this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2025
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People got mad at this one streamer for saying American soldiers deserve PTSD. When you consider that most interventions by the US are not justified or just imperial power plays, and that many soldiers commit war crimes, you realize she has a point.
I mean. Jimmy just wanted to go to college. But was forced to go to Iraq. The soldiers don’t have much choice. Especially the boys in trailer parks. They have no opportunity and the military gives them that.
Nobody was "forced" to go to Iraq.
For some reason, people think it's ok to pull others down to get ahead but only in the context of the military. There are other ways to escape poverty, like selling crack or scamming the elderly. I wonder if you condone those approaches as well because "they didn't have another choice if they wanted to escape poverty." I doubt it. But if the victims aren't people in our own neighborhoods who you can actually see, if it's dead children on another continent who the news doesn't talk about, then somehow it's perfectly fine.
Everyone in that position who chooses to work at McDonald's or Walmart or Amazon instead of signing up to murder foreigners is a better person than every troop, they are braver, more ethical, more heroic, and more enlightened. The cowards who pull others down to get ahead deserve no respect and no sympathy.
Just so you are aware. Soldiers were forced. They were by the rule of their contracts forced to redeploy after they found out how terrible the situation in Iraq was. I know this because friends were forced to go back to Iraq because there were not enough replacements. They had little to no choice. The POTUS was able to force this upon them.
Now sure, they could just go awol or force their resignation and go to jail. But some of them have families that rely on base housing or medical coverage.
"I'm going to invade another country instead of going to jail" is not a sympathetic choice.
Nobody forced them to sign up.
I can’t really agree with that. Social economic factors make it impossible for some people to get out of their communities. The military during peacetime. Is a great upward mobility tool for folks in gang lands. We don’t invest in their schools. The jobs left in these regions are pitiful. And the only choice they have to get out is to serve.
It’s how the rich make America such a shit hole to force people to fight in wars for their benefit. It’s so much deeper than just blaming the soldiers.
The same is true of selling crack but I'll criticize that too.