What other institution is so organized, so marketed, so respected, as the army?

What other institution will take you in and dedicate the same level of attention and money in guiding you?

What other institution does all the above with as low of a barrier to entry?

To some extent, the army provides the same benefit as a cult. They are there to fill your void when you feel it most. Guiding you to a path of adventure, excitement, and mostly, fulfillment.

But they would never consider dating street sweepers or shop workers or manual labourers either, or anyone else they see as beneath their social status as "university students", despite relying on those people every single day of their lives. It's pure class snobbery, and this is why many people hold "students" in contempt.

Fortunately most grow out of it when they graduate.

PS: Yes, this means that large numbers of smart people don't think the way you do.

Since the American political spectrum is skewed so far to the right, that it's ridiculous it might be true that American soldiers have views more representative of the population.

Obviously your own experience differs, but you must be careful in applying that to an entire continent. Not to mention the absurdity of university students looking down on soldiers, many (almost all in my unit) of whom will hold degrees themselves.

As the popular proverb in Poland goes, "za mundurem panny sznurem" - "girls queue up behind an uniform[ed guy; follow him]".

A lot of private (what we call "public") schools have Army/Air-Force cadet groups which are supported by the real armed forces and often have ex-forces staff working in the school.

The US is just such a young country that it simply either hasn't learned the lesson, or that any kind of political dissent is dissipated or ineffective. Personally I take humility over pride any time of the day.

Meanwhile, Americans are kept in poverty to fund the military force that lets Europe and Japan be generous to their citizens. How just can that be?

The notion isn't new, Shakespeare as usual sums it up:

And gentlemen in England now-a-bed Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

It's from Shakespeare's Henry V and it's part of the speech given by the titular King to his troops just before the Battle of Agincourt - which fell on St. Crispin's day. The Battle of Agincourt became a major English victory against the French during the Hundred-Year War and led to Henry V being recognized as Heir Apparent to the French crown, and his son, Henry VI, claiming the title of King of France as well being King of England.

In simpler terms the quote is saying that the glory gained by fighting in the battle alongside their King will be so great that any man who could fight who was not there will be jealous and will think of themselves as lesser men when in the company of those who fought.

The whole speech is here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Crispin%27s_Day_Speech - and well worth reading.

Is that of any help?

(some context) This was part of a motivational speech by Henry V, given before the Battle of Agincourt, which took place on St Crispins Day.

War is horrible and should be avoided at all costs. Sometimes it is justifiable and necessary. War should be a last resort. I wish society had alternate means of accomplishing your first paragraph without resort to the second.

I can understand that people be against war. I don't like violence. I don't encourage violence and certainly do not enjoy wars. But wars exist and as a citizen, you can decide to wish that war magically weren't a thing, or do something about their existence. I did not encourage the concept of war by taking part in it, no more than I encourage system outages when I take part in building or fixing them.

War is not just war. It's not "just going somewhere to kill people". I didn't decide "Oh all that sweat wasted, better kill foreigners to make up for it". I volunteered because I thought I could make a positive influence, if any, by being a reasonable person doing their job in the most humane way I could. Not every soldier is an angry, bloodthirsty, moronic killer. Most of them aren't.

I don't wish to kill an innocent person anymore than you do. I don't wish to kill a guilty person either. But sometimes, participating in a war, or killing a person, is the only way to make the war less harmful, or prevent that person from killing many more.

Avoiding wars at all cost is not a magic bullet against wars. That's my take on it, I might be wrong.

http://blogs.uoregon.edu/philanthropy/files/2014/08/army-of-...

It may be best to reject others' opinions, considering what you've done. Just to maintain that sanity. We all lie to ourselves for many things in our lives to maintain sanity. I'm not saying this in any way to be a slight towards you.

I personally think the current wars are actually abusive to those who join. Just because someone signs up to -defend- the nation, doesn't mean the political elite has a right to abuse those people. Since I think the wars are unjust, illegal and doing more harm overall than good. I'd never participate and would never encourage anyone I know to do so either. The best way to end war, which is never the 'right thing' in my mind to refuse to participate. There are -always- alternatives even if the argument coming from the profiting parties don't frame it in such a way that this is clear. Short of having foreign troops as we have them overseas, in your hometown. Then there likely are few alternatives.

Someday, and I think that day is approaching or we wouldn't be automating war, we'll see everyone as the same as us. I'd grab a gun and defend my home in Afghanistan too. I don't blame those people. Just as I'd be a 'terrorist' if the Chinese were in the US today to liberate us. I don't believe in gods or the tooth fairy- but I'd be happy to ally myself with Christian Fundamentalists if it meant preventing some jackass Chinese soldier from blowing up my grandmother's house, raping my wife, or just for simply marching around my hometown like they own the place. Which all of these things happen when you give someone a gun and license to kill.

The whole get-the-bad-guy argument has been proven wrong so many times. Looking at the situation today, Saddam was a great guy who we wish we could put back into place. Now there's ISIS, it's all a huge joke on us.

I don't honestly believe it's about any noble goals though. It's about perpetual war, using any argument at any cost to keep it going. This is the Vietnam they failed to turn into a perpetual goldmine for those who finance it and build the bombs. If you get my overall point here, you'll see I actually Support the Troops better than those who have the stupid bumper stickers or tell you "thank you for your service". The best way to support them is to bring them home where they belong, defending the nation from attack. I can't thank anyone for their service since I don't support the mission, but I also can't bear the thought we as citizens have somehow allowed this to go on for so long.

If political influence wasn't strictly measured by our bank accounts in our society, you'd never had a war to fight.

This seems to be a bit contradictory. I'm also curious how it meshes with your personal experience.

