#there is no greater crime imho
A thing that the present day cult of united states military worship actively obscures, but which at one time was common knowledge both inside the military and in civilian life is that if you join the military then the government literally owns you. If Uncle Sam tells you to stand down wind of a nuclear test because it wants to know how effectively an infrantry unit can fight in the middle of a tactical nuclear exchange, your choices are “yes sir” or the stockade. This is not a hypothetical scenario but an actual thing that happened in the 50s, repeatedly.
Due to incidents like that and a number of other examples of the military leadership treating service members as disposable assets who’s only intrinsic value was in how much money the government had invested in training them, the military-legislative complex finally decided that if it was going to make this whole all-volunteer force work (an existential necessity for the military following the disasterious war in Vietnam) then it had to at least give some pretense to the idea of treating soldiers like actual humans.
So over the next couple decades, the military and the army in particular, begin to really try to put a humane face on the service. A lot of the casual abuse that was part and parcel of army life gets prohibited. Drill instructors can’t physically beat recruits anymore. The mantra of “no one left behind” gets popularized, which was a direct effort to counter the lingering belief that there were still American POWs held in Vietnam. Then 9/11 happens and full blown military worship goes mainstream, to the point questioning the military as an institution becomes a social taboo to an extent it never was before.
But all the chain store military discounts and thank yous for your services can’t obscure the fact that the purpose of the military is to carry out missions for the national interest and no matter what it claims, the mission is always first and the health safety of any individual GI is a nearly insignificant second. A solider is an asset, and although they may be an extremely expensive and valuable asset, they are ultimately expendable.
And of course part of being in the military means being trained to accept this. No military could function without soldiers willing to be treated in this way. It’s why so many professional armies have abandoned conscription. It turns out it’s a lot easier to brainwash willing volunteers into having so little regard for their own life than it is to get a bunch of draftees. This is of course also why militaries around the world, all volunteer or no, favor recruits who are just barely adults. It’s much easier to condition people who haven’t yet developed the sense of self preservation that characterizes mature adulthood to be disregard their own well being on command.
Most discourse about military training emphasizes training to take life, and the dehumanization this entails, but this ignores that a) outside of combat specialty training (e.g. infrantry, armor, etc) this is not as focused upon as much as disregard for personal safety, because this is the most vital attribute of a solider, whether in a combat or non combat role. Once you have someone willing to stand stoically down wind from a nuclear blast on que, training them to kill other people is easy. The dehumanization of self is the pretext for the dehumanization of others. A moral Injury by design.
Tl;Dr stay away from the military (every military) and especially the army (every army)
