Should Leftists join Imperialist Military Organizations?

Hey guys Burger here, and I was wondering should leftists join the military even thou there shitty and imperial? My argument is every successful left wing country has had a strong military, Russia would have never been the USSR if not for the Army joining the protesters.

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army.mil/article/111827/National_Guard_preps_to_support_drawdown_in_Afghanistan/
militaryproject.org/
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLF_and_PAVN_battle_tactics
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

No, don't join the organisation that is raping half the world.
If it is possible to do the training and leave afterwards, do that. Use the training to organise the people (if a revolutionary situation occurs, which is unlikely).
You could of course always join up to sabotage the us military, but unless you got a high position you are not gonna be able to do much. Also you are risking your freedom doing it.

You don't have to join the military just join the national guard. It gives you the same training the army does but you don't have to leave the states.

yes
anyone who give you a moral reazon is a liberal
we must corrupt military institutions.

False.
In 2006-2008 I had a few friends who had joined the (US) national guard who were set to be shipped off to Afghanistan that summer.

Apparently they're still using the guard for this.
army.mil/article/111827/National_Guard_preps_to_support_drawdown_in_Afghanistan/

Sorry. Didn't know that, only know what some recruiters have told me.

Talk to someone who has served or hunt around for recruiter stories online and they will tell you this as well - recruiters lie to get people to join. It is their job, it is what they are trained to do, it is what they are paid to do, and it is encouraged by their superiors. They may seem genuine, they may even be a bro off the clock, but it is their job to sell (You) on joining up, and at a minimum that will include not telling you the whole truth about what you'll be doing, how long you'll be in, and the conditions under which you are still legally able to leave if you desire.

yeah don't believe the recruiters. You could always telll the national guard guys, because they would be wearing leftover jungle camo in the middle of the desert, with no body armor, their contracts having been involuntarily extended.

Just Join the Guard and if they tell you that you have to go overseas tell them NO.

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Hello, fellow Burger.


I don't think there's any preclusion of being left and serving a military in and of itself, however-


You've reached the conclusion that should have told you enough about the situation to not require asking someone else's opinion of it, but here's the main thing you should remember. As a Burger, your military career isn't going to be pursuing leftist goals - it will be crushing them across the globe while propping up an ultra capitalistic right-wing terror state. The end.

It is unfortunate that there isn't really a military option for us Burger-folk who oppose right-wing corporate ideology. Not unless you want to move to Rojava - and if you do, then more power to you.

We need to form a Red Army of America for leftists here who want military training, but don’t like the US Armed Forces.

And conscription

Half the training would be useless anyway. Most countries don't use American squad structure, and I don't think militia units do either. You can learn to shoot on your own.

Good way to get an extended tour of Fort Leavenworth's disciplinary barracks.

In case you were unaware, by the time you have an MOS and they tell you where you'll be going they already legally own you for ~7.5 more years at that point. Obey or gulag.


Yeah, I'm sure the ATF and FBI will be totally cool with organized militant lefties doing armed combat training in their backyards. It's not like these organizations have been infiltrating everything from teachers unions and book clubs to white nationalist militias and Taiwanese Cartoon Appreciation Imageboards from the 1850s onward. See: Pinkerton Detective Agency.

Not saying I dislike the idea in principle, just saying it isn't going to happen in burger country.

Not unless you retrieve all seven Dragon Balls, that is…

i'm okay with comrades being in the military if it's their job and means to generate income in order to feed the family etc. i'm also okay with being in the military if the home country is attacked.
however people supporting militarism and the most devastating symptom of rabid capitalism (imperialism) politically aren't comrades for me, in fact, i don't consider them leftist at

all. imperialism is injustice by nature.

This is quite true. Modern military training from a wealthier nation (not burger-exclusive) is heavily reliant on air support, satellite data, heavy weaponry, mass comm structure, and just generally being far and away better supplied and technologically advanced than your opponent(s).

Get fit, learn to use and maintain firearms and vehicles, get familiar with radio equipment, go camping for a few days at a time if you can, and acquire the tools that will allow you to do all of those things better. Do that and you'll be better off than most people who have military experience, plus you'll have a hobby that will help you survive after the exploitative capitalist global economy collapses.

Spoiler alert: Recruiters will lie their ass off to you so you can go die for Israel in the opium fields of Afghanistan.

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Why is she so perfect?

