Two things not mentioned it that article:
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Why would anyone want to fight for a country that is so callously disinterested in the welfare of it’s citizens?
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In the last quarter-century it has become extremely apparent that the US Military is not the “global force for good” that it wants to portray itself as. Most young people probably aren’t interested in joining up to commit war crimes in the name of making money for the military industrial complex.
- Every branch of the military has become increasingly toxic, cutting things like training and cleaning up black mold in favor of new uniforms every 2 years
How’s training and cleaning up mold supposed to line the pockets of the senator’s buddy who owns the uniform company?
Yup. Every problem with this world eventually gets traced back to money.
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@kvasir476 @throws_lemy Suggested edit: After “In the last quarter-century” insert “I’ve finally noticed”.
Butler saw the scam first-hand, 100 years ago. Every generation seems it must relearn the lessons of our grandparents.
As for young people not enlisting for wars of convenience - exactly. That’s partially why a draft was around, and why it was so unpopular. And why the money each service pays for college benefits goes way up when there’s a shooting war and goes down in peacetime.
My time in the Navy overlapped with the VEAP program, which would give me a 2-to-1 match for college - up to the maximum contribution of $2700. What a joke.
Compare that to the current GI Bill plus extra money each service pays directly.
Never has been the global force for good
I mean… defeating the Nazis?
After Germany declared war on them? They didn’t defeat them out of good will, in fact, I’d say America and South Africa were the closest things to Nazi Germany outside of the Reich
Really? Closer than Russia which actually did invade its neighbors? Go back to lemmygrad.
Should I remind you of the land the USA originally had and what they did to the people who lived in the lands they conquered?
You can if you want to pretend that Russia didn’t do the same thing and that it somehow makes the comparison better for you!
It did, but the natives are more than 1% of the Russian population
Is it good to beat the shit out of the school bully after he picks a fight with you so he learns to stop picking fights with people? I would say so.
Not if you’re quite similar to that bully
There’s a difference between being a good country and being a global force for good. In helping to defeat the Nazis, the U.S. was a global force for good regardless of what else they did, had done or will do. The same with Stalinist Russia.
And then they took all the top scientists from Germany and Japan, who were guilty of crimes against humanity, and made them high ups in the American government
Not really
Global force for better
Good would’ve involved them allowing Spanish civil war vets to fight
stopped clocked fallacy.
the united states is in so many wars, they were bound to achieve one somewhat correctly.
The U.S. military also defeated the Confederacy. So that’s two.
thats 2!
shut it down, shut this all down!
Helping end genocide in the Balkans would be a third example…
Ok…? Does that dispute the point? Original comment said they were “never” a force for good
You know that was more so Russia right?
I would say it was a combined effort, but Russia suffered a lot more. They didn’t liberate Paris though.
It was a combined effort, but Russia did most of the work and lost most of the lives? Nice
The Russians did nothing on the Western Front or North Africa.
But yes, they lost the most lives. I’m not sure why that means it wasn’t a collaborative effort. Are you claiming that if the U.S. and Britain had sat by and done nothing, Russia would have defeated Hitler singlehandedly and liberated Western Europe? Because I find that to be a very spurious claim if so.
He said suffered more, not “did more of the work”. You added that part.
Suffering more losses does equate to contributing more to towards the victory. For example America’s Lend Lease Act didn’t cost American soldiers but contributed towards the allied victory.
Not really, no. And let’s ignore the part where the only reason they even fought is because Russia wanted to conquer some of the same land as Germany 😂
\3. Pay hasn’t kept up with civilian work.
\4. They stopped offering student loan repayment as a benefit.
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We’ve seen the bullshit reasons the US government use to send people to war and we’ve seen how the veterans are treated by Congress.
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Seems like he did. Sorry for your loss.
No, we don’t want to fight for racist, corrupt, misogynous, traitorous shitheads like Trump and DeSantis.
As pretty much any political minority will tell you, the country constantly uses us like ping pong balls and cat toys to win elections or internal battles.
I am sick of my rights, welfare, sense of safety, and hope for the future being dangled in front of me and ripped away over and over again so billionaires and career politicians can be greedy.
So, yeah. Not interested in serving. If my country wants me to fight for it, then it should fight for me as well.
That was honestly the main reason why I didn’t join the military over the last few years.
That and I just refuse to be a part of it.
I have two sons in their early 20s and I’m scared to death one of these fascist chucklefucks decides to get us into some conflict we don’t need to be in just because he wants to prove he has BDE and reinstates the draft.
I was in the Air Force in the late 70s. Twenty years ago (roughly) I pushed both my boys into the military, because they were being fuck-ups and I didn’t know any other way at the time.
I’m thankful as all hell that they had the good sense to tell the military to get fucked when in Basic and got out.
Learn from my stupidity.
Some people can thrive in the military for sure. I have a stepson that’s one of the hardest workers I know. He has issues with basic life skills (anxiety and stress) and taking care of things on his own but thrives in an environment with lots of discipline and order. He’s too old know but had he gotten into the military I’m sure his life would have been much better now.
But given some of the things they send the military to do recently (cough cough …Afghanistan) it seems like a waste of human life and resources. I’m glad your boys were smart enough to understand it wasn’t a good fit for them at the time and had the courage to make that decision. Hopefully it’s worked out for them.
Ah well, soldiers haven’t fought for their country for decades. Instead they’ve been fighting for the interest of industrialized military, and the whims of politicians.
the american military-industrical complex is little more than a welfare/jobs program for americans with profits made overseas while at home were prostetlized that were ‘defending’ ourselves with overt patriotism
its absolutely revolting, and it boggles my mind how anyone in the military can find this a good thing for humanity.
