The Merits and Pitfalls of Military Service

lol @ interforce rivalries over food. Though I'm curious at this point branch of the Forces has the best cuisine. I never hear the Canadian armed forces members bitching about their food either.

1. Soldier (n): 1. a member of a national military, 2. derogatory term for a fighting man not fit to join the Marines.
2. Someone who was brave in the defence of others when cowardice would have been easier and/or accepted.
3. Someone who runs into trouble they weren't asking for.
4. You can justify anything if you try hard enough. They're always unnecessary, not that it stops anyone.
5. Historically, when enough of the population to be recruited into the conflict has reached a critical mass of ignorance about/hostility towards the "other side".
6. Sure, to the people not making the sacrifice.
7. A lot of dead people, with some side effects involving the concentration of wealth and power among the people who decided that people dying was acceptable.
8. That's generous; a more accurate description would be a fractal spiral. Conflicts breed like rabbits, and the more damage they deal to local populations, the more fertile they make the ground for future conflict.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

Oh, right, the questions!

Uh, well, here we go:

Can't vouch for anybody else, but I was a guy who wanted travel, adventure, a sense of belonging and, above all else, to keep the good people safe from the bad people.

Heroes? Sometimes. Victims and villains, too.

Wars are sometimes justified. More often than not, they are not. At least, not to begin with. Is it worth getting killed to stop crazy people shooting kids for being the wrong tribe? I think so.
Is it worth getting killed to keep petrol cheap for the public back home? Not particularly.
Whether to go or not is not a soldier's decision to make, though.

What does war accomplish? Sometimes it saves millions of lives or secures freedom for a nation. Sometimes it secures resources and power. Sometimes it sows the seeds of the next war.

For as long as people keep fucking and plopping out more little people, there will be violence.

edited 25th Oct '12 4:46:43 PM by InverurieJones

'All he needs is for somebody to throw handgrenades at him for the rest of his life...'

@Maddie: Yes you do, but you also get a yearly allotment of ~$200 specifically for uniforms, which you are supposed to use to replace/buy anything you require. Some things are ridonculously expensive*

, but unless you're exceptionally hard on clothes the allotment is more than enough. In addition, most bases have a thrift store that resells used uniform items. The only time uniform costs really matters is in boot camp, but it's not like you can spend any of that money right away so you don't really notice the several hundred dollars taken out to supply your initial seabag full.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

Lets not get into the whole philosophy of if war is good or not and a soldiers culpability. This is about more ground to earth and practical aspects.

I like to travel. I like the friendships I've made. I like the job. The pay is decent.

Those are my reasons for doing what I do. At this point it's the friendships that keep me in. I've got 84 brothers and 6 sisters who I don't want to leave behind.

I've heard from some relatives of mine that Submariners get the best foodstuffs. Sounded plausible to me given the environment they stay in.

Until they run out of stuff when underway...

I've heard a number of stories about (from a blog):

"I've been underway when coffee ran out. It was a bad couple weeks. Swiss Miss became the hot ticket item. Not a pretty time onboard.

My funniest food story is the opposite of a shortage. We had an MS 1 who meant to order a top off of some essentials. We were getting ready for local ops, playing rabbit, ORSE preps etc. I think the plan was to order a gross of eggs, but the MS 1 ordered a dozen gross of eggs by mistake. We ate eggs with every meal, order an omlet and it was made with at least 6 eggs, instead of a soup down during vulcan death watches we had egg down -I wish I would've saved a POD for proof."

"cooks put too much butter out on tables for meals (1/2 lb per table per meal) early in an extended deployment and then tossing the leftover butter - roughly halfway through we began to notice that the "butter" was coating the mouth like grease and looked more like soft serve than hard sticks and was slightly different color which progressively became more white - solution devised = cooks were "extending" the butter with shortening and coloring with carrot juice."

"On one mission we ran out of tuna (midrat favorite) so the cooks found a substitute. Ground up ham and mayo just isn't the same. Then we ran out of mayo."

"Was a rider on a deployment...Chop was told to only order 60 days worth of food for a 30 day mission. Sounds good until you count that we had over 86 hot rackers on a 688, to include 8 midshipmen who only watched movies and ate our food. We also had to stay out, with all of the hot rackers, for an extra 2 days due to a typhoon moving through the Sea of Japan.

7 day port visit following mission turned into a trash off-load followed by a stores onload to go back out and do a ROKN SUBEX. Thanks CTF-74.

We ran out of the usual stuff also, such as yeast, flour and sugar. We did have kielbasa, since the chop had accidentally ordered 1000# vs. the 100# he intended. Chop in Saipan could not understand why we wanted 1000# of kielbasa. Neither could we. We still did not want to eat the kielbasa even with the food running out."

