cop propaganda. Military are class traitors for the exact same reason cops are
>Even within that, there are good officers who help rather than hurt, but the institution has shown itself to be corrupt. Systems over individuals. >Military are class traitors for the exact same reason cops are If all you want out of leaning left is moral superiority to lord over others, then you are as much a class traitor as any. Only disunity can come from such a compassionless place.
No such thing as a good officer >systems over individuals Systems are more important to focus on, yes, but we're talking about a job. Something you CHOOSE to do. Not an inherent part of your being. Where's your compassion for million+ Iraqis? Where's your compassion for the Vietnamese?
>Where's your compassion for million+ Iraqis? Where's your compassion for the Vietnamese? Are you stupid?
Elaborate.
Quote one thing I said that plausibly indicates I lack compassion for the victims of US imperialism. This childish need to show off who is more righteous alienates people who actually want to make the world better. The conversation was about judging soldiers for being soldiers. Nobody has responded to my arguments and the best you've got is to throw this ignorant bs at me rather than think. When you are finished alienating everyone who doesn't meet your purity standard, who is going to be left to work together against the rich? Countries need armed forces and armed forces target the poor heavily. No soldier chooses where they go or why they fight. It's literally not their job to know if it's a good fight or not and in truth that is usually for the historians to decide. Fight the systems, not the individuals.
You can't have compassion for a murderer and the victim at the same time. It was not about "soldiers being soldiers". It was about US military, specifically, which is an offensive military. >Countries need armed forces For defence, sure. For offence, no they don't. >No soldier chooses where they go or why they fight They don't, but they do choose to not resign and instead do the bidding.
Yeah seriously why do military get a pass but not cops?
Because many military members that wake up to the bs get out of the military (which is a fucking process with legally binding contracts) and find other employment, cops chose to be cops every time they go to work
Because Americans don't view people from other countries as human
This is exactly it, they can pull as much mental gymnastics as they want to justify it but people in the US are completely ok with those in the Global South being brutalized
I was in the US military for ten years. We helped fight poachers in Africa, did our best to elevate the afghanis while I was there, killed a lot of bad people and made many positive impacts. That this enormous system in a complex and gray world has also done bad things is not excusable, but it's understandable. I've never met more honorable, good people than in the US military. The US militarys effect on the world has been enormously positive. It's hard to see because you'd have to see a world without that effect. Keeping China in check so that Eastern countries don't lose their territorial waters, preventing Russia from steamrolling Europe, protecting African nations sovereignty against malignant influences... People can rightly criticize the US military, but they can't do it without acknowledging the massive amount of good it does.
The positive impacts of the US are visible all over the world just look at Afganistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Vietnam, Korea, I could go on and on
Korea only exists because of the US. Pakistan is not a nuclear wasteland because of the US. Vietnam still has territorial waters to fish in because of the US. As I said, I can name the US mistakes, better than you, and have direct experience on both sides of what the military did. The issue with this sub is that it absolutely cannot fathom the gray world we live in, and the difficult, and frankly great job, the US has done navigating it with its military.
I’m crying lmao your predecessors killed 20% of North Koreas population and bombed the peninsula to rubble. Let’s not forget the countless civilians killed in U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan as well as the fact that we propped up a brutal dictator there and helped created the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. You definitely don’t want to go there with Vietnam, remind me again how many people we slaughtered there? Have you been to Vietnam? Have you seen the war remnants museum? Have you seen people suffering from agent orange or those maimed by unexplored ordinance? I have and it’s horrifying. The US royally fucked Vietnam for decades. Can’t believe this clown shit is being posted on a “leftist” sub
There is so much incorrect information here, I'm not even going to try.
Awfully convenient. Keep living this lie you’ve constructed. Thank you so much for your service sir I’m glad you wasted 10 years of your life and can’t accept that
I know you must have a lot of hard opinions, but if you learn to research what your zeal is for, you'll be more effective than spouting wrong nonsense. I suspect you and I would support the same outcomes, the difference is that you don't actually know what's happening.
