Actualy war IS a racket, but some people don't realize that despite his interesting outlook and military record, Smedley Butler was one of the voices lent to the crushing of the gold standard by one "hero of the people" FDR. Or as Maj. Gen. Butler called him "Mr. President".
While, from his own essays it seems he was more a useful tool rather than conscious helper, his voice lent to the "help pay the nations debt with a more available form of money" was one of the keys for popular/ignorant support.
Thus lets make sure we blame everyone who is even partly guilty or blame nobody and look at things critically. In fact, part of the reason why the military has "sissified" in some ways (not a bad thing) is because so many intellectual types and women who are enrolling who are less willing to put up with abuse. Why might you ask? Why not? While reading On Killing, I noticed that Lt. Col. Grossman points out that soldiers only require two qualities that must be instilled. Aggression and more importantly, obedience. Some of the most intelligent and well educated people I know are still some of the easiest people to control psychologically. Education is NOT a prerequisite for a strong will, and neither is intelligence. A strong will is something most modern people completely lack, and those who had one growing up have it systematically weakened through trained submission at every level, from "going to class" to "getting a job". I still hold that unquestioning obedience and obedience when they knew better was the source of mankind's original sin. Not sex as some ignorant zealots preach.
Likewise, the military isn't the bunch of twits and unaccomplished idiots as some think. Given that most of these guys are trained on hardware usage more than they are on field combat with guns in some mudhole (ala vietnam/korea) or sand hell (ala Afghanistan or Iraq), the USA military is mostly geared up for logistics and high tech warfare, than for actual ground pounding. In fact, a recent complaint reached my ears that there are "TOO FEW TRIGGER PULLERS" and too many "paper pushers and logistics people".
My only real concern is that most of the grunts, while neither stupid, nor illiterate, are somewhat less educated on a different and FAR more important front. They are willing tools and unwilling to accept the simple fact that the people who run the military see them as "expendable assets." In fact, some of my reading indicates that they are INSURED assets, which makes each of their deaths quite profitable to the Federal Government. If this is later proven true with heavier documentation than my reading, I think it would be wise to invest in sandbags. I still cannot see why they do not join the mercenary organizations in the world, which pay better, and treat their employees as valuable contributors and engage in just as much tyranny as the national governments that employ them and pay them better than they do their own armed men and women. (Recall the shelling Fallujah received after four Blackwater boys were found hanging from some beams. It pays to have influential employers in the current paradigm.) Back to my observation, however, the only thing that bothers me is the simple unwillingness of individuals to admit their true motivations or that their motivations may be misguided and those whose orders they follow may have ulterior reasons and very little interest in the wellbeing of their willing and easily expendable tools.
Vonu, such a thing is called Cognitive Dissonance, not illiteracy or stupidity. Many of my own military acquaintances make no qualms about it, they're into it for the money or because the job market in their area was fairly dry (chalk it up to government dominance of the markets, IMNSHO.) Some of them are actually as well read, if not MORE well read than I am... and if you would consider me "illiterate" or "uneducated" or "unread", you may find yourself chalking off a LOT more people in that column than you expected.
Back to my observations, I have a second concern, that the current crop of grunts might be more willing to kill fellow Americans mostly because they were raised socialist and view their enemy to be anyone that is either successful or unwilling to yield to Big Brother. But that has little to do with such things, since the most ardent supporters of expediency and wholesale tyranny for the sake of a "better world" have been VERY educated. Take, for example, the Fabian Socialists, Rhodes Scholars (and Cecil Rhodes himself)... all VERY educated. It didn't stop them from spreading and what's worse, from ENTRENCHING tyranny to the four corners of the world, did it?
