Many will argue that service members cannot simply pick and choose which conflicts they participate in; that the nature of military service by definition requires unique sacrifices of personal freedoms. If service members can simply walk away from the job when they feel like it, the argument goes, there is little point to having a military.
There is some truth to this, but few consider the other side of the coin: those sacrifices cannot be taken lightly by the state either. When service members die or are wounded for a cause that doesn’t make sense, as is often the case, decision makers must face consequences—or they will repeat their mistakes.
This dynamic plays out legally too. President Truman was the first to enter a conflict without getting a formal declaration of war from Congress, as the Constitution requires, and that has set the precedent for every president since. But until now presidents at least sought congressional approval for major conflicts; this disastrous war began without even a consultation from lawmakers. It marks the nail in the coffin for the separation of powers and for the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which requires unauthorized troop commitments to be limited to 60 days. Absent resistance now, the law will be meaningless, and presidents will have no checks on their ability to start major wars.
Americans are being sent into harm’s way today for a stupid, immoral project because the Pentagon recently got away with it twice in a row, in Iraq and Afghanistan, with little consequence.
Adam Sandler: But they won’t.
Chris Farley: No…but you can imagine what it would be like if they did.
Yup. They are all independently war criminals now
They should quit and refuse all orders not just “illegal” ones. I have no sympathy they know they signed up to enforced imperialism.
Dwight Eisenhower warned against this in his final address (it isn’t just presidents or executive power, but indeed the interests of capital that dictates these wars), and so it is crucial to consider why this hasn’t been fixed before you start to put all your energy into fixing it within this system.
The US military is fundamentally a genocidal, imperialist institution, and so the moral issues of these recent invasions is hardly a starting point to consider how to change it. The people who sign up for military service by and large want to, and therefore have no moral issue with the century of imperialism and genocide that this institution has been used to perpetrate. No, it isn’t mostly poor and vulnerable groups, it is in fact over represented by middle-class, white Americans, and that means they also have their own material interest in this imperialism as it maintains their privileged way of life.
There is no case where a person who signs up for the genocide brigade should be expected to act with a sense of moral conscience, and there is no world where the US military exists and the US state willfully weakens its ability to wield that military to its most destructive potential. Unfortunately, that means that enough challenge has to be established within the metropole for that restriction to be beneficial for actors of internal power struggles within the US to adopt and implement it. I.e., grassroots action and popular inertia; which is very very tough to do while acting like it is respectable to be in the US military and that this institution is somehow virtuous, and therefore unlikely to require moral regulation.
Dwight Eisenhower just preferred greatly expanding the CIA and FBI to more covertly control the world and oppress everyone.
That’d be an interesting source to see; I only referenced his Farewell Address to demonstrate that this is by no means a newer issue, as OP suggested.
The US military is fundamentally a genocidal, imperialist institution, and so the moral issues of these recent invasions is hardly a starting point to consider how to change it. The people who sign up for military service by and large want to, and therefore have no moral issue with the century of imperialism and genocide that this institution has been used to perpetrate. No, it isn’t mostly poor and vulnerable groups, it is in fact over represented by middle-class, white Americans, and that means they also have their own material interest in this imperialism as it maintains their privileged way of life.
Citation needed
Gladly, lol. It’s public information.
https://apps.armywarcollege.edu/nss/Documents/Demographics of the U.S. Military.pdf
Or wait, you weren’t asking for a source on how it’s genocidal, surely? Because, I mean:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_imperialism
About as broad and public as you can get.
This isn’t really that damning of statistics for me, even at the high end of that median household income you can easily be essentially living paycheck to paycheck.
A) look at the date of the report, and revise what you think qualifies as poverty.
B) are you about to try and argue that people who make at or above median incomes in the US are coerced into serving in the military through their experience as a vulnerable group? That’d be awfully interesting, because then the overwhelmingly white (80%, as per pages 8-10) recruitment rate would be even more inconsistent with rates of poverty as well, with their representation higher than in the civilian workforce proportionately in multiple cases (and racialized groups below civilian rates in multiple instances), as per the document you are referencing.
So, do you think you could pull up say, manual labour jobs and find consistent stats with this? That’d be incredible, and I’m surprised that it isn’t plastered all over right-wing media to dissuade any claims that white people are privileged. Or are you about to also try and argue that these inconsistencies are a result of poverty and not indicative of cultural and social values, and privilege?
What’s the real reason you’re defending the victim narrative of the US military when it is false by their own measurements?
look at the date of the report, and revise what you think qualifies as poverty.
I did, still true in 2020.
I am not defending the US military, I am pointing out it is more nuanced and mixed up than your narrative implies.
It is literally less nuanced than what I said. I said over-represented, and worded it that way specifically to comfort people who take offense at the notion that privileged people are actually bad. In truth, the overwhelming majority are middle-class and white, and they are represented at rates that are not only disproportionate to the civilian workforce, but contradictory to rates of poverty and coercive labour along racialized and class lines.
Did you not even read the entire document before trying to act like 50k- 70K annually is too little to keep from joining the genocide brigade? Or is this just a self-report that you come from a place where 70k isn’t a lot to make in a year?
You think trying to maintain a family/household at 70k is actually being in the middle class in the US? Sure if you live somewhere with no social safety net…
Recall the senators and house members who have not voted according to the peoples will - prosecute them all, remove their illgotten wealth legally - and if they respond with violence then…
They should die, all of Amerikkka’s wars are illegal and they are the enforcement arm of the imperialists so are scum themselves
Americans should respond with the 2nd and 25th amendments, but the entire country of 360 million members are absolute cowards to a raping orange dementia-riddled patient who’s a puppet for Putin and a cuck for Israel.
Hey. How about the Epstein files fuck face?
The only thing that can save the US from NOT succombing to fascism is people becoming convinced that shooting fascist leaders weakens fascist movements, it backfires, emboldens them and gives them license by the rest of society to commit comparatively unlimited violence. This kind of reaction is necessary for fascism to succeed.
They have the license NOW. What fucking response would there be. People are being murdered in the streets, tortured and raped to death in concentration camps. But fucking chuds like you scream nooooooooo dont resist itll make them even meaner noooooo
Shooting figure heads in random acts of violence is not resistance, it is playing the heel to authoritarian fascists while fitting the narrative they need to consolidate power.
What power do they not already have. Name a single one.
The power to kill as much as their ideology demands they do, which is far more than is occurring right now.