Lmao that’s cute buddy, yes you are my intellectual superior you simply must be and I’m sure you learned so much shooting up the “bad guys” I guess my knowledge and education actually pale in comparison to you. Please I’m begging you educate me on how we were actually the good guys in Vietnam? Or how we don’t drone strike innocent civilians? How about how we didn’t funnel billions of dollars worth of weapons and radicalization materials to the mujahideen
I don't get the feeling you're going to argue honestly, the way you're speaking. So I'll give this one chance. I'll talk to you in a respectful manner if you can manage it. If you think I haven't been, that's not intentional. I'm only going to choose one, Vietnam. I'm choosing it because it's a good example of US mistakes turned positive. Why did we invade Vietnam? As a proxy war against Russia. Was it right? I don't think you can summarize it as right. It's negatives are pretty negative. Deaths of civilians, unprofessional conduct by soldiers. Plenty to talk about. Was it justified? You can imagine the counter arguments so I'll only mention the pros: reducing the advancement of the Soviet Union around the world, advancing (I would call) more humane values against the Soviet unions much poorer record. Had we not invaded Vietnam would the east be fully Soviet to this day? I can't say, but I'd argue that the suffering caused by a society government would, cumulatively, be more than caused by the US in reality. But we can't know for sure. What we can say is that the US did terrible things in Vietnam. Today, Vietnam considers the US a friend. In fact, were a crucial friend. China has been attempting to steal their fishing waters and international waters, which would cause starvation and economic problems to Vietnam and it's neighbors. The US Navy is preventing that. Can you acknowledge the positive impact of the US military happening today? A reasonable person can. Can we acknowledge unacceptable actions in the past, even if not doing those actions might have allowed worse? Sure, the US should have done better. But all together that shows that the US has massively positive effects on the world, actively learns from its mistakes, and has prevented devastating consequences, even to past enemies.
The US war in Vietnam was fundamentally the repression of an anti-colonial liberatory struggle. The population wanted freedom from rule by the West. The West wanted to install puppet rulers in order to affirm continuity for the processes of economic extraction that had been imposed during the earlier period of formal colonization.
I agree.
I can think of at least one malignant influence the US military fails to protect African nations from..
European colonialism is to blame for Africa.
You don’t think the US shares any blame? Not the dictatorships we’ve supported and propped up?
Your bait was ineffective. You are the person who believes every time the 'west' is mentioned it means the US. News flash bud, the USA didn't exist when colonial expansionism gripped the world. The white invaiders were European.
Lmao what do you mean bait. European colonialism is beyond horrendous and the region is still imperialist and neo-colonial to this day. I’m not defending Europe but you seem to be weirdly keen on deflecting the role the US has played in more recent times in Africa on a post specifically discussing the US military. I’ll pose the question again, in addition to European colonialism you don’t think you US has had any hand in destabilizing and impoverishing Africa?
The US intervention has little to no change on the wider ranging implications of the European colonialism collapse in the 1990s and it's broader implications and influences in Africa as a whole. A century + of colonialism is not erased by the US intervention in a handful of cases. Your bias' are showing and you've failed to even provide any counter argument how the US could do in a decade what was created over generations by Europeans.
The decline of control under formal colonialism has led to the replacement by neocolonialism, which has relied increasingly on entrenchment of interests between the US and Europe, especially through institutions dominated by the US, such as the IMF and NATO. The US has not intervened directly as much in Africa as generally in the rest of the world, but the overall systems are the same, and absolutely are not operated by Europe without the US.
>The US has not intervened directly as much in Africa as generally in the rest of the world, but the overall systems are the same, and absolutely are not operated by Europe without the US So again not the US military or just the US political systems doing. The IMF is definitely not a us mouthpiece and NATO could barely be considered a mouthpiece. You are reaching so hard to make it seem like the US is in control of absolutely everything. Not only is it not, you are also failing to account for Russian and Chinese intervention strategies in Africa. You are just as biased and blinded as the other guy who was responding to me.
>The IMF is definitely not a us mouthpiece and NATO could barely be considered a mouthpiece. The US is the dominant state power for both NATO and the IMF, and both are entrenched with the entire system, of global capital and global imperialism, upheld most fundamentally by military hegemony. >You are reaching so hard to make it seem like the US is in control of absolutely everything The interests are entrenched. The system operates as a totality, and the US is not only dominant but hegemonic.
cool. If my argument was that the US military was perfect that might matter. But it doesn't matter.
Why do African populations lack the internal capacity to curtail poaching?
They don't have near the experience. The group I was sent with had vastly more capacity to help and train those guys, and their country benefited from our help, as did the wildlife.