If the Chinese were in the US today, I'm not sure we'd have much choice. I'm also not sure the people of the mideast have much choice either. Does anyone seriously expect them to embrace our "help"? It's asinine and insulting to their (and our) intelligence. It's unfathomable to me that anyone over there wouldn't be taking up arms against 'us'. It should be radicalizing the moderates. What a gift that was for the extremists. The money, lives and hatred created was senseless. Our troops and their population are deeply invested in a conflict that didn't need to happen. Well, except on their side. They had to fight us once we setup shop in their country. These wars are a business venture transferring wealth from the citizenry to those colluding with the gov't, not a noble cause.

It meshes with my personal experiences quite well. Unless someone takes a swing at me, I don't fight. I get by well with this principle. I'm never in jail and never standing in front of a judge, and no one gets hurt unnecessarily. I think the same principle would do our nation-state a lot of good.

You can't say it's a response to 9/11 (a "swing at us"). Because if this were about stopping Islamic-sourced terrorism, we would've invaded Saudi Arabia first, foremost and long ago. It was a response to nothing, it was an excuse.

you try to rally your neighbours and friends to have a raid group. unsurprisingly, your german and french friends are against armed storming of someone else house based just on some overheard rumours (), rest is at least hesitant. you say something along "fk you puies" and storm the house with only friend you are left with - that british fella that you have so much in common with. Long story short, you kill the guy unarmed, don't find any weapon whatsoever and burn his house in the process to ashes. After that you refuse to move from his property, stating you need to keep that neighbourhood protected and invite other armed people to join you.

Sorry if I missed some important stuff, and of course this describes only beginning, with all the current mess being result of these (probably intentional) mistakes. If anyone still thinks US is viewed anywhere as a good guy in this war, then NO - there are only bad guys. Personally, ISIS would still have to work hard to match all US-directly-caused civilian casualities in Iraq. It doesn't matter much if someone is beheaded, blown to pieces or machinegunned while going to work, does it...

() - that Bush speech in UN was really horrible, I recall it quite well, saying to myself - and they want to screw up another nation completely based on THAT???

Oh? And what would you do if you came across someone beating a child to death? Just watch and wait for him/her to take a swing at you before intervening?

Am I to fly around the world, saving everyone? Is that even possible? What about the children not immediately near me, but closer than Shanghai? Haiti or Mexico for example. I think the people in the Shanghai region have more responsibility to save that child than me. When we did try to save that child in Iraq, we ignored the child in Haiti, Mexico and here at home too. And so many unintended consequences (like the region assuming: oh, the US is here, we'll do nothing now). People are good across the globe, it's naive to think we're the only one interested in saving children. Unfortunately it's usually a political ruse than a genuine interest to help. Instead, the children here, Haiti and Mexico either have no oil, or are already under US political control- so the industrialists in bed with the gov't don't care about children beaten there. That's the real answer.

Also, does anyone honestly believe the people of Shanghai -want- our help saving their beaten children? Just about as much as we want the Chinese coming to San Francisco to save our children in need.

Hypotheticals are good for making points easier to get across. But I wouldn't accept an overly simplified hypothetical like yours without qualifications. The way you framed yours lines up with how the war profiteers want the argument to be framed. I mean, Shanghai is a big enough city that you know for a fact that there is literally a child being beaten there, right now. There's many good reasons you're not buying a ticket personally to go find that child and save him or her.

You could say, "the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Well then, best order your ticket now. Think about those reasons why you aren't doing that. Those are the same reasons we shouldn't be sending guys with -guns- over there either to "help". If you do this exercise you'll understand how absurd the whole thing is.

Also, drop the condescending tone in your response about 'helping people see another way'. I gave you a simple hypothetical and you dumped a page of text without answering it because you didn't understand a simple question. You're not helping at all.

But take any of the recent genocides (Rwanda) or even ISIS - innocent people are unquestionably being killed. A soldier hears about this in the news, prepares every day to stop large forces like that, and instead is being asked to stand down. The media obviously plays a large role in shaping the perspective of horrors being done in the world, and I wouldn't argue war is the solution to all but a few problems. However, it is fairly straightforward and morally defensible that innocent people would be alive if other people were killed, and soldiers are prepared and ready to kill.

Last I checked the official stance was that any able-bodied adult or adolescent male in a war zone is considered an enemy combatant in official statistics.

Yeah, take that. What you don't talk about is that what we call ISIS today was US best friend just months ago. They were called euphemistically "moderate rebels fighting for democracy in Syria" and they were supported economically and with weapons by the US and Saudi Arabia to kill innocent people there(and put a puppet state in place).

Of course they took the weapons and crossed the border to occupy Iraq, as the failed state the US created made it so easier than fighting against a well organized, and Russia supported army.

Media creates your perceptions based on their own interest. If the news come from far away, media has total control of shaping your emotions, as you don't have family, friends, eyes or ears in the place.

Don't waste good.

When you get trained to deal death, yes, you tend to become somewhat callous.

Being exposed to that culture helped me effectively combat a serious medical condition. I don't think it is somehow inherently evil.

"The single greatest weakness of a free people is always their moral doubts."

For the trooper, it's entirely differnent - assuming that a war exists already, the choice is about which bodies get sent there, and not wasting your training is a reasonable argument. Once a war exists, joining it usually contributes to it's end; if the other things are somewhat comparable, a shorter war is less horrible to everybody (especially local civilians) than a prolonged war, and you get a shorter war by winning with an overwhelming force.

Not all paths are appropriate for all people, though.

I also doubt that the commenter would wholly support going to war or that he would seriously disagree with any of the assertions in "your second paragraph". But life is hard, and people have to try to achieve their goals and form a coherent narrative out of things. You might do better to reconcile a critique of the military with the fact that people in the military are not all bad or in the wrong.

Yeah, better use those muscles and brains to kill people across borders. That's the spirit!

~ Carl Sandburg