You live in Europe, correct? Maybe you would need to live here to understand, but most of the people in the military are there because they care very much about this country, and what it was founded on.
The last part "what is was founded on" bugs me. Because of many things I hear about modern-day US that sounds just like empty words, not ideals that are actually upheld. USA seems mostly like a corrupt nation now, run by corporate interests, and that includes what the government orders the US military to do.
But yeah, you also have a great amount of internal propaganda to uphold the belief within your own population of living in the "best of all possible worlds". The rest of the world has seen it because you have exported a whole lot of media containing it.
I know many US citizens enter the military also for a career opportunity. I think many enter for varying degrees of all three reasons mentioned.
I do think that Saddam, literally being a genocidal maniac who used chemical weapons on the Kurds, burying them by the thousands at a time, needed what was coming to him, but I also know that nothing could ever have been resolved permanently in the middle east because the Treaty of Versailles had already destabilized that region with its arbitrary redrawing of all borders based on European spheres of influence, and disregarding religious and ethnic sensitivities.
Saddam was a tyrant, yes, but I don't agree that he was a maniac. He did manage to keep opposing forces within the country in check, and BTW, he did actually use that same argument as justification for some of his actions.
What the British did a hundred years ago does not change that the US were in charge of Iraq last, and completely mismanaged the country after the invasion. A whole lot has been studied and written about it. The US invasion is what allowed Daesh/ISIL/ISIS (whatever you want to call it) to rise up, and is therefore indirectly a reason why the war in Syria has been going on for as long as it has.
And don't forget that the US invasion of Iraq had not been to save the world and the peoples of Iraq from a tyrant, but simply because of corporate greed - to seize their oil.
If you haven't already, go read up on the organisation Project for the New American Century. Too few "americans" seem to know about it. During the '90s, they had lobbied the Clinton administration to invade the Middle East and install puppet regimes to safeguard a steady oil supply to the US.
They had been completely open: with a public web site, with their manifesto and members. In January 2001, several official founding members got installed at high-ranking positions in the US government and Pentagon, including the offices of vice president and secretary of defence. (There are even those who say that a group with several PNAC members had chosen GWB as their front-man, and not the other way around.)
In June 2001, the administration retreated from the Kyoto protocol (despite GWB not disbelieving anthropogenic global warming: he's not an idiot) and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and introduced the Bush Doctrine of a policy that allowed preemptive war. I'm not a conspiracy nut, but 9/11 was very convenient for them. A military operation in Afghanistan had already been in the works as a punitive expedition against the Taliban for them having refused an oil pipeline through their territory. In 2002, the administration also in-effect withdrew from the Rome statute of the ICC — in effect declaring "we may allow our soldiers to perform war crimes".
If the US hadn't royally screwed up ... PNAC's plans had also included an invasion of Iran, launched from Iraq and Afghanistan.
But you never heard of PNAC in US "news" did you ...
... our constitution, uniquely, gives the citizens not just the right, but the obligation, to resist tyranny.
Then why don't you?
Well, this will be a fun one, to be sure. Empty words? I'm almost inclined to agree with you, but then again, I'm not entirely sure that we would even mean the same things when we say that. Could you elaborate?
Well, we've been a corrupt nation for almost as long as we've existed, since Madison never intended for us to be inseparably chained to a ceaselessly, irrationally, dogmatic two party system. There was corruption during the time of Lincoln ... and especially before, and that of Grant. There was certainly corruption during the time of Teddy Roosevelt, over one century ago, much of which was his focus as president, as a matter of fact. There was corruption during the time of FDR, Nixon, Johnson, and JFK, for certain. I imagine that's the case with most any president that you can name, although that corruption didn't always lead to the oval office itself. I'll leave it at that for now, other than to further summarize that I feel that this country was a beautiful idea, with a wonderful constitution, ruined soon after by pointless partisan politics, and certainly corruption of all kinds otherwise.
I'm not sure what it is that you mean by "the best of all possible worlds". I imagine a New Yorker may think that way ... when referring to their hell hole as the "greatest city in the world". I don't think that true Americans care too much about greatness. America is an idea, not a place, and not a people. An ideal. We have no shortage of propaganda, that is to be sure, but I don't see pointless, misguided vanity as intentional propaganda.
Yes, I would agree that some may do it simply as a career, without any patriotic influence whatsoever, although most that do choose it primarily as a career are also influenced to do so because of their ideals. What exactly is this illusive third reason?