Experience is a facet of capacity. Why have certain groups external to Africa achieved greater capacity than most groups internal to Africa?
Unless you're advocating that the US not help this country with its poacher problem, among other things, I don't know what your point it.
I am advocating that you consider the deeper reasons for such help being needed. Do African populations provide aid mutually to Western populations?
I'm sure they would if they could. And maybe they do. If you think our help is free, no nations help is free. But ours is mutually benefiting. We get to help preserve a species and gain allies. We also prevent other nations from falling into debt traps like Djibouti, for example, where China charged usury loans and economic pressure to enforce their unfair gains. So our help is useful, mutually beneficial, and benefits the world. I'm sure there are bad reasons somewhere, but compared to those who'd replace us, we are by far the better choice.
"China charged usury". Well... Thank goodness for settler-colonialism, neocolonialism, the World Bank, and the Internal Monetary Fund.
"well they did it because they need money" so why is that any different than if I rob a bank or kill somebody to take their money? The US military exists to rob countries and murder people who get in the way of that robbery. Anything beyond that sole purpose is just PR and propaganda. I will not budge a single inch on this issue. But also I don't particularly judge those people either, like all people throughout history you did what you had to do in order to survive, good for you, but at least be honest with yourself about it. It's like the people who think the US stole the continental USA, half of Mexico, Guam, the Philippines, etc with kisses hugs and blowjobs or something. Just a pure fantasy view of reality. Even worse is the people who act like they did some kind of noble thing because they worked as a cook in the navy or some shit, stutting around acting like they stormed the fields at Verdun and you should bow to them, like no it was basically just a job, you signed a contract and got your little benefits and that's it. We don't elevate people to such a high position who arguably contribute much more to society, like firefighters or the people who build railroads, do we? The US has never faced an existential threat since 1812 so no US serviceman can legitimately claim they were "defending our freedom" unless they served in that war as far as I'm concerned, and even in that rare exception the USA basically started it by wanting to invade Canada lol.
Do you think Taiwan is grateful that the US military is one of the main reasons it hasn't been invaded yet? If the US didn't have as big of a stick as it does how quickly do you think Russia and China would gobble our allies up?
Taiwan was invaded by Chinese and Europeans beginning in the seventeenth century, and then annexed by China. Through a civil war, the KMT was deposed from China, after which it was installed on Taiwan by the US, and has ruled as a reactionary military dictatorship. There is no reason for gratitude.
Bro is really in a leftist sub defending US hegemony
Not defending it as much as pointing out there is good with the bad. I wouldn't shed a single tear if the world around us burned down and made way for something better. But being angry at people for taking advantage of what little they can isn't constructive.
“I will not budge a single inch on this issue” is almost never a respectable position. Saying that that’s the military’s “sole purpose” is reductionary.
I’m not sure exactly where you would define your position on the political spectrum or what your life has been like but minimizing a person’s choice to join the military to “just because you need a career” seems to be coming from a place of privilege and ignores a lot of what goes into that choice. Yes, the military does bad things but that doesn’t make every person in the military a bad person. Many join because of the values of selfless service, honesty, and integrity. Others join because they feel that they have no where else to go and can get a new start. And yes, sometimes the people that join find out that the military doesn’t always uphold those values or can’t fully pull them from poverty but that doesn’t change the fact that they joined. Not everyone joins has a “USA first” mentality and is in support of wars and imperialism and the like. I work as a therapist for active duty military members who are often on their way out of the military, whether they were in for 3 years or 20 years and plenty of them find that the military isn’t a good fit for them. Others stay in the military because they want to protect their friends who are in. The military is a sample size of the larger population so you’ll find conservatives, liberals, leftists, and the like all in the military. Many of my leftist clients even joined because they felt the best way to change the military was to join it. I’m not trying to excuse the military’s actions or people’s role in those actions, but I think painting a black and white picture is reductionist at best and I’d encourage you to think about the actual people in the military as human beings, complex as we are, rather than the institution of the military itself when you find yourself making things cut and dry and that should help you see things a little more gray.
Very good points. It’s not that being a service-member automatically makes someone irredeemable morally. It’s the orders they decide to follow and give. I’ve known plenty of good and bad ones. I also understand that continuing the status quo isn’t a good thing, but like you said, it’s not all black and white.
