Of course it’s not bad. People join the military for a myriad of reasons.
What really bothers me is this attitude that somehow there’s something wrong with planning for a future after the military. The military is not a sustaining lifelong career for everyone. Is it so damn horrible to join for a few years to get some skills that you can use for the rest of the possibly 50 years you might live afterwards?
I’m not sure why some people think some greater sense of patriotism is even necessary. People work hard and risk their necks for the people around them.
But there are a fair number of people in the country that simply having 3 meals a day, some place to sleep and a regular paycheck is a huge deal, and doing it without having to do anything illegal is amazing [I knew someone when I lived in Norfolk who joined because her boyfriend was pushing her to “just go out on a ‘date’ with my buddy, I owe him $25 and he will let it go if you ‘just go out with him this saturday’” She didn’t feel like being pimped out and with no work available in her town, getting away from him would have been problematical. Enlisting got her out of her town, away from a potential pimping situation [as she saw it, if she agreed to do it once, there probably would be more times her BF would ‘loan’ her out] and she got the ability to make and save money and get to an area with better prospects [and less pimping.]
Not to mention, if you live in a small town, have nothing going for you except a high school diploma and a clean record, why not enlist? Regular paycheck, 3 hots and a cot, full medical and the ability to save money is pretty decent compared to working at Walmart or McDonalds.
There is a long tradition of that. Historically speaking, joining up has been seen as superior to starving.
I will say that as the mother of two teens, my 2.0 GPA non-college bound son gets a different sort of recruitment than my high achieving daughter. She gets invitations to apply to West Point. He gets the “you don’t know what you want to do with your life, the military is an option.” And it is. Its a job when jobs are scarce for young men with high school diplomas.
(He’s planning on trade school having decided that getting up early and boot camp isn’t his idea of fun - the getting shot at thing isn’t fun either.)
I don’t think it’s bad and really most soldiers don’t see any combat and truthfully join for the benefits. That way you actually get a greater diversity in talents and personalities. When I was in the Army I knew people who joined for the sole purpose of paying off massive student loan debt, they weren’t lesser soldiers because of it from what I saw. I was verging on being homeless when I joined and I didn’t want to lean on Mommy and Daddy anymore.
I chose the MOS that paid me the largest bonus but I enjoyed the military lifestyle because at the time I really needed the structure and discipline. I wanted to do a second enlistment but it didn’t pan out after an injury. I promise you that if you slashed the benefits significantly a lot less people would volunteer, these guys aren’t working for free after all.
Same here…I joined for a combination of reasons, but the primary was the training and help with college. The fact that it gave me something to do right out of high school along with free room and board didn’t hurt either. 
Plus, it had become sort of a tradition…my dad had joined the USN basically to get his citizenship, and I felt kind of like I owed the country a bit more.
Mine did the same thing, three years earlier.
I’d prefer people join the military (or the police for that matter) for the benefits. I’d assume they are going to be, as a whole, more sane, respectful and professional than the ones who join out of some deep seated ideology or because they feel they have to save the world.
This is how my brother got to patrol the Berlin Wall from '69 to '71.
If you enlist you can get some control over where you end up in the military complex. I don’t know what role, if any, length of service played. I assume people who enlist are in the military for far longer than draftees, but I don’t know. I do recall one teacher I had in high school saying she signed up for one military unit over another because the length of her contract was shorter.
I’d like to think if I had a 18-year-old kid, the two of us wouldn’t be living under those circumstances. If we’re homeless and eating out of trash cans or some crazy shit like that, I most certainly would push my hypothetical son into joining up. Because we’re already in the worst case scenario. But that’s a pretty different reality from the one I’m currently living in. If my son or daughter told me they were going to join the Army solely because I can’t afford to pay their college tuition, I’d feel like I failed somehow as a parent. I’d tell them to hold off on that decision so that we could figure out an alternative that’s not so rash and fraught with risks.
