What about defensive wars, though? Occupations are often quite brutal, as well.
Even when a war is necessary to prevent a worse outcome, it is still bad
Well yeah, but if that’s the only kind of war that a military is planning on fighting, IMO it’s a bit much to call it “evil”.
As militaries are a tool of states to protect their sovereign power: That’s not what militaries do, though.
I don’t want to die for a state. Even if that state is being challenged in it’s sovereignity.
Of course depending on a defensive war, but often times you’re not fighting for the state, but your loved ones. Like on a smaller scale nearly everyone would defend the people close to them from harm, for example trying to stop a rapist from abusing your wife/sister/daughter of course not limited to women. Rape can be used against men as well.
In a defensive war the goal of states sovereignty and you defending your loved ones can align.
but often times you’re not fighting for the state, but your loved ones.
If I’m part of a state’s army, I’m fighting for the militaristic goals of that state. That state only has an interest in my “loved ones” insofar as it’s the population they require to achieve their political aims. My loved ones aren’t benefactors of the state. That’s just state propagana.
Your rape example has little in common from militaristic conflict that it’s simply a non-sequitur.
In a defensive war the goal of states sovereignty and you defending your loved ones can align.
I think you misunderstand what wars are to a state: In war, two or more states fight for their interest by destroying an opponents people and resources by destroying their own people an resources. I’m not a resource that’s willing to be used up.
I think every army that had to defend their home country would have preferred doing other things, and until 2022 i honestly tought that invasions were a thing of the past, at least in Europe. Russia showed otherwise, now i think that being capable of defending yourself is important. You dont have to have a ginormous army like the US but you have to be enough of a threat that somebody would think twice before attacking.
I live in Australia and until 2024 I thought we don’t need an army, we’re so far from any threats. But now I think we need to build drone bombers so we can drone strike some IDF bases.
Do elaborate.
War is always nasty, cruel, and terrible for the people involved, even if it is a just fight. Killing people is nothing to celebrate and there is nothing honorable about it
I agree with you. The rest of this comment may seem to imply otherwise, but two things can be true at the same time.
There is celebration to be had in not being genocided by successfully overcoming an invading force though. There is celebration to be had when you’ve eliminated a threat to your family’s lives.
If someone wants to play stupid games, let them win stupid prizes. I don’t agree with murder, but killing in self-defense, even at scale, is reasonable. I would even go as far as to say it is good to live a longer, safer life. As far as “good” and “bad” are just projections of human’s fear of discomfort and suffering, and desire for pleasure and comfort.
It is good to live, it is bad to die. If soldiers didn’t want to die, they wouldn’t go to war. They made their choices. Its a weird use of free-will in my opinion, but its an option.
Defensive wars? Like insurrections against invading armies and mercenaries?
If a fighting force assembles when its home country is attacked and disbands once they’re no longer being invaded, it hardly feels like “the military” at that point. That’s not how it works these days, at least in most places.
That’s a little naïve, isn’t it? Your fighting force isn’t trained, doesn’t have any equipment and so on, more people will die because of this.
Switzerland has conscription for men and voluntary service for women over 19. They receive military training and are issued a service weapon. They then return to civilian life, with the idea being the population is now an armed militia in the case of invasion.
It seems to have worked out for them so far, surviving being right in the middle of 2 world wars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland#Government_and_politics scroll down from there to Military
It seems to have worked out for them so far, surviving being right in the middle of 2 world wars.
Their conscription system is only a part of the story. Switzerland was not invaded in WW2 because:
A. it is geographically difficult to invade, has a lot of bunkers and armed people.
B. because the Nazis used it to exchange gold and currency to Swiss Francs and get free access to trade with neutral countries. Switzerland was more useful to Germany as a “banker” and middleman during trade embargoes than it could have ever been as occupied territory.
I know about Switzerland, they have a military with conscription. Lots of countries in Europe are currently considering reintroducing conscription, but that’s not some random fighting force that assembles out of nowhere in times of need, it’s still a military.
quick note:
that’s national service, not conscription.
That training is funded from the Swiss military budget for the purpose of protecting the state of Switzerland? Suggesting that conscription, aka a mandatory military service term, is akin to a training program for stateless militias seems to me a bit of a stretch…
If a fighting force assembles when its home country is attacked and disbands once they’re no longer being invaded, it hardly feels like “the military” at that point. That’s not how it works these days, at least in most places.
I’m pro abolition of the state, but this comment thread had no mention of a stateless society.
