Soldiers

I would die before I joined the US military. I'm sorry but there is no mercy for people who slaughter others for their own gain

Hey there tumblr, how's that performative wokeness treating you?

there is no mercy for people who shit on proles from behind the veil of their slave built screen

You always have a chance to follow another path. Soldiers, even if constrained by this or that situation, get in the business of killing for the state, and even if following an assigned duty, are themselves responsible for taking the assigned as THEIR duties. They are responsible for each and any action they do.

I prefer to define men by what they do, not by what they think they do. They kill, they maim, they rob, and they bear this upon themselves.

That wasn't my point. I was just saying that I don't think they're any better or worse as people for joining.

From my group of friends from high school circa 2006…
Listen to Hero of War by Rise Against. A lot of these folks would make great comrades. Just gotta talk to them.

I agree with you, they're probably to reactionary to be turned. I was a military contractor for 12 years btw.

voluntarily passing your moral culpability to a military force makes you entirely responsible for everything you do.

Veterans and rank-and-file soldiers, talking from an American perspective, tend to have personal experience with the realities of US imperialism and are often disaffected which can make them allies of ours. Some join for the benefits, others because they want to "serve their country". A great many come from working class backgrounds which can also make them sympathetic to socialist views. The class character of professional soldiers though is not necessarily in line with the working class. The interests of career soldiers is in maintaining the military industrial complex and maintaining or increasing their own budgets so they can keep their positions. Which of course, means war.

t. ancap

That is a beyond retarded response. I laid out such a simple idea, and it was still beyond you.

In America the military, like the police force, is largely a middle and upper class institution. It's a place for the children of the petty and actual bourgeoisie to get free shit and inflate their resumes while they participate directly in American imperialism. They have no revolutionary potential.

My brother is in the Canadian First Reserve and he enlisted purely for the money. So from a purely egoistic point of view, I can't really hate him for it. I just hope I won't have to storm one of his parades during an anti-colonial demonstration.

literally what is your defence for becoming a murderer for empire? they wuz poor boys they dindu nufin? It's more forgivable to be a dumb wannabe patriot who thinks killing the yellow man is actually a good thing than to be a cynical piece of shit who joins up just to go to college.

every westerner has an abstract responsibility for imperialism, that's not the same as pulling the trigger yourself or loading the bomblets.

Are you fucking kidding me? No, not even close. Maybe officers, but even that's doubtful.

Agreed

Actually what you're doing is worse. You stay safe while others kill and die in your stead and then you denounce them for doing their job. Reminder that while we had conscription anti-war action was through the roof. this "volunteer army" shit just divides the working class and keeps people from realizing their complicity.

If the left is going to win we need to infiltrate the military

check it out this americlap actually believes this 'they fight for your freedoms' shit.

Are you seriously arguing that the gunner who atomises a wedding party is less morally culpable for the crimes of imperialism than a civilian westerner with no particular connection to the 'defense' industry? You are being hysterical right now, calm down before I have to slap you.

If my commanding officer told me to go burn a Vietnamese village grove I would turn around and fucking shoot them, but that's why people like me don't join the army.

What do you hope to accomplish by echoing racist Holla Forums rhetoric? All you're doing is proving that you're just as stupid and incapable of nuance as them.

Whoa there, lay off the Maoism-Third Worldism. No one here denies American and general Western/NATO imperialism. No one here thinks that us Burgerclaps attacked Afghanistan and Iraq for any reason but oil.

Yes. I'd rather be hysterical then in denial and wrapped up in ideology like a blanket.

If that's true and not just a jerkoff fantasy of yours then you totally should join the military. We should force people like you to join. There'd be more dead commanding officers that way and less dead Iraq children.

Soldiers around the world fight for spooks their countries instill into them. Either the soldier rejects its spooks and becomes a radical with a stomach for violence who has seen the effects of bourgeois wars first hand, or he takes the spooks to heart to justify the horrors he saw and thus becomes a staunch reactionary.

Source: WW1

t. acedemic that never been gotten a sweet defense contract.

It's the opposite, I don't believe that all westerners are evil for what the military does, I think the political, economic, military establishment, and yes, the individual members of the armed forces, have individual moral culpability for their actions.

