So your point that they do not choose their battles is not entirely true. A soldier has as much a voice as any other person. They can choose to declare themselves a conscientious objector or refuse to sign up in the first place. A soldier in a democracy has as much as any other person an obligation to be informed and pass judgment as to whether a particular conflict is worth fighting for.

I respect those who fought in World War Two, for they did the right thing, or at least the thing that was necessary at the time. I don't respect the people who volunteered in droves when Bush invaded Iraq. They could have and should have known better.

joining the military are clearly known. In the case of WWII, young men and women enlisted because of the nature of and reason for that war. Once one is in the military, it's rare for those below the rank of colonel to really know the details of whatever battles or missions they are asked to undertake. In that sense, they are unable to choose between serving or not serving in a particular instance.

In some cases, the nature of some mission may become clear at some point. Atrocities occur when ordinary soldiers ignore the morality of their actions and do immoral things. Such atrocities occur in every war, sadly. Defining what is and is not an atrocity is a difficult matter, in many cases, and each person's definition is unique.

But, those judgments are most commonly made long after whatever happened happened. Hindsight.

I also served in the military, during the Vietnam war. As luck would happen, my service had no connection to any combat operations at all, but was related to the cold war, which was going on at the same time. I was posted to a tiny USAF base in Turkey, where the Russian language I learned while in the USAF was thought to be useful. How useful? Not much, actually, but there it is. What I did was clerical, and had no real relationship to any fighting anywhere on the planet. I consider myself fortunate to not have been faced with any moral or ethical decisions. It could have been otherwise.

I've often tried to put myself mentally in the cockpit of the B-17 my father flew, but am unable to visualize it clearly enough, despite having actually sat in the cockpit of one during a flight.

I have never been in the military myself. Several people in my family were.

Yeah, I guess the entire scope of what is happening usually only becomes clear after the fact. I suppose many people believed they were re-fighting WWII in the early stages of the Vietnam War.

of very bad, unnecessary wars. The Korean War may actually have that distinction, but it was so close to WWII, that it carried some of the same weight that WWII did, along with fresh concerns about the beginning of the Cold War.

Vietnam was wrong. Indeed, every war the US has been involved with since has also been wrong. Oddly enough, WWII was the last actually declared War the US was in. That is an indicator of the subsequent wars have been wrong.

freely honest, that respect for one's own right to moral dignity and honor, requires respect for theirs, even if you think they are wrong. We have an obligation to confront all of that as honestly, freely, and responsibly as possible, but we have no obligation to violate free and honest decisions that differ from our own, we can only respond to them as honestly as possible in our own choices.

I think the older generation had more of it. The younger generations are getting soft.

In fact, I doubt very much that it is.

Half the time it is "Those young ones are getting soft."

Then of course some bad story of a robbery makes the news and it is "Those young ones have no discipline and are thugs."

What it really means though is "Bah, get off my lawn."

The 300 ancient Spartans who fought the Persians were probably accused of getting soft by their fathers.

He and his fellow soldiers saved us from the Nazis.
This was the right thing to do. But the other wars Americans fought since then ...
I don't know.

We need to make damn sure we don't send our people out to kill and be killed unless there is absolutely no way to avoid it.... and that means actual danger to our own country. Not some crass political or economic gain.

How the fuck would any of our recent wars stack up against that criteria.?

The quality of the people is the same as in WWII. Look at the stories of courage and honor coming out about combat there and rehabilitation afterward.

At the same time, look at the atrocities and destroyed lives that have resulted. Not much different from other wars.

I think we need to honor our military people and veterans by NOT making so damn many of them.

...and a vast, insatiable sinkhole of public investment in arms and warfare. Our primary export is state supported violence, usually against civilians. Even our domestic social programs are characterized as "wars:" the war on poverty, the war on drugs.

Military service for the purpose of defending the U.S. and its constitution is honorable service, but no conflict involving the U.S. military in decades has been that sort of defense. When military service actually becomes armed thuggery for U.S. corporations and Wall Street, is it still honorable? When we slaughter innocent civilians by the tens of thousands to secure greater market share for U.S. business, or to enforce our political dictates upon nations who are no threat at all to the U.S., is there any honor in doing so? Those are crimes against humanity. That's what the U.S. military does today-- it is a professional enforcer organization dedicated to committing international crimes against humanity on behalf of the corporate and political interests of the 1%. No recent military conflict involving the U.S. armed forces can be reasonably characterized otherwise.

decision making grounded concretely in who one is in whatever one's life is. It's not compulsion, because freedom is what makes things like authentic love, authentic knowledge, and authentic responsibility possible.