Fair point, I’ll accept that bit of nuance.
You could train them, obviously. My point was that when people think of “joining the military” they aren’t thinking about a defensive war - which is true. So “the military” is, overall, pretty bad. (Some might argue a necessary evil, perhaps, but it’s still bad.)
The logistics of what you’d replace the current system with are beyond the scope of “is the military bad?”
Oftentimes governments make use of that and try to indoctrinate their governments into thinking a war is defensive when it isn’t. False flags, clamping down on freedom of speech, large-scale censorship, promoting authoritarian and totalitarian tenets, violence against independent journalists and protesters, and so on.
That said, billionnaires and power-tripping CEOs are the source of far-right ideologies (as it benefits them to repress all labourers), and those should be combatted. When someone claims antifascism is an issue, they have practically admitted to being a fascist. And the only good fascist…
Yeah, doesn’t op know that Iran is TWO WEEKS away from developing nukes!? We’re in grave danger, we need to bomb all their schools ASAP because that’s where the kids learn to build nukes.
NGL tho I did learn how to build nukes in high school… All you need is a big donut of enriched uranium and a core you can slide into it quickly enough.
They are defending a made-up line on a map full of made-up lines and names. I don’t care about the make-believe show.
But what if the people on the other side of the line think you don’t deserve to live because of your world view, your sexuality, your skin colour?
I can’t think of a war that happened because of this. Please don’t say WW2 because even the history books don’t claim it was to stop the atrocities.
Living inside any of those lines doesn’t seem to guarantee that. ‘People on the other side’ is a story the powerful have been telling us for years. What if they start a war and nobody attends?
I’m not gonna fault an american for an opinion like that, but if you’re involved with european leftists who are too busy virtue signalling to adopt any pragmatic defense policy positions, you get a real appreciation for the nuance.
This applies as well to the french, polish or British armies no debate.
So many absurd things that I was told “you’ll understand/agree when you’re older” that turned out to just be boomer copium.
No, I don’t hate taxes (the opposite). No, I’m not more conservative (the opposite).
As someone pointed out, this is understandable if you’re from the USA.
Otherwise, I see it like this:
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Every country has an army.
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Their own, or the one of another country.
The baseline is that going to war is bad, having a defensive army is absolutely not (and will prevent deaths as russia won’t dare attack you).
Having a formidable army has clearly not deterred global superpowers from attacking you, especially if they get too cocky like in Iran and Ukraine
Neither Ukraine nor Iran had a “formidable” army when they were attacked.
Russia was supposedly the second army in the world too.
Iran has long possessed the ability to survive decapitation and respond to an existential threat by closing the strait. It’s why no US President tried it before now. Ukraine was more of a surprise than Iran, but Russia not realizing that their own neighbor wouldn’t be a pushover the second time was still a danger that they could’ve foreseen. In both cases, deterrence didn’t work because the invaders were greedy and irrationally confident.
And?
Still didn’t have “formidable” armies.
And sincerely your “being cocky” smells like kremlin apology sauce, you sincerely don’t think Ukraine is at fault in any kind of way for the 2014 invasion or the 2022 full scale invasion?
I don’t know why you think I was saying Ukraine was at fault for once again being the target of Russian imperialism. If anything, I’m giving them more credit than you are
No you don’t, because you have no idea how much credit I give the Ukrainian people, which if you wonder is around astronomical.
You can also just accept and say “ah yeah they didn’t have formidable armies. I was thinking about how it went after the invasions.” But that’s too hard for some people I guess.
this reads like satire
Sometimes, but do you let your neighbor waltz in and subjugate you?
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What’s even more wild is to ask a religious leader for a religion that says “don’t kill people” about how killing people in a war isn’t a sin. I was only a child when I saw one of my peers ask a priest this. The mental gymnastics the priest was trying to pull was blatantly obvious to me, even as a kid.
When I was young people around me told me that the further west on the map country is, the wealthiest and more free people live there without any conflict bothering them. With USA (the west-most country on map) as a shiny utopia with everyone peacefully living there being rich and free.
When I was a teen and my country joined EU I saw countless young adults emigrate west, seeking wealth and freedom beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Terrorists and oppressive regimes waged war in the eastern lands.
When I am an adult, the supposed peacekeeper of the world is waging wars to protect pedophiles. Former empire where sun never sets is trying to outlaw being young and sell their citizens data to highest bidder. And EU is bi-yearly trying to pass universal invigilation act.
