Why would anyone want to fight for a country that is so callously disinterested in the welfare of it's citizens?
In the last quarter-century it has become extremely apparent that the US Military is not the "global force for good" that it wants to portray itself as. Most young people probably aren't interested in joining up to commit war crimes in the name of making money for the military industrial complex.
Every branch of the military has become increasingly toxic, cutting things like training and cleaning up black mold in favor of new uniforms every 2 years
@kvasir476@throws_lemy Suggested edit: After "In the last quarter-century" insert "I've finally noticed".
Butler saw the scam first-hand, 100 years ago. Every generation seems it must relearn the lessons of our grandparents.
As for young people not enlisting for wars of convenience - exactly. That's partially why a draft was around, and why it was so unpopular. And why the money each service pays for college benefits goes way up when there's a shooting war and goes down in peacetime.
My time in the Navy overlapped with the VEAP program, which would give me a 2-to-1 match for college - up to the maximum contribution of $2700. What a joke.
Compare that to the current GI Bill plus extra money each service pays directly.
They stopped offering student loan repayment as a benefit.
What really? That was the biggest reason anyone joined when I was in. Wow. So the headline should be "Military reduces benefits of service, less people willing to serve"
As pretty much any political minority will tell you, the country constantly uses us like ping pong balls and cat toys to win elections or internal battles.
I am sick of my rights, welfare, sense of safety, and hope for the future being dangled in front of me and ripped away over and over again so billionaires and career politicians can be greedy.
So, yeah. Not interested in serving. If my country wants me to fight for it, then it should fight for me as well.
I have two sons in their early 20s and I’m scared to death one of these fascist chucklefucks decides to get us into some conflict we don’t need to be in just because he wants to prove he has BDE and reinstates the draft.
I was in the Air Force in the late 70s. Twenty years ago (roughly) I pushed both my boys into the military, because they were being fuck-ups and I didn't know any other way at the time.
I'm thankful as all hell that they had the good sense to tell the military to get fucked when in Basic and got out.
Ah well, soldiers haven't fought for their country for decades. Instead they've been fighting for the interest of industrialized military, and the whims of politicians.
the american military-industrical complex is little more than a welfare/jobs program for americans with profits made overseas while at home were prostetlized that were 'defending' ourselves with overt patriotism
its absolutely revolting, and it boggles my mind how anyone in the military can find this a good thing for humanity.
Remember the video of the Iraq vet that was screaming at Bush to apologize in 2021 I think? He talked about all his friends being dead and a million Iraqis being dead all because of a bunch of lies. And while Iraq was one of the latest foreign failures, it was far from the only one. It just so happened to occur right around the same time the internet started connecting everyone. MSM couldn't whitewash or ignore what was actually happening like it could a few decades prior.
Eustice, who served 26 years in the Minnesota National Guard, noted that young adults were the military's prime target for new recruits—currently Generation Z, or those born after 1997—and argued that growing up in the internet age had made them used to "immediate gratification."
Oh look, another out of touch boomer. ItS tHoSe DaMn CeLlPhOnEs! Gen Z grew up watching America get involved in, then stay involved in, a deeply unpopular war. Gen Z grew up in an age where you can fact check someone on the spot and it makes it that much harder for recruiters to lie. They grew up in an age where half of the government is trying to drag the country backwards by any means.
I am in the military. I overheard my leadership talking with a woman who wanted to get out. When they asked her why she said it was because of the Roe V Wade decision. "Why would I fight for a country that won't fight for me?" I don't blame her.
A person saying kids don't want to join the military because they're too used to "instant gratification" is some of the most obnoxious shit I have ever heard lmao
If someone went up to me and said that, I'd tell them to go fuck themselves and leave, because fuck all of that.
I have a child who was born in 1999. The other thing men and women of that general age group has heard is "DON'T JOIN THE MILITARY" from their parents, starting at a young age.
Yeah. I was in the military, the Marines in fact. I will tell my two children don't join the military, especially don't join the Marines, and if you need to join the Air Force and work on AC units or some shit.
Everyone here suggesting joining the military means you're going to combat is mistaken. When I was in a combat role, the number we always heard was 10% of people in the military are in combat ops jobs, and 10% of those people see actual combat. The military absolutely offers opportunities to learn a trade for folks who are in a tough spot, and you can make it work for you.
Everyone who says shits fucked now and the country is just billionaires, I'm totally on board. But if you're some poor kid from Mississippi, being an engine mechanic in the Army might be your best shot at a decent life, and I wouldn't begrudge anyone that.
additionally, nearly every fundamental system (education, healthcare, insurance, car-dependent city designs, etc.) within the united states is designed to take everything away (or restrict access to everything) from it's citizens through poverty, thus making the above problems exponentially worse.