Yes, and that system is exactly what revolutionaries need to understand. Any idiot can get fit and learn to be an infantryman. Know yourself, but it is equally important to know your enemy.

We are on to commie infiltrators. You'd be in serious shit if anyone found out you were a fag.

Yes. Individual boycotting makes no difference, individual training and experience does.

Don't fucking do it. Never mind praxis and rationale. Don't do it, because being owned is miserable in a way that civilians cannot understand. It will be especially miserable someone who already understands why you will be made to do the things that you will do. I doubt that a communist could complete a tour.

the military from my country treath you like a nigger and give you the shittiest training

Try to graduate from wet point, become an officer. Eventually become a General. Then order your troops to do a Coup d’état and become the leftist version of Pinochet.

True enough in principal, know thy enemy and all that, though understanding a small fraction of how an adversary with trillions of dollars in resources operates will only go so far in combating it.

However, the fact is that in order to acquire this knowledge (in the way you are suggesting) someone needs to sell themselves for at least 10 years to this machine - participate in war crimes in order to someday possibly resist war criminals - it sets itself up to be the antithesis of your intended goal, like joining the SS to fight antisemitism.

And what will you really gain? An appreciation for how bad a bureaucracy can be? See a handful of tanks and planes from a few feet away? Use radio comms equipment from the Korean war era?

You're likely going to spend a lot of time masturbating in the desert if you join the US military any time soon. Gotta' take the oil for Commander-in-Chief Trump - for communism or something somehow…

But you can just read that shit online. And who are these other people that presumably you'd be fighting with? They wont know shit about the U.S military, but they don't need to listen to some private either.

Join no, propagandise yes.

Anyone here remember GI Special?
militaryproject.org/

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If you join the US armed forces you can be trained to be brave enough to torture prisoners, some of which are innocent, others are not.

When you're fighting for the devil and not against him it isn't bravery that leads you but fear.

Where is a ten-year enlistment required? It only took me four.

I am not overly concerned with the legality of war. There is no right way to commit mass murder, just numerous horrible ways.

An understanding of how different elements within a modern military function. If there is anything that civilian revolutionaries are missing, it is that. Modern warfare is incredibly sophisticated. Units are structured such that the entirity of them is much greater than the sum of its parts. Revolutionary officers need to know how that works.

Does anyone know of any good books about modern military theory? I feel that something like that would be tremendously helpful.

Nah, you'll come back crazy.
"Every soilders a rifleman first" is the new policy of the US military.
Meaning that bullshit about joining to learn a skill or get education is thrown out the window. All the jobs that are applicable to the civilian world are done by military contractors. I used to remember all the Airmen and Sailors that would cry because they got ordered to man truck convoys in Iraq. They thought joining the Air Force or Navy would keep them away from such bullshit.

That's a really stupid thing to say. Military training isn't just getting fit and knowing how to use the equipment, it's intensive drilling to get you to react without having to think, teaching you how to perfectly coordinate and interact with your comrades. Basic training isn't months because it takes that long to learn how to use a rifle.

uwot? A regular US contract is 4 years of active duty, 4 years in the inactive reserves. I reality it's just 4 years, because unless WW3 happens, you're not going to be recalled, and they don't care enough about you to actually keep track of you.
Unless you consider occupation in general a war crime, it's extremely unlikely you'll be forced to do something illegal. US troops are usually held to a higher standard of conduct than fucking police officers, the ROE is usually pretty strict.

The average soldier isn't going to be part of a fucking Abu Ghraib.

People ITT are really overstating what being part of the military is like. The US military does a shit tons of horrible, shitty things, but the average soldier isn't likely going to do anything except fuck around, train, and possibly be deployed to do patrols in Iraq.

Vegetius, what does the scouter say about his bravery level?

Short answer is no. From an ideological/principled standpoint, you would be actively serving as an organization of violent force against other members of the international working class with little justification other than pure imperialism. If you honestly think that the military being "shitty and imperial" is in any way excusable, you need to seriously reconsider your priorities. Joining the military because you're materially desperate or because fleeing conscription is too much of a risk to yourself/family is one thing; joining because of the vague possibility that there MIGHT be revolution in your lifetime is another. The damage you will cause in the military will almost certainly not outweigh the good you MIGHT provide in times of revolutionary struggle.

