None of the veterans I know killed any brown kids. The people we shot were generally either shooting at us, or had just set off an IED with a car battery. Most of our interactions with kids involved someone getting in trouble for giving away MREs to the kids that would walk up to the vehicle.

[–] pyre@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

wow #notallinvaders. i said kill or help kill. they fall into the second category. they still volunteered for unjust, illegal wars, unless you're talking about WW2 or something... the US had no right to be in any foreign country in the last few decades.

[–] blackstampede@sh.itjust.works 0 points 2 months ago

No one I fought with was helping kill brown kids either. You could argue that we were indirectly helping, since we were fighting for a country that was also sometimes bombing areas with civilians. If that's how you would like to approach this, then everyone helped.

If you've worked in retail then you've sold goods to soldiers, if you work in agriculture then you've fed them, and if you're a teacher then you educated them. Some small fraction of those soldiers went on to bomb kids somewhere.

If you want to criticize the US policy of invading other countries on a pretext and then propping up governments that do what we want, go ahead. I'm right there with you. If you want to live in a fantasy where all soldiers are merciless baby-killers, I guess you can do that, but that's where we part ways.

Soldiers are individuals, and they sign up for all sorts of reasons. A very common reason is an education that gives them a better shot at a high paying job so that they can care for their family or start one. Is it fucked that people feel the need to do that? Sure. Would it be great if there was a straight forward way for a person with no resources to get an education and a better job? Yes.

But currently, we're in an environment where risking your life to fight for your country in an unjust war is the best option some people have. And pretending that the reason they do it is because they're Bad People doesn't help solve the problem.