To be clear, I wasn't trying to do a blanket condemnation of everyone who enlists in the military earlier. I just don't agree with America's troop worship culture. There's nothing honorable, noble, or altruistic going on there. At best and most charitable, a drafted soldier who dies in combat is equally tragic as a civilian casualty, and no more deserving of memorialization. One who wasn't drafted is frankly less tragic, because they met their fate by choice, while the civilian didn't.
And everyone who piled in about the mundanity of most military work was only reinforcing that point. If they're just normal people taking an opportunity for material reasons who hope never to see combat, then why is that deserving of special heroic memorialization status beyond that of civilian who dies as collateral damage?
IMO, garbage collectors really get shafted here. They do a shitty job for shitty pay that's consistently rated one of the most dangerous, but also an essential public service. Give them some memorials.
"Don't join the military because it makes you a sinner" is not the right way of looking at this to begin with, both because capitalism does stain our entire species by that standard and because Protestant moral theory is no more reasonable now than it has ever been.
Of course, if you actually commit or order a war crime yourself that doesn't apply, which is the real lesson - the best way to not commit war crimes is to never join the military.
The true objective behind objecting to the military should always to be damage the cultural standing and acceptability of the military and of imperialism, because this is an actually effective path to limiting how much imperialism actually gets carried out and thus to reducing the amount of people murdered to keep the empire running.
I agree with what you say in terms of practical approach to discourse on the military. Out in meatspace around co-workers or whatever, I keep my opinions completely to myself.
But I don't think that's really necessary here, and while capitalism and other aspects of modern society force everyone to participate in unethical systems, there's a real difference between run-of-the-mill working a job as a cog in the wheel of exploitation and working the job that involves shooting at anyone who threatens the wheel. Being on the "we feed all" level of this pyramid is not ethically equivalent to being on the "we shoot at you" level, and we shouldn't bother pretending otherwise on somewhere like this thread.
Yeah nah, an Army Imam/Chaplain, a canteen assistant who did nothing but peel potatoes or a logistics officer that spent their 8 years managing inventories, a fucking doctor who does the exact opposite of efficiently killing someone e.t.c.
Vast majority of US armed forces roles will never see combat. Plus the nature of war itself has changed, a USN sailor or pilot for example is probably not going to fire a single shot at any Chinese or Russian personnel any time soon, but they are going to maintain the capability. The primary objective of all the US armed forces is not to be lethal, it is to project power & not be fucked up by its own imposing bureaucratic size, opposing information control & electronic warfare. In cases like Iraq and Afghanistan the US army focuses on training the local military and police forces, not on killing Taliban or ISIS. So even in these examples the command structures are focused on doing different things, it doesn't help to be reductive
This is true, but take it to its logical conclusion. The military-industrial complex keeps on going, and the number of soldiers continues to drop until literally no one is ever looking down their sights at someone and pulling a trigger anymore. It's all remote or automated technology. War still happens and hundreds of thousands of civilians are killed. No single person bears responsibility for the direct action of killing someone. But for every piece of machinery that does do the killing, there are dozens of people working to maintain the machine and the logistical infrastructure to deploy it. Do we extend your sentiment to mean that none of those people are responsible for what the machine does?
A personal story on this note.
My ex has been cycling through boyfriends pretty quickly since we separated, and has a tendency to attract military guys. I worked with one of them to help her move some stuff, and my kid asked him that day if he'd ever killed anybody. The guy laughed and responded lightheartedly that he hadn't. He went on to explain that he was an artillery operator. He loaded and fired giant guns into combat zones from miles away. So yeah....... never killed anybody. He seemed pretty comfortable with that. And then whipped out his phone and showed off some video of him operating some sort of artillery weapon during a training drill, and talked about how many times they could fire per minute like it was really cool stuff.
I'm glad that relationship didn't last long, so my kid wasn't exposed to any more of that. I understand the guy was probably just coping as necessary to not hate himself. But then to teach someone else's kid that's how ethical responsibility works... I was mortified.
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