I was convinced that it was a good thing to do — that the U.S. deserved a strong defense, and that I would benefit from my participation.
When I enlisted I did not see myself as making some great sacrifice, nor did I think that others who did not serve should necessarily see themselves as being in the debt of military veterans — such a debt would be conditional, and would depend on when a veteran served. As an obvious example, serving during WW II would be more important than serving during peacetime (as I did).
I saw U.S. military service as at least worthy of respect, since any participation contributes to deterrence, and I assumed that the overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens valued freedom, and also that they understood the necessity of a well-prepared military.
For a different take on the value of military service, here is former U.S. Air Force Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski in the 2005 documentary 'Why We Fight'. Karen's story is interesting because she became convinced that the U.S. military no longer serves its legitimate purpose —
"I have two sons and I will allow none of my children to serve in the United States Military. If you join the military now, you are not defending the United States of America, you are helping certain policy makers pursue an imperial agenda."
In 2003 Karen Kwiatkowski retired after just over 20 years of services, over the handling of the U.S. invasion of Iraq —
http://www.salon.com/2004/03/10/osp_moveon/
https://archive.is/eYNwT
I agree with Karen Kwiatkowski for keeping her sons out of the military.
I am very grateful that my own life was not wasted during my military service, in some asinine 'nation building' experiment, being conducted by corrupt bureaucrats sitting behind desks thousands of miles away from the war zone. I cannot think of any positive outcome that has come from any of the U.S. military actions in my lifetime (from the Vietnam War onward) — never mind an outcome that would justify having sacrificed the lives of any of the members of our military.
To those who think that such a characterization of the more recent U.S. military actions is exaggerated, and that the U.S. military still deserves enthusiastic participation, I have another reason for disagreeing that I think is even more important — the attitude and mindset of many Americans regarding the proper limits on government.
I know almost no one who supports — never mind being able to reasonably defend — the principles of limited government and a free society. Apart from a small group of friends, the overwhelming majority of people I talk to at work, or read in the media or social media, have some kind of sloppy variant of fascism that they wish to enforce. That is, a government that exercises almost complete control over private industry and has an elaborate so-called 'social welfare safety net'.
Of course, no one will refer to this as 'fascism', but apart from the same kind of homogeneous racism, today's so-called 'democratic socialists' have all the same intentions as fascists of the past — authoritarian one-party rule, control of private industry by government but without government ownership to avoid responsibility for failure, and a control of personal income that would make Karl Marx proud. Like the notion of a 'maximum wage', that has been floating around for years —
https://archive.is/FpVu
http://articles.latimes.com/1992-04-08/local/me-457_1_maximum-wage
This is exactly what prompted me to write a blog post denouncing Bernie Sanders as a symptom of American dishonesty —
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2015/12/bernie-sanders-glaring-symptom-of-american-dishonesty.html
The 2016 Presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders was nothing more than a massive public display of vote buying — a corrupt political candidate promising to buy things (education, medical care, etc.) for one group of voters, with money taken from some other group of voters. The hypocrisy and dishonesty from Bernie Sanders and his followers has been brazen.
While pretending to be on the moral high ground with their supposed compassion, a simple moral justification for any of their supported policies is never given. Like a tribal chant, Bernie and his supporters just keep repeating the claim that some have a right to the labor and time of others, simply because of a need.
At one time, I worked with a couple of ardent Bernie Sanders supporters, and (to the degree that I could stand participating at all) I would try to point out the obvious problems in his positions in the political discussions I had with them — mainly the immorality of using the political process to take from one group to give to another in an attempt to pretend you are compassionate. One day, in a hallway discussion with one of these Bernie Sanders supporters, I pointed out how that not only had our company health care premiums jumped dramatically after the introduction of the 'Affordable Care Act', but that the premiums the employees now had to pay became progressive — if you made more, you had to pay more for the same coverage than a more junior employee.
This particular Bernie Sanders supporter was not comfortable discussing this — he made a comment about the amount of the penalty, as a way of dismissing it — it was as if he knew this was obviously unfair, and he just assumed that trying to pull everyone into the health care system, regardless of whether they could afford it or not, would not harm anyone. I guess it was lost on him that if one could not afford something, that something did not suddenly become affordable to them if government sold it to them — someone else was being forced to make up the difference.
This was just another expression of the dishonesty surrounding this issue, and is typical of Bernie Sanders supporters in particular, but also of supposed 'progressives' in general — none of them are willing to acknowledge that some people must be harmed to support their supposedly compassionate schemes. They hide behind such statements as 'medical care is a right'. Such language only appeals to those who want to force others to purchase what they are using — those who respect individual rights, do not respond to such emotional pleas.
For more examples of American voters who do not support freedom, consider these massively uninformed Hillary supporters, who do not understand that the question being asked was invented to highlight voter ignorance. And ironically, the typical Democrat views Trump as the danger —
Or how about these so-called 'social justice warriors' (SJWs), who aggressively attempt to make others follow their petty little dictates, as if it is painfully obvious that they have the moral high ground (these are Canadian students interacting with Professor Jordan Peterson, but there is plenty of this to go around in the U.S. as well) —
Do such people deserve freedom? Why? They do not defend the freedom of others.
Do Bernie Sanders and his ilk deserve freedom? Why? They do not defend the freedom of others.
If your primary life goal is to diminish the freedom of others, why should anyone be willing to fight for your freedom?
Enlist in the military to fight for petty cowards, who are constantly trying to use a political process to violate the freedoms of others? Why would anyone defend such cowardly, hypocritical, and dishonest people?
I am certainly not ashamed of my military service, but I would never do it again — mainly because I find it so difficult to find people who care about freedom.