I'm not sure how anyone can be a tyrant but not simultaneously a maniac. The man was a mass murderer. He had 0 real justification for his methods. Iraq, as it is drawn on the map, should not exist. I'll spell this out again, since this seems to have been entirely lost in translation: Sadam's Iraq should never have existed, Iraq as it is today should not exist either. That's literally all I said in my previous post. All of the territorial borders in the middle east are fubar. Wars literally will not cease until, if ever, that is resolved. We've done nothing at all in pursuit of this goal, just topple dictators and try to force fit Democracy.
The British were not all that were involved in Versailles, most of the major players of the Entente were ... even though this was technically an armistice. And its collective stupidity has caused the deaths of what we may be able to amount to hundreds of millions of people, if we can even consider the rises of Mao and, most definitely Hitler as unfortunate ripple effects ... as WW2 itself was also a direct result of Versailles, hindsight being 20/20.
We, as a global community (if even appropriate) didn't destroy ISIS decisively when we had the chance. We certainly even should have either moved on Syria when we had the opportunity, or left the region once Russia did. That awkward revival of the Cold War didn't help matters. Though, if not ISIS, it would have been Bin Laden's al-Qaeda, and if/when we've left that mad house, it will be someone else, possibly Iran, or the Taliban, if they ever recover. Maybe even our great "friends", the Saudis. We've certainly ruined any chances for regional stability by abandoning the Kurds and letting Iraq, Turkey, and Syria, walk all over them when we had the chance to prevent it in all cases. Our problems in that area, as a nation, actually began, at the very least, with our proxy meddling in Russia's invasion of Afghanistan and/or subsequent involvement in Kuwait, maybe even, to a lesser degree, the rise of Israel, and our support of it, throughout the Cold War. You sure do try to simplify an extremely complex situation though.
I read the entirety of your link. Do you have any evidence that the invasion of Iraq actually had anything to do with the acquisition of oil? It was mentioned once, as a minor point, in the 1990s. I imagine so as to keep oil, which is money ... which is power, away from Saddam. You do know that the U.S. has its own vast untapped oil reserves, correct? We're capable of being entirely self-sufficient, and have actually finally begun exporting oil again ourselves in recent years, so the pursuit of foreign oil is a fundamentally silly conspiracy theory, although PNAC did certainly have some silly goals as it is. I disagree, unequivocally, with everything that PNAC stood for, by the way, and I couldn't really care less about them.
In January 2001, several official founding members got installed at high-ranking positions in the US government and Pentagon, including the offices of vice president and secretary of defence.
Prominent Republicans, many of whom have been a part of various presidential cabinets for decades ... were again given prominent cabinet positions in the GWB administration ... you don't say. Imagine that.
(There are even those who say that a group with several PNAC members had chosen GWB as their front-man, and not the other way around.)
I'm sorry, but didn't you say that you're not one for conspiracy theories? I'm seriously just going to leave that one alone, although it is apparent by now that both parties try to preclude those candidates that those with the power dislike. GWB was a popular governor, and had a razor sharp wit, especially in debates. The propaganda that tried to portray him as an idiot was pathetic, even then. I can't think of a better candidate for that race, and I'm not even a Republican. I do sincerely hope you don't think 9/11 was an inside job. I can think of few more ridiculous conspiracy theories, from either supposed side of our imaginary political spectrum of left and right.
I don't care about those treaties. Withdrawing support from the Rome Statute could mean a lot of things, one being some bizarre desire to arbitrarily commit war crimes, I suppose, in your own presupposition. I'm mildly interested in what you further claim about PNAC, for the sake of history, although, on the whole, I don't care at all about PNAC, or whatever hairbrained ideas they may have had. The end of Iran as a state would sure be nice though. Syria, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia too. I don't recall hearing about PNAC, maybe I have, maybe I haven't. I know I certainly wouldn't have remembered if I had. I don't watch the "news". I would say whatever you may mean by the "news", but your political leanings have made that apparent.
Why don't I, specifically, resist tyranny? What tyranny do you suggest that I resist? Did you read the rest of the comment chain in which we were literally talking about the national guard shooting U.S. citizens on sight for leaving their homes?
not just the right, but the obligation, to resist tyranny.
Then why don't you?
Unfortunately, the Radical Right has defined the imaginary "Deep State" as tyrannical and defined domestic terrorism with the intent of inciting civil war as legitimate "resistance" to it.
Truly frightening stuff.
I'm not sure that I even want to try to think about what it is that you're actually implying here. The sooner we finally end this left and right nonsense, the better.