As for the training and experience itself, most of it won't be useful if you were ever to actually partake in a revolution. As others have pointed out, the tactics and training employed by militaries like that of the US rely heavily on the advanced technology and resources they have at their disposal. In times of revolution, you will almost certainly not have access to most of those assets. Guerilla warfare and insurgency is likely to be the name of the game for most of the revolutionary military struggle, and that's experience you're not going to get in a modern country's military. Fighting in places like Rojava would be infinitely more useful experience-wise. The only exception to the usefulness of military experience gained from modern national armies would be specialized training like engineering, medicine, etc that are broad enough to be applicable under more varied circumstances. As pointed out though, the era where such specialists would primarily stick to those specialized tasks is mostly over.

The difference is that Russia had a massive surplus of dissatisfied/mistreated soldiers as a result of WWI and living in the shelled-out remains of a crumbling state, not a volunteer army in an otherwise quite stable country. Joining the revolution was an obvious choice for many of them given the material circumstances, and indeed the military rarely will join revolutionary struggles unless comparable material circumstances present themselves.
Soldiers often become radicalized after experiencing war, but its not in meaningful numbers unless we're talking big wars (enough that large-scale conscription efforts are employed). Trickling numbers of sun-dried and PTSD-laden vets coming out of the Middle East is not meaningful buildup for domestic struggle, and the US government has become WELL aware of that after Vietnam and the 20th century wars that preceded it: if avoidable, do not displace large amounts of the population to fuel war efforts.

You're assuming that a regular soldier in the military actually does anything except waste resources and adds to a statistic, and that choosing not to join somehow makes any meaningful difference. The military will continue to exist and do what it does regardless of you joining it or not, while joining it would teach you useful skills and in depth knowledge of how it functions and acts.

You guys are both saying things that are true here, but I think you've lost sight of the big picture.

What do you imagine a leftist/communist/communalist/antifa/etc/etc uprising or movement in the US would really look like? I want you to think about it for a moment please, because I want you to understand the mentality of the people you'd be fighting with and against, the equipment and you'd have available, the environment you'd be in, the targets you would select, and the way you would generate propaganda for your cause.

If I'm being quite candid here, I imagine the scenario we are all envisioning happening within an America (or major western power) which is in some way collapsing, no? If you're going to Rajava to train and fight there then again, more power to you, I would assume that things will be more traditional in the way you are, in my estimation, assuming warfare will be conducted. Bases with clear command structure, platoons and comradery, patrols in vehicles, established places and equipment, etc.

This is not how war works when you are the insurgent force in an occupied nation. Understanding basic OPSEC will be more valuable than any training you receive in shooting machine guns and driving humvees.

Which is worthless in asymmetrical warfare. This is the point I am trying to make.For the sake of OPSEC I won't go into further details, but I know the skillset that people come out of (at least in my case) the Army and Navy with. They wouldn't have a clue where to start a resistance movement or how to maintain it. Put simply, the skills of the average enlisted soldier have no use outside of the role of an enlisted soldier within a massive military structure that already has an entrenched culture and way of doing things. These skills don't translate beyond that environment, at least not from the people I've seen come out of the service.

Learn guerilla tactics and OPSEC. Prepare yourself and create a resilient community. Don't sell yourself to a terror-state in order to try to learn their secrets. You'll end up in the sandbox with a bunch of idiots shooting at civilians for so long that you eat a bullet.

For anybody interested in self training, this is surprisingly thorough for a wiki article.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLF_and_PAVN_battle_tactics

commenting bc this is interesting thread and i'm kinda interested i think OP makes a somewhat good point about defectors and gaining weapons training as a commie is never a bad thing

All the OPSEC in the world isn't going to help you if you're a bad soldier who doesn't know how to fight or plan operations. And a revolution in a first-world country would not be a prolonged insurgency, insurgencies cannot win wars like that. Insurgencies are effective at getting the occupier to leave because the war is too costly, insurgencies cannot defeat the state at home. Any revolution would have to progress to a civil war to succeed.
It's impossible to know whether those skills don't translate because there's not a resistance movement happening where you could see or not. Obviously soldiers trained to teach and act under certain circumstances will have trouble doing otherwise, but knowing how to clear a building, how to coordinate with your squad, knowing how to fight, knowing how to stay calm and react instinctively, knowing how to apply first aid, knowing how the military acts under certain conditions, are all extremely useful skills that are transferable.