I don’t like this kind of attitude, frankly. The chances of coming back from a day’s work at Walmart or McDonald’s with a chronic head injury or PTSD is pretty dang slim. Not so with the military. Every time I see one of the “Wounded Warrior” commercials, I am reminded that too many people in this country think that their inability to answer the question “Why not enlist?” means they don’t have options. When really they just don’t know their options. To get out of many crappy circumstances, all you need is a bus ticket and enough gumption to tell family members, “Stop bugging me for shit and let me live my own fucking life!” You don’t have to join the Army to get out of Bumfuck.
If I’ve got a kid who is prone to bad decisions, do I really want him to go get himself discharged for bad conduct? At least if he gets fired for stealing a stray french fry at McDonald’s, the shame of it won’t last a life time.
[QUOTE=monstro]
I don’t like this kind of attitude, frankly. The chances of coming back from a day’s work at Walmart or McDonald’s with a chronic head injury or PTSD is pretty dang slim. Not so with the military. Every time I see one of the “Wounded Warrior” commercials, I am reminded that too many people in this country think that their inability to answer the question “Why not enlist?” means they don’t have options. When really they just don’t know their options. To get out of many crappy circumstances, all you need is a bus ticket and enough gumption to tell family members, “Stop bugging me for shit and let me live my own fucking life!” You don’t have to join the Army to get out of Bumfuck.
[/QUOTE]
You do realize that even assuming you went into one of the ground combat arms and even if you actually got shipped off to Afghanistan that the probability of you being one of the ones hurt is pretty low, right? And you could always join the Navy or Air Force instead of the Army or Marines if you were not wanting to have the chance for PTSD. I’d guess that, depending on the Walmart or McDonald’s the actual probability of you getting PTSD or a head injury are fairly similar if you are in the dire straights being posited in your back and forth.
No, you don’t have to join the Army to get out of Bumfuck…there are definitely other ways. But it’s still a good deal for kids right out of high school without a lot of good prospects for college or the like. It’s a good deal even for kids with more advantages, though obviously you (the broader you, not necessarily you, if that makes sense) folks with silver spoons in your mouths might look down on it. For me, a young hispanic teen from the barrio the Navy was a pretty sweet deal, but obviously MMV.
The probability of just about every risky thing is pretty low.
I have a pretty low probability of getting mugged while walking in downtown Richmond late at night. I do it frequently enough to know. But it’s still something I wouldn’t want my own kid to do, especially since I’d feel horrible guilt if something bad were to happen. I’d also feel obligated to care for said kid if he were to suffer from one of those “low risk” life-wrecking injuries. Frankly, being a caretaker of a disabled child is not how I envision spending my golden years.
I’d probably be like the majority of parents and end up fully supporting his decision in the end. But I’d really like to think he was joining up for more than just the money. Even if his chances of being killed or maimed were low, the military is still ultimately about killing people. Potentially innocent ones. I’d like to think that my kid would require a lot more than a free ride to a university to accept that kind of heavy responsibility.
My brother joined the Army right out of high school. He’s not book smart and didn’t do great in school, so he felt like he didn’t have any options. Even though he wasn’t in combat and didn’t have anything really messed-up happen to him during his stint, he did not enjoy his time in the military and regrets having made the decision. I think he’s doing well for himself now. But I don’t think the credit for that should go to the Army.
actually, what the hell do I care.
ETA:Not directed at posts immediately above mine.
In my military experience, the US Armed Forces are pretty good at not enlisting people who want to join for “killing people” and are very good at discharging those who do manage to slip in anyway.
Yes, most of us do work for the benefits. That much is true. The difference is, most of us don’t have jobs that involve committing acts of violence towards other human beings. The military does.
For me, the issue is the personal qualities of people who join the military. If someone is going to commit violence, they need to have a pretty good reason for it.
To say “Hitler is a threat to the freedom of tens of millions of people, we have to stop him” is a pretty good reason for committing violence against Hitler.
