I despise anyone who becomes a soldier of their own free will. The moment you enlist, you accept that you will be obliged to kill, and that you will have no control over whether that killing will be justified.

Not true for the USN. They hand you a contract that you sign. You only have to do what is contained in that contract. To change your job they have to get you to sign a new contract. I was never close to combat, and neither would any other Navy Nuke, though they actually left the school for the fleet. I skipped that step. There are tons of non-combat jobs in the US military that will never be anywhere close to combat. Logistics is why our military works. That being said, it’s worse than you are making it out to be. A lot of the people who signed up for combat roles were looking to kill people before they ever signed the contract.

You join the USN, you help with the logistics, someone somewhere presses a button, a cruise missile is fired, obliterates a target and a few bad guys, some civilians die as collateral damage - to me, you’ve helped kill these civilians even though, admittedly, you’ve only played a very minor role. I very much doubt there are any contracts at the USN that 100% exclude that possibility and I’m not giving anyone a benefit of the doubt.

I have a good friend that is a cardiologist in the air force. Joined the military when he got into med school to cover his tuition and the get guaranteed residency. He’s never been deployed over seas, never been in a war area, and never designed a process or item that has led to an indirect killing. An exception could be if he saved someone that went back to kill someone, but that would be true for all doctors military or not, so that’s not a valid comparison. There are many military jobs that are simple office jobs like accounting. Not everyone of them is linked to battle. If you think these more mundane jobs indirectly lead to military related casualties, you better start hating on your local grocery store, because odds are they have given supplies to a soldier that eventually indirectly killed someone. Or probably any public service a soldier could use, because indirectly, that may help the soldier kill someone.

The grocery’s job doesn’t rely upon the imperial pillaging of other places to make economic sense. “Non combat roles” in the military do. The military doctor’s job is to get the boys back out doing more slaughter. That’s the point. If they didn’t do that they wouldn’t be doing their job. Other doctors, that’s not the point…it could be some distant effect, sure, but for a military doctor it’s direct. Other doctors see patients who are not involved in imperialist slaughter of innocents. Military doctors do not. This is like Von Braun saying “I was only an SS officer developing military weapons for the science! I wasn’t like…info it, you know, you can’t hold it against me.” Accountants for the Nazis should have quit, and it’s okay to say they’re awful people and complicit in the holocost. Anyone who works for the US military is complicit in the imperialist crimes of that organization. I’m sorry if that’s you or people you love. If it is, you should do something about it.

Absolutely agree. I happen to be German, by the way. My grandfather was forced into the Wehrmacht, he tried fleeing the battlefield, he got executed. Anyone who works for the military enables politicians to wage war. And no soldier will ever be able to 100% prove their actions never led to anyone getting hurt. Soldiers know and accept that and that’s why I despise them.

Your grandfather was very brave ❤️ It’s sad that ordinary people are sometimes forced to choose between bravery and monstrosity. But there it is. And frankly, us military members are not forced. They can just…have a normal life instead.