I must strive for the most freedom possible in order to make the most "morally" valid decisions possible about my own behaviors and, thus, preserve freedom as much as possible for myself AND for others to do the same, since the validity of their own decisions affect the sorts of things that can and do oppress me and others and thus affect our valid/truthfull decision/choice making potentials.

If others should respect my efforts to free myself and, thus, make my own "morally" valid decisions/choices, if I have a human right to that respect from them, then so do they from me. The only criteria for our efforts is honesty, the freedom to be honest with ourselves and others, which is our only chance for any degree of validity in our perceptions of reality/truth.

I know that, though I try to orient myself in cognitive and social processes relevant to my choices by my desire for freedom and its consequent validity/truth in my life, I DO make mistakes. The best way for me to recognize those mistakes is to be free to do so, i.e. not inhibited in discovery by, not under, the evaluations and judgements of others.

Though it is possible for those things (evaluations and judgements from others) to relate to my choice, it still must be possible for my decisions to be made independently, to reflect as honestly as possible my own being in the world, free, from coercion as much as I am capable of that: my own decision, and valid choices or not, my own fate/consequences, and that applies to anyone else as much as it does to me as long as we are honest.

Therefore, others too, in the process of freeing themselves, more or less perfectly/validly or not, should respect the evaluations and judgements of others, including mine if offered, without depending upon those external evaluations and judgements in forming their own choices. This is what makes anyone's responsibility possible. Whether we are right or wrong, it must be freely chosen and whatever consequences of that choice recognized.

These are the principles by which I live. They mean that if I have a problem with the truth of what you're doing, you are going to hear from me about that, because I have a personal responsibility to defend freedom for truth's sake, whatever the truth actually turns out to be. I'm supposed to make whatever effort I can and accept the consequences, not only for what I can do, but also for what I choose not to do.

You may even hear from me a lot and in the strongest terms possible, if I think your "choice" isn't actually a choice, or if I think you are being dishonest about the effects of your behavioral decisions upon your own freedom and/or that of others and the consequences of all of this to how all of us manifest truth in our being, because if we're going to change anything that oppresses (hides whatever the truth actually is from us), we MUST begin with where we actually are.

So, when it comes down to limits that have to do with direct harm to others (who also have all of these same human rights as you or I have) and it is harm in which it is possible for me to intervene, I am required to do whatever I honestly decide that I can and, then, whether your choice was valid or invalid, whether you were right or wrong, I must accept my own responsibilities/behavioral choices for the consequences/effects of YOUR actions. I can't just walk away and say, TTE, "I made my choices, so what happened isn't my fault."

The reason that I am taking some pains to articulate this is because of what I hope it leads to: If I hold myself and others accountable for ending the ways that we oppress ourselves and others by our "choices", if I commit to whatever it takes to honestly free myself, and that includes my behavioral responsibilities for how the oppression of others also oppresses me and because of that oppression we all become less and less authentic, more and more invalid/unreal/more false, if I commit myself to this struggle, to hold myself accountable and respectfully ask others, at every opportunity, to hold themselves honestly accountable, eventually, those who have honestly and FREELY chosen to accept the consequences of authentically defending others, from those who would oppress anyone by means of any of the various forms of violence, will meet one another in a field that honors their commitment to that effort by NOT violating the rights of those who have not FREELY chosen to do or to support that same defense.

What I'm trying to deal with here is the possibility of an authentic need for defense, from those who would do actual violence in the name of oppression, and the possibility that in the family of man such persons aren't limited to this or that political, religious, national, or any other boundaries, that is, they can be on "your own" side, so what to do and STILL free people to act upon any authentic need for defense, still honor the FREE choices of those who accept the responsibility for authentic/valid/real needs for defense.

These are the reasons that machine wars trouble me, because they change behavioral cause and consequences too much and CAN ignore collateral damage entirely.

........................................

I don't know how well I have said this, probably not well enough. If you have read The Bhagavad Gita, you might have the context for what I'm trying to say here. Hinduism (the ancestor of Buddhism) is NOT Christianity; it seems more whole -istic to me, more honest/real. Read Krishna's talk with Arjuna on the night before the great fratricidal war begins to get some influences upon what I'm trying to say.