I feel like my moral compass never really changed, it’s just the world around me that changed beyond recognition. I worry how it will be when I get old, if I even get to live to old age.
Hang in there, buddy, it’s rough but we are all in this together.
US quality of life is going down because labor market has lower demand. it used to be: economic growth -> high demand for labor -> high wages -> quality of life.
the only thing that it has to do with being “west” was that new land -> lots of stuff to do -> growth -> high wages -> quality of life. once the land is settled, that stops.
If nazis in ww2 had propaganda as good as american dream, nobody would know they lost the war to this day.
actually, to live without economic growth takes entirely different strategies than the labor market and wage mechanism.
it needs strategies that the US has not shown mastery of yet.
I know, but like, what? How? I just can’t see a society where that works with current ideas
Better society safety nets. Accepting that constantly chasing quarterly gains is unsustainable. Sometimes its fine for a company to just “Do/make X” instead of constantly pivoting and enshitifying chasing every % of profits. Accepting that sometimes employees will have moments of zero productivity and thats fine because your company is creating jobs and supporting the economy (instead of laying people off because $$$$)
I was once asked why I joined the military and my answer was ‘l needed money’. This seemed to shock my companion who was astounded that I was willing to potentially kill people over money. My response was that it was a far better reason than for imaginary friends or the colour of their skin.
Still a terrible reason and it makes you an awful person to be a mercenary for imperialism to kill innocents for bourgeois profits.
Never denied I was an awful person. Also, not in the American military.
Canada isn’t any better. Edit: Why is this being down voted when the comment under is being upvoted I looked at their profile they are candadian they say this multiple times.
They also didn’t say Canada
Looked at their profile they live in Canada say they are Canadian that’s why I said that.
Honestly I always had more respect for mercenaries for not spreading bullshit about imagined values and just admitting why they joined lol
Yeah well I think because they have some sense of (perverted) morals behind it, while you were doing it just for profit.
I always had a deep puzzlement with the military as an institution. It’s basically an organization designed to take young people and teach them to run toward a firing machine gun when told to do so. It defies all logic at the individual level, and it scares me.
The rich need cannon fodder.
When we talk about voluntary enlistments they typically rely on mythology of noble and valiant warriors and honorable deaths, or the military represents a path out of poverty.
It’s really eye opening to read accounts of civil war and WW1 soldiers who found out how brutal war actually was.
This is exactly why WWI is so interesting to me. All over the world (mostly Europe) we had these notions about honor and glory in war. Then after a bunch of people got fed to machine gun fire the collective consciousness of humanity shifts. Obviously there were folks ahead of the curve and already knew this.
But in general for western civilization WWI is the inflection point.
It’s so interesting!
I feel like I hear a lot more about how Desert Storm was the massive shift to the general public getting to see the horror of war. It’s absolutely true that there was a step change! I think it’s valuable to include WWI in this discussion because adding to your point about the machine gun the change in war technology fundamentally changed who was surviving the war and how, and what stories and life changing injuries they brought home.
It’s tragic and world changing if your loved one goes off to war and dies, but that’s also very abstract. Having them come back and either:
- re-enter society with visible bodily damage
- require constant care for the rest of their lives
- seem to be okay in body but come hope deeply changed by the trauma
really change how the people who weren’t there view the reality of war. Even for myself, it was hearing my grandmother sobbing as she recalled atrocities in WWII (she was a child) that really shaped how I view war.
I find it hard to digest that people in north america appear to have become less opposed to wars (specifically the wars of the US) than they did in the 2000s (which are the first wars I have adult memory of). If I had to guess I would say it’s a mix of overwhelm with everything else and that war is back to being more remote. I’m sure the people who are being droned still think it’s horrific.
Also US centric but I went to the Atlanta History Center a few years back. I am not from the states. The way the US Civil war was presented was so different from what I had learned. This makes sense, especially as canada uses the US as a shield for their own atrocities, and likes to emphasize how chattel slavery was outlawed here sooner. What I didn’t expect was the exhibit on how the horror of war left such a mark on the population. It was very enlightening!
Good point about Desert Storm. Because North America has been so insulated from war/ major conflicts we have grown to be more tolerable of waging it. Every 20ish years we have to be reminded that it is something to be avoided.
Also, I hadn’t even thought about how much medicine had changed and that allowed more people to survive but with injuries.