Then you're a fucking idiot. By this logic Hitler was the most innocent person in the whole of Germany for the holocaust because he personally contributed to it the most.

haha… i ain't gonna do it officer! no way, I ain't gonna do it!

Damn leftypol sure has a lot of military bootlickers.

If there's ever a draft you're the type that gets killed by their own men, just saying.

No by my logic Hitler is the most culpable because he started the war. Read through the argument again.

That's not how that line of thinking works at all. The logical conclusion is that Hitler is at fault for everything his soldiers did, having assumed responsibility for their actions.

P U R E I D E O L O G Y

Military coups are not "revolutions." Stop being a crypto-opportunist.

In a way I get it, because the revolution cannot be successful without the support of at least a large faction of the army, but this fact leads people to deny reality about the military actually being responsible for what they do

I never voted for Blair, I never voted for Bush, I never voted for a warmonger and I sure never voted for a war. What more can I actually personally to absolve myself of a sin of being born a westerner other than going on a one man revolution spree that lasts 5 minutes before I get shot?

In a way yes, we have an economic draft. An economic draft the middle class (I.e. People who can sell their labor at a price high enough to meet their needs) is comfortable with.
I'm not saying their not culpable, but to say their more even though they were goaded into by material capitalism conditions is you being a porky apologist.

Not being a warmongering capitalist.

people join for the benefits and get indoctrinated there
the petit-bourg "support our troops" cucks and jingoists have never been in the military
we have to get soldiers on our side, you can't win a revolution with red liberal students

Hey yugoflag guy. Since you were a contractor, how important/useful would you say it is to have someone who can produce weapons beyond just small arms and can work with limited resources?

If you personally kill Iraqi children, you personally have blood on your hands and should probably be executed for war crimes. I'm sorry that this incredibly complex chain of moral logic is causing so much confusion.

My passport… well actually I can't even afford to go anywhere so I don't have one but it would say 'British citizen' on it. How exactly does this make me a warmonger?

I'm gonna regret asking this but how does that work?

C'mon now, was the Russian Revolution a coup because soldiers and sailors mobilized in support of the Bolsheviks?

No one is defending the slaughter of civilians, user.

You fall on a barely-held together shanty made of sheet metal at speeds just below what can break bone. The roof falls through, you tumble slightly, and your midsection lands on the still upright wall.

Does this mean we should just deny reality though? If an ex soldier is able to admit what he did was wrong and pledge to try to make up for it that's one thing but that's not what people in this thread are saying.

Seems pretty simple, imagine jumping out a skyscraper onto a pane of glass.

It's very convenient logic for capitalists apologists like yourself. If you have a bunch of poor people and give them an avenue to a liveable lifestyle they're going to take it.
We have a crap welfare state for a reason, no one would join if we had free healthcare like in Japan, or affordable housing.

Hitler didn't start the war you dumb fuck. Britain and France declared war on Germany, after Germany and the USSR invaded Poland. The war wasn't caused by the invasion of Poland, otherwise they'd have declared war on the USSR as well.

He only said that civilians were "more culpable" in that they were in denial of the bloodiness of imperialism.

Zinc roofing easily catches the wind. When working with zinc roofing you are supposed to use special clamps to keep that from happening. Pretty much anytime zinc roofing to not anchored down or represents a major safety hazard.

That is, in fact, what most of us would consider the ideal situation.

They were FUCKING WHITE MALES!

Bad troll move on

I guess you don't think recruiters don't lie to recruits. Guess you didn't know it's litterally illegal to disobey an order once your in.

If you are in the military you have far more responsibility for killing civilians than just being a westerner. If you are a gunner, fighter pilot, artillery crewman, you have personally killed civilians. If you are a ground trooper you may or may not have. If you're a mechanic you have made that killing possible. And so on.

If you were brainwashed that is semi understandable but knowing that the US military is evil and joining up for free college means you made a concious choice to be a murderer. Also, some things are worse than going to prison, some things are worse than being executed for treason. I can't tell you that I personally would be strong enough to frag someone who tried to turn me into a murderer because I've never been in that situation, but I would never put myself in that situation either because I can actually think about the consequences of my actions.

So, the average American?

Also.
If you're a fucking taxpayer you pay for all of it, you stupid twat.