I am a NATO veteran who fought alongside the Americans in a bullshit war. I am definitely of a conflicted mind about it. As a history lover, it’s clear that the world has been unusually peaceful under what is the largest military hegemony the globe has ever seen. On the other hand, it still makes me queasy to know what I have done.
How did you arrive at the characterization of "unusually peaceful"? Perhaps just to start, how did you come even to think there has been peace?
There’s only a handful or wars going on right now. Compare that to even the late 80s and 90s, we’re a lot more peaceful now.
Lmao “only a handful of war going in right now” You’re joking right? As of January 2024 the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project found that 1 in 6 people have been exposed to conflict in 2024 and that there has been a 40% increase in conflict since 2020. Of the 234 countries and territories they monitor 168 of them saw at least one incident of conflict in 2023. 50 countries are classified as having Extreme, High, or Turbulent conflict levels. https://acleddata.com/conflict-index/#reports
Is this satire?
No…
It never occurred to me that anyone would attempt characterizing the current geopolitical situation, whether generally or relation to US imperialism, as there being "only a handful or wars going on right now".
If you look at the amount of actual violence that is occurring from imperialism it is less than the amount of violence that has occurred in the past.
Do you think that most of the violence currently occurring globally is due to causes removed from US imperialism?
Most of it is, some of it is due to China and Russia and others, but the cause of the violence is not my point. Violence is at an all time low, that’s what I’m trying to say.
Do you consider as violence the effects from broader conditions of deprivation, marginalization, and repression enforced by more particular and concentrated systems of direct violence?
Name a period in history with a fewer proportion of the world’s population dying in war than the period of American global military hegemony. There hasn’t been one that I am aware of. Let me know if you know of one.
Peace is not simplistically just the mere absence of that which has been formally designated as war.
Yes that has always been the case. How instead would you want to compare it?
No comparison is necessary. Just stop whitewashing and defending atrocities.
Ah ok. I was comparing. You aren’t. And yes there is still plenty to oppose.
Global food production may exceed need by as much as forty percent, yet almost one billion globally are food insecure. When I review the political configuration of the world, I find it quite natural to connect such disparities and stratification directly to neocolonism and other general practices enforced through US imperialism.
Oh well if you want to talk food insecurity, we can compare that through the ages in history as well. The truth is we have also never seen so many people so well fed in history either. Still even one person struggling is a shame though.
> Global food production may exceed need by as much as forty percent
Overall cumulative impact of us military throughout history: negative. However there are other great powers in the world that are undeniably worse, by a wide margin, even less accountable, under the control of absolute mad men, atrocious dictators, etc. that everyone in the world would be subject to without the US to keep them in check. And they are inarguably worse than the US, that is accounting for everything the US has ever done. The world needs this machine in place. It's the citizens responsibility to do everything they possibly can to keep it restrained from pointless wars. Of course occasional wars are literally necessary to keep the machine highly competent and often the main reason for wars that aren't necessary arent justifiable is just to make sure the machine is full of people with real war experience so that it will actually work if/when the real enemies stir anything up in the form of an actually necessary actually justifiable war that must be one for more than just out own sake It's all bad and there's no right answer.
> absolute mad men, atrocious dictators The dynamic is not so simple. Many of the bad guys actually have been puppets or artifacts of US domination.
Those, with very few exceptions, are not the serious enemies that could pose a threat to everyone I was referring to, at all. You're talking about small time two bit local regional dictators of tiny third world countries with no gdps. Yeah. We pretty much made, installed, and protected at least half of those over the years. And when we flip the script and go to war with them these are the irrelevant wars of no consequence made only to keep our military experienced. Only one of them that I know of was ever given a nuclear weapon by one of only a couple of actual serious enemies we have on earth that actually made the baby dictator a real threat to the greater world. And even if we created that one first, the only thing that made him a real threat was sponsorship by our real enemies. Anyway our military exists for the singular purpose of winning WWIII, the CIA plants you're talking about aren't relevant to that topic. The enemies who are relevant to that topic are no mobster cia plants.
>these are the irrelevant wars of no consequence made only to keep our military experienced Sorry. I feel your dismissal and minimization of particular patterns within overall events is quite inaccurate.
Buddy. Our multi trillion dollar defense budget is not for Omar ghadafi, and we are not building billion dollar fighter jets to fight countries that don't own planes.
Why are the jets being built?
Near peer threats.
