Shortfalls in some of the military services' recruiting goals for fiscal year 2023 demonstrate the challenges that lie ahead for the all-volunteer force, the Defense Department's acting undersecretary
Its soldiers literally volunteer to take part in imperialism and jackbooted fascism around the world. There is no ignorance here, and there is no "they had no other choice".
There is absolutely no sympathy for fascists. You wanna be one of the good ones? QUIT.
Don't rehabilitate them. Shame them into fucking leaving and stop making excuses for them.
I'd agree with you in ALMOST every case. The ones I don't condemn half as harshly, are those from military families and those who get DEP'd out of their high school; doubly where they intersect. (Literally, the Delayed Enlistment Program is ALL ABOUT prowling high schools like the predators most every recruiter I ever knew turned out to be.) I was one of their victims, groomed by my family, then groomed by a recruiter to not think about the costs of what I was doing. I was a high schooler, thinking I was ensuring a future for myself in a future that was very quickly proven to be the lies of my elders made of nothing but whole cloth; thinking 'oh, I'm not gonna be near the front! I won't have bodies on my conscience!'
Then I ended up in a support shop, watching drone feeds that blew people away day by day-- to the cheers of the rest of the shop. The blood isn't on my hands, but in my eyes, and coating my brain. Leaving was the best decision I ever made, and having to remember everything I saw-- never mind the several losses of function I've suffered as a result of that service-- is the price to pay.
Not all of them chose to be bloodthirsty jackboots. Some of us only really found out what it was when we were too deep in to get out without handing over the time we signed a contract to give.
This is an argument for being harsher, not kinder.
We don't get these people to quit by being nice to them. We get them to quit by making as many people as possible see it as morally reprehensible to be a troop.
Even if you have empathy for the ones that get tricked into it, the correct strategy to minimise it as much as possible is to be as harsh as possible about the troops and to build a social environment that inoculates the largest number of people possible.
It is simply the right strategy whether we acknowledge a small minority are fools or not. It's the right strategy to get those fools out and it's the right strategy to inoculate more of those fools before the military recruiting machine gets to them.
Its soldiers literally volunteer to take part in imperialism and jackbooted fascism around the world. There is no ignorance here, and there is no "they had no other choice".
There is absolutely no sympathy for fascists. You wanna be one of the good ones? QUIT.
Don't rehabilitate them. Shame them into fucking leaving and stop making excuses for them.
I'd agree with you in ALMOST every case. The ones I don't condemn half as harshly, are those from military families and those who get DEP'd out of their high school; doubly where they intersect. (Literally, the Delayed Enlistment Program is ALL ABOUT prowling high schools like the predators most every recruiter I ever knew turned out to be.) I was one of their victims, groomed by my family, then groomed by a recruiter to not think about the costs of what I was doing. I was a high schooler, thinking I was ensuring a future for myself in a future that was very quickly proven to be the lies of my elders made of nothing but whole cloth; thinking 'oh, I'm not gonna be near the front! I won't have bodies on my conscience!'
Then I ended up in a support shop, watching drone feeds that blew people away day by day-- to the cheers of the rest of the shop. The blood isn't on my hands, but in my eyes, and coating my brain. Leaving was the best decision I ever made, and having to remember everything I saw-- never mind the several losses of function I've suffered as a result of that service-- is the price to pay.
Not all of them chose to be bloodthirsty jackboots. Some of us only really found out what it was when we were too deep in to get out without handing over the time we signed a contract to give.
This is an argument for being harsher, not kinder.
We don't get these people to quit by being nice to them. We get them to quit by making as many people as possible see it as morally reprehensible to be a troop.
Even if you have empathy for the ones that get tricked into it, the correct strategy to minimise it as much as possible is to be as harsh as possible about the troops and to build a social environment that inoculates the largest number of people possible.
It is simply the right strategy whether we acknowledge a small minority are fools or not. It's the right strategy to get those fools out and it's the right strategy to inoculate more of those fools before the military recruiting machine gets to them.