Of course. But everyone is influenced by their culture, is absolutely nobody responsible for any action?

It's about degrees of responsibility, you dense cunt, if you go far enough down yes everyone is responsible but we have to consider how much each individual actually played a role. I don't even make enough money to pay taxes but if I did I would feel a little bad about that, but what can I do short of completely drop out of society?

People don't put themselves into poverty. Also people are individuals, they got siblings, parents, children who are all poor too. You're not just trying to escape poverty for yourself but often a gaggle of ores too. I can't think of any avenue where an uneducated person could accomplish that then by joining the military.
I loath soliders, worked around them for most of my career, but this moral absolutism regarding their culpability is beyond ignorant.

Obviously people have some level to which they choose, and some to which they are coerced into doing things.

It's pretty blatantly obvious you're just trying to pull guilt by association when it's convenient and then desperately trying to wash your hands of the blood that logically falls on your own because you just don't like the idea that you could possibly have any blood on your innocent perfect hands.

*Also people aren't individuals,
*a gaggle of others too.

We need more Smedley Butlers tbh

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why does /leftpol/ hate cops but have a soft spot for soldiers?

are you too thick to understand that a lot of soldiers in the US are poor as shit, and do it to support their families? They literally have almost no other option, and they do it because theyre spooked to believing it helps. Most soldiers believe they serve their people and help their communities, if we convince them to do it with socialism, revolution is guaranteed you asswipe.

I accept that yes I do have a fraction of the culpability (though I've been more a burden on the taxpayer than a benefit so far anyways) but you are just being ridiculous to assert that there is no greater crime than simply being a westerner. This MTW trash needs to fuck off. Put the blame where it actually lies. I never chose to be a fucking killer, soldiers did.

Because muh glorious russian revolution and other military supported left wing coups.

Military enlisted are generally working class people being exploited by the economic machine just like everyone else. We should probably be salting the military to spread class consciousness among them tbh
I said exactly this in /r/socialism last year and they banned me.

That's a right-wing think tank and I would not doubt that they've massaged the data for their own purposes.

We don't, it just cops really are the worst, while soilders are more nuanced in their motivations for upholding imperialism.

Yeah well you know what, I'm exploited at my shitty job too and it sure pays less than being enlisted, but I chose not to be a fucking babykiller.

Soilders are as victimized by capitalism as much as they uphold it. Like my dad used to the "The military never gives you anything for free, they will wring every dollar out of you in blood" so people can identify with that.
Have you met the average cop? They act like the bourgeois, fat like them too often.

The data provided attacks your claim. You argued for a massive disproportion ['largely'], and I'm not seeing that in the data. In fact, the institution seems to be largely lower class by raw numbers. I'm willing to concede that the structure of the institution will indeed be middle-class so long as the officers are, which is why I suggested OCS and command positions given that they actually anchor the culture of the armed services – not recruits.

Sigh….I know, but burgers are super dumb and don't understand the implications of joining. I didn't join either but practically everyone I graduated college with did and boy am I glad I didn't.
The Army is now offering 40k to enlist now. For a dumb burger raised on TV its impossible to resist.

Haha holy shit just go back to tumblr kiddo.

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Where does the moral responsibility stop?
Is it the guy who pulls the trigger?
Is it the guy who orders him into a situation where he has to?
Is it the guy who made the gun?
Or the guy who made the steel?
Or the guy who paid the taxes to fund it all?

We're all doing what we have to do to survive. And those edges of yours are gonna make sure the largest military in world history is firmly against our cause. And besides, my deployments we're non-combat

You choose, and so does every single person who continues to live in an imperialist, warmongering society, to continue to participate in that society, to continue to advance its destruction, to allow it to declare war after war. You happily shift culpability and personal responsibility onto everyone else, how your choices make you a babykiller even if you never pulled the trigger on someone, but the moment it comes to your own accountability in this, you come up with reasons for why your contribution is only slight, how society burdens you into these choices, and even then you try to find reasons why you're not personally accountable at all!

It's shit like this which is why civilians are more responsible for the deaths of victims than the soldiers are. Fuck you.