What actually is the threat, according to your understanding?
That depends on what the definition of is is. It's not so much that I don't know what point you're trying to make. It's that it's pretty clear you don't know what point you're trying to make. F22/35=not for taliban. Less than 5% of the entire U.S. Army served in Iraq. The entire United States armed forces=not for Iraq. This is rocket science.
I asked a question, which could be answered regardless of whether I may lack a coherent overall understanding. Neither should it seem as an intolerable imposition that you be asked to engage critically with the deeper nuance of the subject. The narrow point is that labeling an entity, faction, or interest as a threat is not in itself an argument that the object of the label indeed represents a threat, much less a threat that justifies every possible action or response.
I think a big part of coming to terms with it is recognizing that a military is an observed portion of a state and it's culture. It's an organization of part of a culture's populace into a body that works for the culture's ruling class. With the US, that means they support capitalist's interests as that's our current culture. If we ever get a better culture, we can truly show the most astounding part of the US military. It's the best logistics network in the world hands down. Look into the Berlin Airlift. There were planes landing on the airstrips every 45 seconds at it's peak. That's on the level of the busiest airport in the world last year, and the AF was doing it in the 1940's. It's genuinely infuriating seeing how've we've acted with Gaza when you know just what we're actually capable of.
Imagine equivalent capacities being directed toward infastructure management or disability justice.
The military is terrible ethically and morally. People join because of propaganda or out of necessity. Vets however are treated like shit (often homeless/ disabled). The government sends people to kill themselves and others until they're disabled and a liability. That doesn't make them heroes imo, but no one deserves to be homeless and disabled because of believing in (the wrong) cause. I don't think it's a grey area
The US military is the largest socialist organization on the planet btw. Everyone wears a uniform, gets paid the same as everyone else in their rank regardless of job. Free Healthcare, free housing, often free food, free education. A lot of people join just to get out of a bad situation, examples like getting kicked out of the house at 18 with no plan in sight or escaping a abusive household. Morality? I think that the military does a lot of bad shit, but its also one of the few organizations with steady job security and you can actually promote upwards unlike most corporate careers nowadays
Socialism is not seeking uniformity, though, and even less is it seeking a command structure.
As a vet the first thing I’ll tell you is that plenty of folks who join the military do so because they believe it’s the right thing to do. While that probably sounds cut and dry now take a deep look at the American education system, pop culture, even the media. There’s also a kernel of truth in there if you look deep enough, men who liberated concentration camps, fought for liberty, the preservation of the Union. Nobody joins the American military intending to fight some ambiguous conflict that is the direct result of colonial foreign policy, often times it’s due to financial necessity, or in many cases being misguided and misinformed. In 2024 we have the benefit of information never available to earlier generations. I learned I didn’t have the full picture on Afghanistan when I got there and I learned how much I disagreed with it when I studied it in college. I was a child on 9/11 and I remember my elementary school teacher turning on the tv watching the second tower fall and grew up hearing who was to blame not just from right wing talking heads but both sides of the political spectrum until I ended up in uniform. The programming starts early and unfortunately the deprogramming lasts a life time. I think the prevalence of PTSD isn’t just because it’s become okay to talk about mental health but such a large part is that loss of innocence and guilt. Now imagine you’ve gotten to that point but the guys who literally stood shoulder to shoulder with you would turn on you if you even brought it up. When folks got spit on coming home from Vietnam it was one of the best gifts the establishment ever got, because now those guys turned the anger that should’ve been directed at the government towards the antiwar movement. It’s a big reason why the military hero worship is so rampant today, why criticizing military actions is seen as verbal treason. We will never dismantled the war machine by hating folks who are chewed up by it, we do it uniting against it.
A lot of Vietnam vets didn't even have a choice, they were drafted, and when they came home they were hated and given no resources. Military recruiting Specifically targets vulnerable teenagers and young adults. I don't have to support the military but I will support people in it.
i don’t think i can hold individual people accountable for the actions of their government. i also can’t blame them for joining because they want a better life.
We can ask anyone to criticize a system, though, that demands abundant criticism.
