Agreed. Nor is it unreasonable not wanting to get your limbs blown off or your entire body severely burned. Or come home with post-traumatic stress. Not only are those burdens that the individual has to brave, but his family also has to carry them. Maybe Blaron doesn’t want to put his family at risk of having to care for him for the rest of his life, just for the priviledge of saying he had a job way back when.
I’d rather someone enlist for the love of their country. Hell, I’d even have some respect for someone who just wants to be a warrior and live out their combat fantasies. But if people join the military just for a paycheck, how does that make the military any different than any other occupation? Such people aren’t as much heros as they are desperate.
Three of the seven branches are unlikely ever to have anything to do with combat. PHSCC is a particularly interesting case… all doctors and nurses (although the Wiki pages claim that computer scientists and vets are in it… cool!)
Just to clarify: career military is not just a job and never will be. To be career military is a lifestyle, not unlike a restaurateur. Half the career is spent on deployments where 14+ hour workdays, 7 weeks a day work is the standard. But it is still a very good living to make, and combat doesn’t have to be part of it.
Even setting aside the issue of danger and personal morals, a career in the military is unique in the sense that you’re not allowed to quit if you find out that you hate it.
I’m in the process now of learning to drive a car with manual transmission. It’s exciting, a little bit scary, but my buddy claims I’m learning faster than anyone he’s taught before. This should make things much easier for me to find a job in the city to which I’m moving.
I’d like to give a shout out to the anonymous strangers on the net who have offered me aid. You’ve restored my faith in (at least some of) humanity. And the friends I know from real life. You are the wind beneath my wings.
I’ve gotten a more reasonable number of work hours from my current job, so my finances aren’t quite as bleak as they were when I started this thread. I’m still pretty damned poor, mind you, but with todays paycheck I expect to treat myself to a meal of something more expensive than Ramen Noodles and Potatoes.
Once again, I’m not talking about Iraq infantry, I’m talking about white-collar professions that officers are employed in branches that generally don’t do combat, with field assignments such as drilling ice cores in Antarctica. I’ve never heard of any officers having trouble quitting. You can resign at any time, and technically, they decide when you can actually quit, but I don’t know anyone who had trouble resigning and leaving right away. (Most resignations I’m aware of involved newly married officers who couldn’t handle overseas assignments away from their family, BTW)
Just offering up choices. If I were medically qualified, I’d sign up in a heartbeat.