Another thing to point out is that Canada and the USA have only seen imperialist/ asymmetric warfare in my lifetime and this colors how we view the seriousness of it. How many d-bag Seals have podcasts or books glorifying themselves and how their rugged manliness got them through war? In reality they just had better equipment, logistics, and training on their side. But again it feeds into the propaganda machine pushing these societies to go to war.
Not to worry - eventually the industrialization of war will be such that invaders only need to use unmanned craft to decimate their opposition’s home population on their 9-5 shift and then get drinks afterwards. (/s)
The police are made to oppress your own citizens while the military is made to oppress foreign citizens
And if you’re smart, you can even use the military to oppress your own citizens!
itt: people justifying why their institution of mass murder is actually good
To protect from that other persons institution of mass murder. OBV.
Killing people is wrong.
But you have only a couple of choices when someone wrong shows up to kill you.
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Give in and let them take you over, maybe they kill you
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Put up a fight, possibly killing them, possibly killing you
The military is necessarily bad because humans are necessarily bad. If everyone could just train to defend themselves and agree not to use the military on it’s own citizens, it would be a closer to neutral
Humans are not necessarily bad. Working together in tough times is what made humans evolutionary wise superior and still does. It is power that makes humans bad. And more power even more so. Or how some English Lord put it:
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
humans have fought wars for longer than our recorded history, you can’t blame it all on fools seeking concepts of power. hell, we were fighting back when we were still apes swinging from trees.
We can’t seem to break free of those evolutionary ties that we have to out-compete each other. There are lots of great people, but we’re still at that tipping point where some bullshit makes one county chain-reaction genocide another country.
you almost got it. Power does not corrupt. Power attracts narcissists and psychopaths. Those people have been corrupt before. There are hierarchies all over the place where people higher up have authoritative control over the people (or even other beings) below them and the vast majority of those do not abuse this power hierarchy. Those people that do are mentally ill. It is just the higher you look the more likely you’ll find a mentally deranged narcissist because those are the people that really are into that shit and thus exert the effort to get there. For everybody else it is not worth it.
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Killing people is bad and war is bad and the military is evil and the only way to stop it is to use the military to do a war and kill people.
It’s not though.
So what then? Everyone hug and get along? You understand there’s way too many aggressively stupid people out there that believe profoundly idiotic shit that peace will never be a thing long beyond the sun itself aging into a supernova.
You focus too much on physical aggression to fight physical aggression.
Ever heard of diplomacy? Of political, economic, industrial pressure? What about all the wars that were prevented due to clever people making some clever moves that did not involve murder on a systematic scale.Furthermore, we’ve spent an incredible amount of resources on perfectioning killing each other, and barely on exploring ways to wage war without killing.
Diplomacy? My sweet summer child, that only works for a little while. How many wars have happened within just your own teenage lifetime where diplomacy was used to prevent it, but a war was fought anyways?
The simplest way to rebuke you is to quite frankly say to you that we are all still chimps with nukes.
If you honestly and truly believe that societies that have collected into nationalistic/tribalistic cultures as a whole could stop fighting each other, then I would say that you are ridiculously naive and ignorant. Literally for the entire of human history there have been people and entire cultural movements to foster peace amongst us all using diplomacy, for at least ten thousand fucking years, and people still want to kill each other.
The wealthy and powerful already know this and always/everywhere they wall themselves in away from society as a whole and protect themselves, then pay for protection using the same violence you are against using; we call them oligarchs.
The 21st century is considered to be one of the most peaceful times in human history. That’s indeed due to international cooperation efforts, i.e., diplomacy.
Get your facts straight next time you climb on a high horse to make condescending comments.
I mean killing people is bad.
Yes.
You’re really not gonna be able to talk me out of believing militaries are evil without more than that.
I’m not talking you out of “militaries are evil”. I just want to point out that war and therefore killing people is not the only option.
Thats so naive. Anyone who can look at the general population and conclude there is something called maturity is lying to themselves.
how do you define maturity?
Same thing with profiteering, entrepreneurism, “the need for growth” etc, basically all the bullshit our education system forced on us to justify capitalism and making the rich richer.
Like, no, definitely when I grew up I would somehow understand that its OK to screw people over and hoard resources for one stinky asshole while millions of people starve and die of curable diseases? Loooool nope obvious lie is obvious. I’m here now and I feel old and tired, choosing to fuck people over is still wrong and trashy.
I’d be less bitter about it if so many other people hadn’t bought into it…
It’s just their divine right to own everything and still squeeze us for more 🤷♀️
And suprise, suprise, House always wins.