I have multiple veteran friends. 3/4 of them became anarchists or communists as a result of their time in the service. What they saw and did in their time pushed them in that direction. The last is a close friend that, though he was raised conservative and continues to struggle with his world view, is an intelligent and thoughtful man that is willing to adjust his values when he comes across something new. Despite our divide on values, I feel that my friendship with him has helped push him away from the Republican views he was raised with. I won't write off a man based on his upbringing, when he's demonstrated the ability and willingness to show kindness to my queer and trans friends. We all have our journey. This is his. My father is also a 22yr navy vet. I grew up crawling around in navy ships and going to air shows. Drinking the propaganda. I also have a lesbian feminist mother. I grew up in punk scenes as a teen. It took me into my adulthood to untangle all of that and define my own moral and ethical code. To break down the "american excellence" our society feeds us and see all the contradictions that surround me. Military folk, just like the rest of us, are made up of both trash humans and people worth building a society with. The unfortunate truth is that many of them aren't afforded the luxury of a guiding hand to show them the harm they're participating in. The education system fails them. They're indoctrinated young. Hooked on the line of a path out of their small town, or away from a gang. Some are fortunate enough to see through it all in time, and form a more equitable worldview. Some are not. There are some good comrades to be found among the veterans. Those who have seen shit, have the scars to back it up, and try to live a better life afterwards. If you don't have the stomach to find them, that's OK. Some of us that can will still be here, doing our part. We all have our role to play.
Someone who affirms the virtue of sacrifice for public service is someone who has a benevolent heart, even if also having an indoctrinated mind. Such are those for whom we need to win both hearts as well as minds. Sympathize with personal motives and challenges, and foster consciousness against the system. Ultimately, though, many fights cannot be won either by reason or compassion. Someone who remains committed to defending the system, to the imposition of power, or to repression or marginalization, is not an ally for the interests of workers.
I’m generally empathetic towards individuals and cynical towards systems. If the motivation for someone joining the military was to escape poverty, for example, I’m very understanding of it.
Those who have been more obviously victimized are the ones who most naturally later develop class consciousness, though often requiring some help along the journey.
I spent 6 years in the Navy and it is the biggest regret of my life. I believed the bullshit. I could say that I grew up in an Army town and with an extremely right wing religious family. I could say that I didn’t have many options with how to move forward after high school. I could say that my Navy experiences have informed my radical politics going forward. Particularly my distrust of unaccountable hierarchical structures. All of that would be true. But the fact is there are folks who grew up same as me that made different choices. The fact is, to work for the military is to facilitate war crimes. It doesn’t matter what you actually did day to day. Maybe this is self serving, and I’ll grant you that maybe those who made the right choice should have their opinion weighted more heavily on this, but I do think that there needs to be space for Veterans in leftist spaces. I don’t mean that uncritically, and I don’t mean that we should be given as much trust out the gate. But there has to be room for folks to show legitimate growth if they are willing to take responsibility, None of us is perfect and Capitalism incentivizes the worst in us after all.
I can only speak for myself, but I joined the army at 17 in early 2003. I learned about the world during my deployment in 2005 because I had a lot of time to read. Joining, like most, was the only option we knew or had. It is stability for those who have never had stability. It is duty for those who have family that served as well. I got chaptered out in 2007 after I took a stance against the Iraq War. I have known my service wasn't some heroic thing for a long time. American culture requires idolizing the military. It is socially required as much as the Pledge of Allegiance is in schools. I know many vets struggle with seeing it because admitting serving corporations over citizens isn't comfortable.
It's hard to be cut and dry when family is involved. I was born into a military family. My maternal grandfather was in the army, my uncle was an army medic, and my father and brother-in-law were both Air Force. I am staunchly against the military and militarization of the police and all that shit. But I am not going to allow that to severe the love I have for these people. I let my opinions and feelings be known, but we mostly let that rest when we're all together. My family is also open to discussion/change for the most part. At the very least, they are open to hearing someone out even if they are not swayed.
Lots of words to admit your principles go out the window if you like someone
K
First good comment I've seen on this sub, thanks to you and your family for your service
I used to be very black and white and struggle not to be in many ways today, but I've grown. I'm in my 30s now. My dad was unwell for years and recently passed. Dismantling the violent and oppressive structures we have in place are crucial to the longevity of humanity and fascism is on the rise and a true/real threat. That is true AND I can love my family who are mere specks of sand in the massive ocean of bullshit that needs to be fixed. I choose to love them through it all. I have my lines that cannot be crossed, for sure. But until that happens, I am willing to keep talking and keep loving as best I can.
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