Jubbergun wrote:
Required? No. Preferred? Yes.
What's preferred is the same thing that is preferred in any military or any other monolithic organization which is that you think and do exactly what you are told, and treat the organization as all that is good and awesome.
No, no one in the military really cares if one is smart, compassionate, capable of behaving except out of fear, respectful or a basically good person. The military has more than its share (emphasis on more than) of stupid, vicious, antisocial, rebellious, evil people. We see evidence of that all the time.
You're not going to tell us that military bars aren't the roughest in the the town. You're not going to tell us that mustered-out soldiers don't typically wind up back where they were without the army, on drugs, living out of their car, taking odd jobs and getting by on government checks. You're not going to tell us that these people know anything other than what some drill sergeant or ROTC indoctrinator or lifer CO shouted at them (well, ok, maybe they know what's on Fox News). You're not going to tell us that these people don't have a remarkable propensity to resort to physical intimidation when they don't get their way because they have absolutely no idea how to conduct themselves in normal human society. You're not going to tell us these thugs can handle themselves without a CO who can throw them in the brig if they don't think and do as told.
You're not going to tell us that we don't hear every other day, from My Lai to Abu Ghirab to that atrocious incident with the SS icon to the video of Marines punting animals off cliffs, about how these people do horrible things then get off without half the penalty they would face if they were civilians, protected by that so-moral military structure.
You're not going to tell any of us that's not true because everyone on this forum has seen all of that themselves whether they enlisted or not.
And you don't get to magically write any of that off because it doesn't agree with your ideal.
Bottom line is civilians who conduct themselves in those ways are quickly ostracized from mainstream society, and usually wind up in prison. In the military all of that is OK as long as you know when and how to get away with it and can hide behind the Honor Code: "only liars say that military trash lie".
What it doesn't have are people who question things or who think the military is exactly what it is: a parasite.