They always will be. The revolution is never going to happen, but at least I have my hatred to keep me warm. Just because porky has the power doesn't make him right, just because the army are holding the guns doesn't make them right. If porky told us we were going to eat and nobody showed up, that would be the revolution. But you and I know that will never happen either, because there will always be people who don't think about the lives of others.

Fuck I meant war not eat. Ugh. I'm really tired but now I've got so worked up I can't sleep.

Anarchist, kindly fuck yourself, spin whatever narrative you want but I've never shot a missile. Sometimes people are responsible for their own actions.

Hitler is not responsible for any of the deaths in WWII because he never fired a gun except into his own brain.

He is, however, responsible for every death in WWI because he served as a messenger in the army, thus facilitating all the deaths in that war.

Eat a boot to the mouth.

I'm not Dick Cheney either. Go lovingly deepthroat an M16.

In a way they are victims of the system like anyone else but instead of going for something that causes less harm for less pay, they picked serving the imperialist agenda directly … which is low but still pretty human and understandable in a way. As long they didn't fall for the military brainwashing completely, I don't have any strong feelings against them. They are still individuals.

The majority is but the left should be above painting huge groups of people in the same light.

If you have the power to give orders and disobeying these orders has the possibility of fatal consequences, why wouldn't you be responsible for the orders you give? If you point the gun at someone and tell them to suck your dick, are you not responsible for their action? It clearly wasn't voluntary after all.

the existence of police is a large part of what enables the violence of the military. They're the ones who keep the citizenry in line when they don't want to go along with the warmongering. They keep warlike states running. They ultimately will help enforce conscription and draft to ensure that there are enough soldiers.

Every drop of blood on the hands of the military also falls on the police.

I remember my reasons. There was this chick I was seriously into, and I wanted to be able to support her immediately. Also, it was 2000, Al Gore was about to be president, and there was going to be peace for a while. Best to get the military shit out of the way so that they can't draft me later if shit hits the fan.

No, it is not, and that is a horror that is difficult to convey to a civilian. It feels terribly wrong. For all the benefits I received and am still receiving, it was not worth feeling like the property of something else that did not give a shit for the lives of my or my friends.

Jeez, I didn't ask for this feel. Did it at least work out with the chick you was in to, since it sounds kinda past tense.

Special Forces infantry sergeant here
Its past time that the left gives the military the attention it needs, just take a look at history

Any books or stories I can read about this? I don't know what that's like but my god am I sorry fam.

Nah, she dumped my while I was in tech school. It was my own fault for talking shit about her parents, a couple of silver spoon-fed rich-bitches from L.A.. I got married to a dancing chipmunk I met on vacation at Disney World a year later. Sixteen years later she's still with me, so it's all good.

Which branch? Green Berets? PJs? SEALs? Force Recon? Delta?

I have 2 friends who are ex-military. It's ok the State trains you well but yes ofc they want dogs. You can gtfo from the military once trained & once paid (they make good money there not even kidding), better than the alternatives.. Then they gtfo.
Ex-militaries are very useful for the insurrection.

When he is done saving convince him to retire, he doesn't wants to be sent to Afghanistan like a bitch ass pawn.

Keep in mind that you can also use the state as your idiot for your own training, capacitation then retire.

this

Comandos, I'm brazilian, not american, if that is what you thought
The situation here is not all that different, though

All those that do not fight for the communist revolution will be hanged like the traitors to humanity they are.

Imperialist scum or at least imperialist supporters no matter why they joined.

THIS!

I have no idea, but every veteran will tell you how different it feels to know that he was not in control of his own life. There are some guys who actually like that sort of thing. I don't know if it's a fetish or Stockholm Syndrome or what. All I know is that it grated on my nerves every day until the day I got my discharge. It didn't help that there was so much bullshit going on at the time. I was telling everyone who would listen that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and that the war was trumped up bullshit. I had a sizable stack of reprimands in my file by the time I got out.

Erich Fromm in "Escape from Freedom" makes the argument that individuality is too burdensome for some, and so they surrender it to be absolved of the problems that come with it.

Right on. Did you ever do any training in the States?

Is it unfair of me to feel repulsed by people who have that state of mind?

I don't think so. Fromm at the time was trying to understand the heart of Fascism, so it seems fair enough to feel repulsed.

Didnt had the opportunity yet, no

ppl with military training are very useful for revolutions.
just saying.

