Our military recruitment model targets people who are primarily just poor. Then we call them heroes and treat them like shit.
But by calling them heroes it implies they signed up for purposes like patriotism and honor. Not the reality that a lot of them are just shifted into it for lack of better options. It’s a grave disservice to soldiers to hide their struggles with bullshit praise.
There may well be heroism involved in military service, but it’s used as blinders to avoid the fact that we have screwed over vets for years ever since, idk, the bonus army; and fully intend to continue doing so.
I found this article which sort of suggested it, but the math didn’t match my intuition.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-recruit...
Obesity and intelligence are certainly problem factors, but I just don’t believe middle class millennials are the ones going to the military. I have to believe it’s still the poor who aren’t disqualified. Open to contradiction though.
One of my mates signed up and said that he enjoyed his 7 years but then it was time to get a job that paid a living wage.
Which is why the military and related orgs have such a hard time recruiting people experienced technical skills.
It’s not ok to claim that they’re there because of their values and to lie in saying that they’re a treasured part of the society.
I don't know how 10-year-old me found that poem, but I memorized it for a fifth-grade poetry recital. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, indeed.
I fear the US political establishment learned the wrong lesson from Viet Nam. Avoiding the social costs (like the draft) to our current military engagements overseas has allowed the US to be indefinitely at war for 18 years.
Vietnam might have been a boondoggle of a war. But it certainly better than had we folded and let the dominoes fall in many places where there was some discontent but not nearly as much as there would be with Soviet style governance.
Certainly there were smarter ways to wage the war, but short of taking over the corrupt local govt there wasn’t much else we could do. We suggested land redistribution and other forms of reform, as we implemented successfully in South Korea but the South Vietnamese wouldn't have it.
The US put that corrupt local government in power by the way.
Or are you suggesting the North Vietnamese were a tool of the Chinese or Russians? In which case - like Robert McNamara - you would be told by the former foreign minister of Vietnam that you should read a history book[0], because you have no knowledge of the region's history.
The Vietnam war was a disgrace waged for no valid reasons, accomplishing nothing except ending the lives of millions of Vietnamese people. To defend it in this day, with all the benefit of hindsight, is utterly beyond the pale and should rightfully be compared to supporting other historical atrocities such as the genocide of Native Americans.
Do you think the US was right to carpet-bomb Cambodia?
No war however done is good to have. Some wars are necessary and come with great loss. It’s unavoidable. There were many mistakes in Vietnam-the whole war, but it wasn’t pointless. The middle eastern wars we went into are pointless. Those are local conflicts and we should let them settle their own scores.
The Vietnam war was more than about Vietnam. Kennedy knew that.
Of course, if some random American comes up to them demanding their thoughts on the Vietnam war they might have a different answer.
You should consider re-examining your belief in domino theory.
It’s also often not clear who is the good or bad guy. As far as i know in Vietnam for example the main goal was to get rid of the colonialists. If the west had accepted that maybe north Vietnam wouldn’t have aligned with the Soviets. In addition the west also aligned with highly corrupt leaders in the south. We see the same dynamic in the Middle East. Out of short term interests we ally with highly corrupt dictatorial governments there and then we are surprised that things blow up in our face.
Size is an implicit threat, one that can never be eliminated. How exactly do you propose to eliminate the implicit threat of one animal/group of animals simply being larger than another?
Knowing that that is the policy that is implemented, and that fights are always risky, whether a fight occurs will be determined by the reward size and the predictability of the outcome.
The masses are made to think fighting a war (soldier) for someone else (the president and the military industrial complex) is an honorable thing to do.
Because patriotism. Which is bullshit. We share this little blue ball in space with all of these people who scare us, whose ideals we ridicule. And people who love and live and dream like we do.
There is no honor in violence. Even less in oppression. Regardless of justification.