Exactly. The same idea can be used to explain voter disengagement. Why bother voting when both parties have engaged in scuzzy tactics, manipulation, lies and/or outright illegal activities?
There you go, 4 different conservative news sources that point out the same issues. the facts that I had stated in that comment are agreed upon on both sides of the political spectrum, the only thing that's up for debate is the solutions. and regardless of what you think the solutions are, they are not currently happening withing the united states of america.
I'd definitely fight FOR our country. But I would not fight for our country and those that currently control it. They're after all, the ones we have to fight against.
why in the fuck would any sane person sign up to die in a failed attempt to implement some shitty politician's whim half a world away? no one has fought for America in decades, they fight for the aristocrats.
Centuries. Up to ww1 they're was an official policy of isolationism militarily, we only got into ww1 because Germany was pissed off we were selling everyone arms, WW2 happened because Germany was pissed off we were selling everyone arms.....
If we kept to ourselves we wouldn't likely have ever entered either war and the "moral war" excuse only cropped up after we were attacked in both wars.
“moral war” excuse only cropped up after we were attacked
I think a lot of people would agree that the US had at least some moral authority to enter WWII after pearl harbor. Did it happen because we used diplomatic and economic policies in provocative ways that essentially amounted to taking a side? Yeah, but it also happened. The people who were killed really did die.
That's because Democrats are brainwashing people to hate their country and has absolutely nothing to do with Republicans voting AGAINST any and all help for veterans, Republicans constantly stopping service member pay with government shutdowns, billionaires killing us so they can make an extra dollar, billionaires using us to do dangerous tasks for minimal pay or Republicans voting to dismantle the VA. It's OBVIOUSLY the Democrats fault!
I don't think this is true. I lived in a big military town and not fighting for an America whose policies I didn't agree with was one reason I avoided the military when so many of my friends and classmates joined and served.
Nobody joins the military because they want a job where they are treated well. Pay and benefits definitely factor into it big time though, and are probably the main reason my late brother joined. He and I talked about how that is effectively mercenary though. Of course there are a lot of great things in America to join the military and defend, and we still do have a lot of freedoms that other countries do not, but it's pretty clear that it's not what it used to be. America isn't even in the top 10 on the human freedom index (we're 14th). https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/freedom-index-by-country
Ukraine isn't my country. They're fighting for their country.
My point wasn't that "fighting for your country" isn't a thing that happens; my point was that the many fights the United States involved itself in over the last 30+ years...aren't that.
I was in 7th Grade when the towers fell. That whole day nothing happened and we just watched the news.
Once we had a day or two to digest it my Social Studies teacher talked to us about what it meant. She talked about how the Vietnam war lasted nearly 20 years and that was not triggered by an attack on US soil. She basically told me that everything was going to change and that we were going to be fighting someone forever.
I'm sure she wasn't quite that precient at the time and I am colouring my memories, but she really got it to stick that the world had changed overnight for us.
Long story short, we have been murdering brown kids in their homes my entire life. Even if more death and destruction is justified in response, we really went overboard. Why would people my age and younger have any fucking desire to support more of that?
PLUS we finally talk a little more about mental health in this country and it is clear that when you brainwash young people to be ok with murdering humans, and then have them do that while watching their friends get blown up, they fuck their brains up.
I was on track to go in to the military as a kid. I wanted to serve my country and get college paid for, but by the time I was 18 it no longer seemed like a fair trade. I'll go in to debt to the capitalists to start my life, seemed like a better deal than a pension and a lifetime of demons from my past to battle.
Forced draft ruined the lives of my father and uncle. (Vietnam) My husband is permanently disabled from his time in the balkins and the VA fought us tooth and nail for every cent of his disablity pay. I would never, ever, ever join the miltary. All you get is a broken mind, body, and a shitty flag when you die.
And dozens of “minor” conflicts in South America and Africa over the years (for example, task force ranger and the battle of Mogadishu… as imortalozed in black hawk down,)
Yeah. Us military might as well be fighting for big corporations.
Even now with two wars the US isn't even fighting in, their corporations are making billions.
Israel and Saudi Arabia are a couple of their largest buyers.
Korea was not as disheartening as the other 3 on that list. Gulf War would be the next example. In Korean War the US had a major victory, created a long term ally, and the soldiers were met with overwhelming positivity that continues to this day. (At least among the older generations... younger Americans are making an ass of themselves in Korea now and drawing more ire).