Always had an interest in joining the military, came close to it last year. The problem is that I would be just a puppet, although all the military shit is interesting. That's what most soldiers don't realise.

Don't fucking do it. If you go into it fully aware of what the shit you are doing is really for then you will lose you shit and get sent to Levenworth before your tour is over. You need that naïvete to make it through the first couple years. You have to be under the misguided impression that you are one of the good guys. Of course, that gets stripped away over the ensuing years, but initially you would not survive without it.

Most of military service is letting people order you around and mop floors. The baby killing is strictly for drone operators and the occasional infantry

m8 I think he was trying to rile you up

I've realized there's literally no difference between being a drone operator, an infantryman, a guy who works for Boeing, or a guy who works for Apple, literally every single thing you do under Capitalism contributes to every horrible thing Capitalism does. Just like there is no such thing as ethical consumption, because all consumption is effectively the same and fuels Capitalism at the end of the day, there is also no such thing as ethical employment. Literally every job is a necessary cog in the machine and everyone is guilty because of it.

The drone pilot who bombed an Afghani village is not particularly guilty or responsible, because for him to have been able to press that trigger the entire Capitalist system had to exist. Beyond the obvious like the engineers at General Atomics who built the drone and the engineers at Lockhead Martin who built the missile, you also had the workers who built the buildings they live in and the equipment they use and the roads they commute on and the houses they live in. You have the more subtle, like the parents and teachers who raised the pilot, the farmers and cooks who have fed him, the employees at Honda who built the car for him to get to his base, and then all of the thousands of scientists, technicians, computer engineers, etc., over the decades, whose work went into the computer and equipment that actually allows him to pilot the drone. It goes beyond taxpayers being culpable also, literally anyone who has ever done a productive job has contributed to murder, the drone pilot is just the last worker who produces the final product and gets all the credit for it.

That said, being in the military is effectively any other job, so whether you should join or not is completely a personal choice: whether you'd prefer killing someone from an office or from a tank, or whether you want to go home every night and quit whenever you want or go home after 4 years and not be allowed to quit without going to jail.

My grandfather was in the Marines in the mid/late 60's around the time of Vietnam - he signed up but only because he saw the writing on the wall with the draft & thought he'd get a better deal if he conscripted rather than was drafted. He never actually got sent in to Vietnam - tho he almost did literally a dozen times (he has an incredibly memory of even minute details - he remembers every carriers/country/camp etc he was in) and several times had to land in water. He's a fairly patriotic conservative tho a really nice guy with good humor - tho he hates both the Rems & Republicans. But yee while he has some amount of pride for his time in the Marines - he really doesn't like to talk about most of it & strongly discouraged his own sons from joining the army.

My dad once told me a story of how he really wanted to go to see the Army recruiter & my grandad begrudgingly took him. He let him go in & sit down & listen to the recruiter for an hour - but when they left he pulled him aside in the car & said "now son that all might've sounded real good & the man seemed pretty earnest and respectable - that said I'd bet 90% of that was lies. They'll tell you anything to rope you in. I brought you down here but please don't join the army."

What about those who do it to feed their family?
Or those who work for the army's furnishers?
Or those who work for the army's furnishers' furnishers?

If there is no ethical consumption in capitalism, it's because their is no ethical production either.

True. The entire thing is designed to be counter-revolutionary.

youtube.com/watch?v=uAXCQZhtzEs
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmudiyah_rape_and_killings
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kandahar_massacre
theguardian.com/world/2010/sep/09/us-soldiers-afghan-civilians-fingers
theguardian.com/world/2010/apr/05/wikileaks-us-army-iraq-attack
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp
youtube.com/watch?v=Ki17673d_Qk
youtube.com/watch?v=ijkD_I3ANOA

#Notallsoldiers

Protip : The bulk of the forces are made of working class people.

This is an interesting idea. Can you develop?

We have friends who are soldiers. Soldiers are not too fixated on the sacred "law", they can be saved from spooky ideologies. Cops are fixated, they're usually way too gone to la-la land to be helped.

A soldier can easily become a rebel like Donner, etc. A cop not so much.