Remember the video of the Iraq vet that was screaming at Bush to apologize in 2021 I think? He talked about all his friends being dead and a million Iraqis being dead all because of a bunch of lies. And while Iraq was one of the latest foreign failures, it was far from the only one. It just so happened to occur right around the same time the internet started connecting everyone. MSM couldn’t whitewash or ignore what was actually happening like it could a few decades prior.
Eustice, who served 26 years in the Minnesota National Guard, noted that young adults were the military’s prime target for new recruits—currently Generation Z, or those born after 1997—and argued that growing up in the internet age had made them used to “immediate gratification.”
Oh look, another out of touch boomer. ItS tHoSe DaMn CeLlPhOnEs! Gen Z grew up watching America get involved in, then stay involved in, a deeply unpopular war. Gen Z grew up in an age where you can fact check someone on the spot and it makes it that much harder for recruiters to lie. They grew up in an age where half of the government is trying to drag the country backwards by any means.
I am in the military. I overheard my leadership talking with a woman who wanted to get out. When they asked her why she said it was because of the Roe V Wade decision. “Why would I fight for a country that won’t fight for me?” I don’t blame her.
A person saying kids don’t want to join the military because they’re too used to “instant gratification” is some of the most obnoxious shit I have ever heard lmao
If someone went up to me and said that, I’d tell them to go fuck themselves and leave, because fuck all of that.
A country is supposed to provide 4 things to it’s citizens, and the united states are failing on all 4.
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safe to drink water: Nearly half of the tap water in the US is contaminated with ‘forever chemicals,’ government study finds
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safety: The record 48,830 total gun deaths in 2021 reflect a 23% increase since 2019
additionally, nearly every fundamental system (education, healthcare, insurance, car-dependent city designs, etc.) within the united states is designed to take everything away (or restrict access to everything) from it’s citizens through poverty, thus making the above problems exponentially worse.
What is there to fight for?
Exactly. The same idea can be used to explain voter disengagement. Why bother voting when both parties have engaged in scuzzy tactics, manipulation, lies and/or outright illegal activities?
Killing brown people so the oligarchy can exploit their natural resources is not fighting for your country.
This is the correct answer.
I don’t think it is that (it should be).
Unemployment is at historic lows and real wages are starting to grow again.
There plenty of alternatives that don’t involve risking your life.
Raise a hand. Who wants to sign up as cannon fodder for the rich?
Bonus; if you survive no one will help you!
Thoughts and prayers.
brought to you by autocomplete (seriously)
War Pigs starts playing in the distant background
I’d definitely fight FOR our country. But I would not fight for our country and those that currently control it. They’re after all, the ones we have to fight against.
… so what period in history was this ever a country worth fighting for lol
Almost never. FOR however, almost always.
… you’ll have to explain that. I think you’re contradicting yourself lol
Not really. You just need to go back to my first post in this thread. Explains it perfectly. The country itself. I would fight to save it from the people that currently run it. But I would not fight for (in service of) the country and the people that currently run it.
The country isn’t, like, its own entity. America isn’t real. There isn’t some ideological spirit of America that you can separate from the people that run it. At most you could argue that America is also its culture, but uh, the culture has been pretty fucking bad since the start!
American society is terrible. America’s government is terrible. American culture is terrible. It’s an irredeemable shithole country.
What the fuck would you fight for?
Actually there is. They talk and talk and talk about it ad nauseam. They simply just do it rhetorically and always fail to embody it. Even countries with a traditionally large immigrant population like the United States have a lot more culturally that tends to bind, then they have differences that divide. And after all what is a country? If not the people in it?
Fighting for a shit government full of crappy politicians is already a weird choice.
Going in other countries to kill random innocent people for the profit of said government is an even weirder one.
This lie is akin to “No one wants to work anymore”
It’s not remotely true. It’s just some bullshit the employer says when they’re not paying enough and they treat their employees like shit.
I don’t think this is true. I lived in a big military town and not fighting for an America whose policies I didn’t agree with was one reason I avoided the military when so many of my friends and classmates joined and served.
Nobody joins the military because they want a job where they are treated well. Pay and benefits definitely factor into it big time though, and are probably the main reason my late brother joined. He and I talked about how that is effectively mercenary though. Of course there are a lot of great things in America to join the military and defend, and we still do have a lot of freedoms that other countries do not, but it’s pretty clear that it’s not what it used to be. We’re not even in the top 10 on the human freedom index. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/freedom-index-by-country
Forced draft ruined the lives of my father and uncle. (Vietnam) My husband is permanently disabled from his time in the balkins and the VA fought us tooth and nail for every cent of his disablity pay. I would never, ever, ever join the miltary. All you get is a broken mind, body, and a shitty flag when you die.
Vietnam
Iraq
Afghanistan
Is anyone surprised
Korea, too.
And dozens of “minor” conflicts in South America and Africa over the years (for example, task force ranger and the battle of Mogadishu… as imortalozed in black hawk down,)
Yeah. Us military might as well be fighting for big corporations.
When people go on and on about fighting for our freedom, I’m at a loss as to exactly what they’re talking about.
Fighting for our freedom to continue bombing the middle east.
Where they ever fighting “for their country?”
How has the majority of people in the US benefited from the US-caused wars in Vietnam, Panama, Iraq or Afghanistan?
Stonks go up /s
i won’t fight for people who voted for Trump… not ever, for any reason… i won’t protect you people from any enemy…
That’s because Democrats are brainwashing people to hate their country and has absolutely nothing to do with Republicans voting AGAINST any and all help for veterans, Republicans constantly stopping service member pay with government shutdowns, billionaires killing us so they can make an extra dollar, billionaires using us to do dangerous tasks for minimal pay or Republicans voting to dismantle the VA. It’s OBVIOUSLY the Democrats fault!
Huh. To me, it looks like an across-the board issue.
