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.

Working for the military makes you a war enabler. Best case. You help making it possible for some government asshole to wage war. Worst case, you become a murderer. So whether you’re in battle or not only decides if you’re a murderer or helping murderers. None of these possibilities are acceptable. Period.

Paying your taxes makes you a much bigger war enabler than the non combat military. And with taxes, you not only enable your country to go to war. You enable other countries to do so too, as your gov pays for weapons to give them. The fact is, noone is innocent. And the people truely causing the wars for thier own interest just want us to blame each other instead of them. Clearly, you are giving them what they want.

If you read my first comment, I explicitly said “out of their own free will”. I do not pay taxes out of my own free will, so your comparison is invalid.

Um… If they really had a choice, the vast majority would not join the military. There are exceptions of course. But most feel they have no other options. Just like technically you don’t have to pay your taxes (you can file a form to have nothing withheld from your paycheck). But it is the best choice if you want to make a living. So still, very much valid.

Feeling you have no other option (despite being a lot of other jobs on offer) and totally not having any other option (because they’ll put you in jail for not paying taxes) are two completely different things. With all due respect, but there is no reason to join the army unless they force you to. Even when Germany still had mandatory military service and they wanted to draft me, I opted to wipe old peoples’ butts instead because that was the only way out. Don’t you dare tell me there is no other option.

I’m sorry you were forced into that, but I have mad respect for you helping the elderly instead of joining the military.