More base bombing, less sneaky stuff

I can't believe I have to say this, but encouraging leftists to join an imperialist military is against the rules.

kys BO
imagine if lenin wouldn't allow soldiers to join the red army

BO why haven't you done anything to stop the faggot porn and pony spam?
like a captcha or a per-IP thread limit or something. literally anything.

Please point to where Lenin says "Bolsheviks should join the imperialist military."

There is a sitewide captcha. There is no per-IP thread limit. We are removing spam by hitting B&D+.

Don't discourage people from getting the best military training available.

There was a draft, there was no option in choosing.
Even now, most people who join are from lower classes who don't have much of an option. We're talking about people in small towns in regions where all industry has gone to the third world, there's opiod epidemics and they're indoctrinated with classcuckoldry and jingoism from cradle to grave.
These are people we need. And people here getting military training is useful too.

8ch.net/bans.html

What the fuck is this shit? You just banned and censored half the thread with zero reason. What the fuck is wrong with you?

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Absolutely this.

Look at Geronimo Pratt. He was a Vietnam vet who transformed the BPP into an actual guerrilla movement so efficient that the first significant employment of SWAT in american history was to raid a Black Panther HQ.

Joining the military and learning the necessary skills is more revolutionary than sitting on your fat tranny ass throwing out pointless bans that would be evaded lol

It's called entryism, and it's a legitimate and effective strategy. If you don't have at least a sizable fraction of the military on your side during a revolution. YOU. WILL. LOSE.

The very least we should be allowed to do is discuss strategies for educating active duty soldiers and veterans.

Why did you plagiarized the post from other source?

here's my reply, don't delete it this time

We have draft so i dont think much about professional soldiers. I guess its a easy job to have.

Kys nigger.

Che, please do Holla Forums a favour and jump off some very high cliff

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My opinion of them versus my opinion of them in the draft are widely different.

You consciously make the choice to be a soldier of US Imperialism. You don't make the choice, and end up being treated like shit.

I would defend a combatant in Vietnam's right, a Veteran, more than I would ever defend a modern solider. True, they get treated like shit, but its nothing like the way it used to be for Vietnam Vets. I don't doubt there's still homeless veterans of that war out there.

Americans and other colonial-imperialist armies past and present: useful goons for international capital

Other non-interventionist armies: good lads willing to protect our homeland from foreign aggression

Might as well start banning people for buying from Nestle or Walmart. Encouraging people to salt the military is not a new idea, and if you want to imply that such a thing is "supporting imperialism" then you're calling wide swaths of communists supporters of imperialism. Power is a responsibility, and you're proving yourself completely incapable of handling it.

imma bump this :^)

Did someone really deleted comments?Wasnt this supposed to be an anarchist board?
Anyway, military man here, support your comrades in the military and spread class counciouness if you are in the force too, the military are an integral part of society and no revolution will ever suceed without them

BO deleted the comments. See

Oh isnt that just amazing

Is this intentional?

There a lot of people in the military OP, and I'm assuming you're referring to the American military, the DoD and etc. etc..?
And there's a loooooooooooot of dudes in it. Active duty vs. Reserve. It's whoever is wherever.
Whether they do it for the money or college, or they do it for the adventure and experience, or because their entire family has been in the military, because there's an opportunity for them to go into special forces and take the fight someplace else that isn't covered on the news that you've probably never heard of. Then you have reservists who gather and report intelligence, repair craft and weapons, stock and supply supplies, push pencils, etc. you name it. Everyone tends to have a different reason, and those limited number of reasons aren't just either-or, like between two central reasons. There's like 10 different reasons people join.

My dad told me he joined because it was either the military, or prison. Spent two years in the Army training to be an Ammunition Specialist, got out and went to college to be a Social Worker. I want to go in to learn how to do Reconnaissance, Intelligence, driving tanks, disarming IOD's, and then maybe try to teach what I've learned later on down the road if what I've learned from college isn't taking off like I planned.

I also kinda want to be like this guy in pic related

That is allowed. Encouraging leftists to join the US military is banned.

can we continue the discussion in ?

Is it just the US military? Russian or Iranian military would be fine?

Joining US military is for the leeches who don't like the hard work so don't. Holla Forums also discourage that for some good reasons. I don't hate the soldiers nor US military. It is something to do with the corrupted government.