They have awesome food in port, though. Made the stuff up in Schofield look like C-rats.

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

Is it really awesome or does it appear that way after long sea journeys?

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

Well, I was in the Army, and we had a detail picking up trucks from Pearl Harbor. Since we were working all day and all of us had mealcards, we walked to Sub Base and grabbed chow at their chow hall.

It really was that good. Better selection and more of it. Civvie cooks and staff, too.

Not that our facilities sucked, mind you, just that theirs felt better.

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

The interest reduction on loans is part of the Servicemember's Civil Relief Act, which I am a bit of an expert on due to my last job. Crecit cards, mortgages, car loans, all those things drop to 6% as of your active duty date. There are a couple of caveats, though. It's the debt you have as of that active duty date, so if you purchase new items with your credit card, this does not increase your eligible amount. (This came as a nasty surprise to quite a few people who went on spending sprees with their 6% credit cards.)

If at all possible, you want to get your SCRA eligibility paperwork to your creditors before you start your active duty, as it is a hassle to get it done once you're deployed or in training. This is especially true if you're going in for basic training/boot camp as many creditors will give you special breaks for that. (My employer gave 0% interest and no payments necessary for the first ninety days of Basic.)

If you've forgotten to set it up ahead of time, you can set SCRA up retroactively (up to 180 days after your active duty ends!) but this causes a massive accounting headache for your creditors' employees, so please avoid that.

Also, be aware that while the SCRA protects you against late fees, it doesn't protect you from being reported as late, or having further credit denied due to missed payments. (Some barracks lawyers get confused about this, because the SCRA forbids creditors from reporting negatively or cutting off your credit for using SCRA protection.)

Military will either make or break a family.

The marriages who go in it with both parties knowing what they're doing and commit to it come out like refined gold. But they go through the fires to do it. Kids can profit highly from a military life, but only if the parents are steadfast partners.

Two of the best examples I know are my grandmother who raised 4 kids alone so my grandfather could either fly helicopters or even command a ship for months at a time in the Navy. It secured their citizenship and family. The other is one of my dear friends. 3 months after finding out she was pregnant, her husband was sent to Korea for a year. He comes home, they get sent to Germany. He was there a year then got sent to Afghanistan. He'll be home in less than a month but has been gone 10 months. His kid is 3 and he knows him through Skype. She refuses to have anymore so her son will never have to share Daddy again.

Military will help your family. Insurance is good. Pay is decent, so are base schools. Also if anything happens to you, war or otherwise, your family has many support networks to help cope, government, social, and NG Os. There is a support system for times of seperation too. It could always be better, but it's better than most.

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

A soldier is someone who signed the Contract(tm), nothing more, nothing less. The US military alone numbers in the millions so I'm not happy with painting them, let alone all soldiers in all the world's armed forces, with as broad a brush as hero, villain, or victim.

I think this is a common misunderstanding of what a soldier is supposed to do, at least in the modern era. If you want to get into a big historical debate, you could go all the way back to the Revolution and question if it was "freedom", the abstract ideal, that the colonists were fighting for but that's beyond the scope of this topic.

In my view, the military serves an important role in foreign policy. Think about it this way: you can't negotiate with other people or other countries from a position of weakness. They'll just laugh at you and possibly throw some rude language at you on your way to the door. Labor negotiations only occur under threat of a strike or lockout. Marriage counseling only happens under threat of divorce. Similarly, organizations like the UN only exist because otherwise we would all be blowing each other to pieces for one reason or another.

So, without making this a whole essay, I don't think it's about defending freedoms. It's about advancing the interests of the country you serve, by force if necessary, if and when the commander-in-chief believes it is necessary.

A wise man once said, "The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war". I think that's crap. One way you can look at peace, or at least the refusal to go to war, is as an acceptance of the status quo. If you find the status quo acceptable, then that's great. Peace all the way. If you don't like the status quo, then you proceed to negotiation and if that doesn't work, to various coercive measures up to and including war.

You'll notice I never answered the question, because that is an incredibly tough question. War is a dirty, dirty business so if you're talking about justified in the sense that one has the moral authority to invade another country, kill their people, and break all their shit, I'm not sure that war is ever justified, with apologies to St. Augustine. That being said, I do not think that we should never have gone to war or that we should never go to war in the future. Regardless of whether it was justified or not, there are some bad people in the world that need killing but it's an incomplete solution. Until you take care of the environment in which these bad people thrive, there's going to be a neverending supply of them.