I mean when we watch decades of wars that kill thousands of American's and MILLIONS of people in their own countries for no reason, maybe we need a little additional justification rather than "fight for your country". Nah! Probably just the fault of the "instant gratification" generations being selfish again.
We see more, and trust less now. Seems like a good first order explanation to me anyway.
Do you remember when the US Army asked "how has serving impacted you?" on Twitter and the most common answers were PTSD, harassment, rape?
Maybe that's why.
I've finally reached the age where I don't ruminate about being drafted anymore. I turned 18 shortly after 9/11 and registering for the SS was terrifying. Now I just have to worry about my two sons coming of age and being drafted into WW3. 😞
Terrible title. People are still patriotic and would fight for our country. They don’t want to join our military that is not currently fighting for our country to enter adulthood with worn out joints and PTSD.
Any country that is a threat to American sovereignty has nukes. We don't use armies against those countries. Ergo, joining the army is not fighting for your countries freedom. So, asks recruits, what are we fighting for?
After I realized that I fell for the lies that pushed us into Iraq (the second time) I was determined to educate any kids I might eventually have about why they should never trust and never join the US military. I then proceeded to do that. To be clear, my issue has less to do with the military itself than the civilian leadership.
Why are we going to fight for our country? Because some rednecks are uppity about some orange dumbass? Who are they fighting with? The cops? I don't see civil war as plausible.
Almost everyone I know that went into the military did it for the experience and to be able to go to college. That was when people believed a college degree would set you up for a stable future. Now that millennials know this isn't true and we're not lying to gen Z, they sure as shit don't believe it either.
The military should add to its incentives. If the military could for example, build you a modest home then I'm sure people would start joining again.
I mean, in a roundabout sort of way, the military does do that. If you're active duty, you earn an okay salary (compared to other jobs whose entry requirement is a passing GED), but a significant portion of your paycheck is composed of nontaxable benefit payments. For example, BAH or Basic Allowance for Housing. As a junior NCO in a low cost of living state, I was getting nearly a thousand dollars a month specifically to offset housing costs. That afforded me the opportunity to rent a very nice apartment I would not have been able to afford on my salary alone. If I had chosen to rent a cheaper place, or cohabitate with someone, I would have been able to pocket the difference. I also received something like $400 ish for food in the form of the Basic Allowance for Subsistence stipend. Not to mention free healthcare through Tricare. Additionally, most veterans qualify for the VA Home Loan program, in which the government guarantees a portion of your mortgage, which can mean better rates from lenders vs a civilian.
So, while the military isn't necessarily out here building homes for folks (that being said, I've stayed in on base housing before, and most places certainly qualify as modest single family homes), they do provide tools that vets can use to make that a reality.
Does the incentives balance out against the cons of military service? For me, they did. For others, maybe not.
Thanks, yeah I think in service benefits are great but life after the military is always the pain point. The military sometimes has crazy signing bonuses and you get the GI bill as well, I think if the military appealed to people's life after service more then more people would sign up. Maybe do that in place of the GI bill. Homes are crazy right now because there aren't enough homes, not so much because they're expensive to build.
Unless you go with an MOS that you'd like to do after the military, a lot of the time the skills you learn don't really transfer to civilian life. Young adults don't usually know what they'd find rewarding and the recruiters can often trick you into some job you didn't want. I wouldn't recommend it to most people.
That is indeed the number floating around, citing some work I admittedly haven't read by John Bagot Glubb.
Average lifespan does, however, make little sense as a metric. The Roman Empire is commonly understood to have lasted around 1500 years; you would need five extremely short-lived ten-year empires (I'm not sure that's even possible) just in order to cancel out the effect of Rome down to an average in the mid-200s.
Then comes questions of measurement. When did Rome really fall? Did the Abbasid Caliphate last 770 years, or was it two different empires lasting 500 and 250 years? These things matter a lot when calculating averages.
It would make a lot more sense to speak of the median lifetime. And still it's a wildly complicated thing to measure.
To run through the examples given by Glubb one by one:
Neo-Assyrian - 859 - 612, 247 years
Achaemenid Persia - 538 - 330, 208 years
Macedonian - 331 - 100, 231 years
Roman Republic - 260 - 27, 233 years
Roman Empire - 27 BCE - 180 CE, 207 years
Arab Empire - 634 - 880, 246 years
Mamluk Empire - 1250 - 1517, 267 years
Ottoman Empire - 1320 - 1570, 250 years
Spanish Empire - 1500 - 1750, 250 years
Romanov Russia - 1682 - 1916, 234 years
British Empire - 1700 - 1950, 250 years.
Neo-Assyrian Empire
859 BCE marks the start of the reign of Shalmaneser III, by which point Shalmaneser's two predecessors have already made Assyria the dominant power of the region. Perhaps it would be fair to place the date sometime in the previous reign, but I understand this one. 612 BCE is the fall of the capital Nineveh to a combined campaign of Babylonians and Medes. Fair choice.
Achaemenid Persia
550 BCE is Cyrus' victory against the Medes, at which point he assumed control of the Medean empire. 538 BCE might have been chosen instead as the date of Cyrus' defeat of the Babylonians, perhaps marking that as Persia removing its last challenge to hegemony. Not sure about this choice, but if we do take the earlier one it actually moves the empire's span closer to 250 years. 330 BCE is when the Achaemenid capital fell to Alexander the Great.
Macedonian Empire
Now things get weird. 331 BCE is the battle of Gaugamela, which more or less marked Alexander's defeat of Persia. Seems odd to pick a different marker for this and the end of Persia, but it's only one year apart so whatever. The end date is a problem though. Alexander's empire shattered within a few years of his death in 323 BCE. By 100 BCE Macedonia had already been a Roman province for 46 years. I'm honestly not sure of anything that happened in 100 BCE that might mark the death of the Macedonian empire. The Seleucid empire, one of the most powerful successors, had been more or less broken by the Parthians a few decades earlier, and the other big successor in Ptolemaic Egypt still had 70 years to go before Rome annexed it. Either way, Alexander's empire broke in 323, lasting just 8 years, and if you include the Diadochi its either less than 200 or more than 300 depending on which you count.
Roman Republic
The author gives some attempt at justification for splitting the Romans in to two empires like this. I don't think they're very convincing, but let's take him at his word. 260 BCE is the battle of Mylae, the first time Rome defeated Carthage at sea. It seems to me that if you're going to mark Rome's ascendancy to empire status by when it defeated Carthage then you should pick the victory in in the second Punic war. If the first one made Rome hegemon, there wouldn't have been a second in which Hannibal tore up Italy for 15 years. Hannibal's defeat in 202 BCE seems a better marker to me. 27 BCE is the proclamation of the Roman empire under Augustus. With Hannibal's defeat as the starting point, it lasted 175 years.
Roman Empire
180 is the end of the period known as the "five good emperors". The author writes: "It is true that the empire survived nominally for more than a century after this date, but it did so in constant confusion, rebellions, civil wars and barbarian invasions." the western half of the empire would last for almost three hundred more years, and the eastern half for well over a thousand more, including reclaiming most of the western half under Justinian. Roman hegemony in Europe and north Africa would not be challenged for centuries and this date makes no sense at all.
Arab Empire
I think this is mashing up the Rashidun caliphate, Umayyad caliphate, and the Abbasid caliphate prior to the Anarchy at Samarra. This entire listing is ridiculous to call a single empire when he counts Rome as separate for the republic, the empire, the western empire, and the eastern empire.
Mamluk Empire
This one is fine, running from the mamluk overthrow of the Ayyubid sultanate to the Ottoman annexation of the Mamluk sultanate.
Ottoman Empire
Not sure why the author picked 1320 specifically, but the rise of the Ottomans isn't well-recorded and it was around this date so it's fine by me. The end date is utterly baffling though. In 1570, the Ottomans launched a war against basically every naval power in Europe, and they won it. How is that end of their power? They would, of course, survive until their defeat as a major power in the First World War for ~600 years.
Spanish Empire
Not sure why 1500 specifically was picked, but it's roughly when Spain got a foothold in the Americas so okay. Nothing of particular significance happened in 1750 either, though, and it would be another 58 years before the wars of independence from its colonies started (and Spain's defeat by Napoleon soon after). Spain's "lifetime" as an empire should be over 300 years.
That's expected to be per year though, ain't it? Which means the air force will be about 40,000 underneath it's wanted amount? 40,000 seems like a large percentage of the ~330,000 reported as their ranks in 2021. The navy has a hair more personnel, I believe, around 350k? So 24,000 below that, not quite 10%. Those numbers probably aren't telling the full story, either. If the overall quality of the enlisted suffers, oof. Maybe those 10,000 that aren't coming in now were the smarter ones.
Considering nearly every empire that didn't get ganked due to major natural disasters, be they volcanos, storms, earthquakes, multiyear heatwaves or multiyear coldwaves was an absolutely horrible shithole to live as anyone not the ruling class.