To say “I was conscripted against my will, I didn’t want to go to war, but I’d have been put in prison if I’d refused” is a fairly good reason. I’m sympathetic to anyone in that situation. Thank god I’ve never been there.
To say “This was is pointless and destructive, but if I enlist and participate then I will get great benefits for myself” is not a very nice thing to do. People who do that, they may well make some of the best soldiers. but they also make some of the worst humans. I really can’t understand how they can live with themselves, or why their families don’t disown them.
As for the people who talk about “serving my country” I’ll make two points.
First of all, it is sometimes a meaningless and hypocritical phase. People often don’t think about what the word means. To serve your country means putting the welfare of your country before your own. Going to a war that doesn’t benefit your country is no service. Anyone who claims to have “served” in Iraq had better be prepared to explain what the war was actually for.
Secondly, “serving your country” is only a good thing if your country’s objectives are reasonable in the first place. We might consider a Confederate soldier dedicated to the South’s cause, who really believes that the South needs slaves, and willing to lay down hisa own life for the cause. He really is serving, but it isn’t something I’d respect.
I see the whole thing on a sliding scale, with “<” here meaning “is worse than”:
volunteer because you believe a bad ideology e.g. Nazism < volunteer because generally patriotic < volunteer for the benefits < volunteer to help defend your country when actually attacked < drafted / national service < not joining military at all. Although being drafted and volunteering for defence are pretty much equivalent…
I agree with most of MrDibble’s hierarchy. But I have a severe problem with the last statement: that not joining at all is the morally best option.
Clearly that falls apart if 100% of the populace does it. Anyone who thinks a major country today could abolish its armed forces without consequence is not someone I care to debate; their reality disconnect is too large.
There is, I think, a significant difference between volunteering in a peacetime / Cold War era, and volunteering in an era when your country is engaged in wars of adventure. So IMO folks would be wise to qualify their opinion along those lines.
My experience:
I volunteered as a USAF officer during the Cold War. And served in some hot spots, but nothing like Iraq, etc. Outside of training assignments I was always in a direct combat position. Had there been a real shooting war at any time I’d have been actively shooting and getting shot at daily.
My motivations were adventure, job training, and a sense of giving back. Probably 45, 40, 15. I took a pay cut versus my in-college job to join. And after my 8 years’ service ended I used my USAF training to obtain a job in a different career field than my college education. And have continued since then using either or both skill sets to maintain two parallel careers.
Overall I’d say I got outcomes pretty much in proportion to my expectations: I had adventure, some shooting & killing but no dying, job training, and gave back to both the world at large and my country in specific.
Additional thoughts:
The OP in the other thread is a nutso if he thinks folks *must *join for purely flag-wrapped reasons or else be some sort of Traitor to the Cause. He thereby demonstrates that for all his bluster the one thing he is not is an actual service member or veteran. He’s a fanboy in service of a fantasy.
Somebody close to the top of this thread said there’s a big difference between the reasons somebody enlists and the reasons somebody re-enlists. I thought that was especially perceptive. Careerist / mundane concerns matter a lot more when you’re re-upping, be that as enlisted after 2-3 years or an officer after 5 or 8. If nothing else, at that point one has a pretty good understanding of the reality as opposed to the mystique / romance of recruitment posters and popular culture.
Yeah, that excuse can’t fly.
I joined during the Cold War ('87 to be specific). I was there because I wanted to serve, and serve with pride and patriotism - that is why I bought into the Marine Corps pitch as well.
Once in, I quickly shifted to an ROTC scholarship when offered and was able to get all of my tuition and books covered. The Cold War ended, and drawdowns started. I was cut from the ranks officially due to medical, unofficially because they needed to cut - the Marines did not need as many officers coming out that year. Found myself without the career I thought I had…
Was a civilian about the time that the Gulf War started - interesting walk.
But yes, I joined for jingoism, stayed for the benefits, sometimes miss the camaraderie, and still get together with some friends from the service. Of the 10 closest friends, 2 are still in (one made Bird!).