I think these are leading questions because they sort of assume the futility of war. Easy for me to say, I've never been to war. Anyway, these questions are best left to the people who make the decision to go to war, since they are the only ones who have access to the full strategic picture and know what has and hasn't been accomplished. I do know this: a war in which you gain absolutely nothing and accomplish no goal is a terrible, terrible waste of everything.

The cycle of violence is an interesting thing. Remember what I said above - you can't negotiate from a position of weakness. I'm pretty uninformed about this subject but my first impression is that a cycle of violence happens precisely because one side hasn't been eradicated and is willing to keep fighting. As advanced societies we, the international community, are unwilling to bear the price, in financial and spiritual terms, of crushing an entire movement and stamping out their will to fight, so they will keep resurfacing in other forms. I'm not optimistic about the future of peacekeeping in places where there is no peace.

• Now, what's really going to bake your noodle is when you start asking yourself, "If a person knows that they are volunteering for an immoral job and does it anyway, because someone has to volunteer, are they themselves immoral?"

edited 26th Oct '12 6:39:41 AM by HouraiRabbit

Wise Papa Smurf, corrupted by his own power. CAN NO LEADER GO UNTAINTED?!

I am reminded of a Richard K Morgan line in his novel Broken Angels, in which his protagonist comments that whenever you hear someone talk about "costs worth paying", you can bet your ass that whoever's saying that is not paying the cost.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

@Hourai - Hmm...that is a fascinating view.

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.

^^

Some of us acknowledge what we signed up for. Nobody wants to pay the ultimate price, but if you sign up and don't acknowledge the possibility, you shouldn't be there.

We don't need other people to feel bad for us or contemplate the morality of what we decided to do. It's a personal decision. All soldiers have opinions on everything. I didn't support our decision to go to Iraq, I felt it was on bullshit sentiment that we went. Doesn't mean I wouldn't go, and it doesn't mean I'd cry about it in the beyond if I died there for a cause I could give a shit about.

We all have our opinions on wars we're in, but what's at stake for us is what we signed up for, regardless of if we agree with it or not. It's a fact of the profession, and anyone who can't face that shouldn't join.

The quote isn't wrong though. I don't like it when politicians or civilians of any stripe say that something that cost our lives "was worth it" it isn't their place to make that judgement.

edited 26th Oct '12 9:13:49 AM by Barkey

Barkey, that's very true; I would hope that most of you guys realized what you signed up for.

But truthfully, I rarely hear statements about "worth the cost" being made by the guys in the military. That line most often seems to come from people who not only aren't paying now, they're also safely out of the line of pretty much ever being the ones who will be asked to pay.

The very few times I've heard it from the people who are doing the paying has always been in retrospect and in answer to the question "Was this worth what it cost us?" "Yes, it was worth the cost. If we hadn't done <X>, <Y> would have been much worse."

edited 26th Oct '12 9:14:34 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Yeah Barkey, it was a commentary on Congressmen, not corporals.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

^^

The reality will often be very different, from an officer perspective. I'm not an officer, so I'm not saying this is a perspective I always have, but I can understand why sometimes losses are inevitable. It doesn't mean I like it, or anyone likes it, but it's something you have to accept.

There's different types of "worth the cost". When was the last time we had a cause that was thought of as worth the cost? WW 2. But from a strategic level, or a tactical level, there is such a thing as "Under the circumstances, we did well despite losing people." or that when all the alternatives would have clearly resulted in more casualties. You don't ever like it, and you always feel it, but you learn to accept it.

Yes, that's why I put that last paragraph. In retrospect, it's possible to say "Yes, this was worth what it cost us". The people who say it in advance, though, are virtually never the ones who will be paying.

"It's worth the cost" means very different things, depending on whether it's coming from a corporal, a captain, a congressman, or a civilian.

edited 26th Oct '12 12:08:51 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Ham is better than tuna! Why would they do this?

Laws are made to be broken. You're next, thermodynamics.

Hamfish sandwiches?

No. Tunafish sanwiches.

Tuna might be healthier also, plus none of that messy "I can't eat this due to whatever" junk.

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

I am chuckling at the thought of a vegetarian chop forcing tofu on his crewmates for a weeks-long voyage.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

^ I'd expect the Chop would get... erm, chopped pretty quickly. If nothing else, to prevent the crew from committing mutiny.

(That, or the "walk the plank" scene from Down Periscope...)

edited 26th Oct '12 4:07:23 PM by Nohbody

All your safe space are belong to Trump

"What's for dinner?"

"Chop suey."

I had tofu once (fried) and thought it was pretty good, all things considered.

...probably not that far away from what powdered eggs are...

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

The only dish I'll eat tofu in is miso soup.

Also, I don't think the Navy supply system stocks tofu. I've done five deployments and never seen it in the galley.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw