this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2025
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The US (which is what this meme is focusing on) has an all-volunteer force.
There's plenty of pro-cop propaganda and plenty of people who join the police thinking they're going to do good. I'm sorry but at some point people have to be held accountable for their actions. Any troop that's not a bastard and who's actively trying to leave should understand why I call troops bastards. It was bastards who recruited them, after all, and it's bastards keeping them there.
In any case, people make way too many excuses for these people, and all it does is reinforce the idea that it's ok, which leads to more people falling for that propaganda and those predatory tactics.
Leave it to a .ml user to ignore all context...
The US currently employs "volunteer" troops, but also requires all male citizens to register for a future draft. Many living veterans were drafted. And many others were in vulnerable situations that recruiters recognized and preyed upon. Once you join the US military, it's a crime to quit.
There is clearly some nuance needed when taking about US war veterans.
I have a question for you. If they made it a crime to leave the police until you finished a set term, would that make you object to anyone saying "ACAB?"
Shitlibs like you: Context matters, nuance is important! Think of those poor soldiers! You don't truly understand what they were going through that led them to join the Kolonial Konquest and Side-Kuests "Defense" Force. The choice between them ending up in the streets or families 12000 km away ending up displaced, starved, tortured, or murdered by their own accord must've been real difficult!
literally anyone else: mentions Palestine, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Sudan, etc..
Shitlibs like you: SHOOT THEM ALL! LOCK THEM UP! NO MERCY FOR TERRORISTS! THEY ARE THE REAL IMPERIALISTS SPREADING THEIR ICKY ISLAM! KEEP ISLAMISM CONTAINED IN THEIR TERRORIST SAND TERRITORIES! THEY'RE ALL ANTISEMANTIC FANATICS!
Casting sweeping judgments about an entire group you've never personally engaged with demonstrates remarkable presumption. There's a specific term for making such broad generalizations without firsthand knowledge, isn't there?
I'm curious—what profession grants you the authority to condemn others for circumstances largely outside their control? What position of moral superiority do you occupy that allows you to evaluate the character and choices of people whose lives and constraints you've never experienced?
Perhaps before passing judgment so confidently, it would be worth considering the complex realities and limited options many face within larger systems not of their making.
You keep bringing up this point and it's entirely ad hominem and also makes bizarre, unfounded assumptions about what everyone else does.
I'm an unemployed warehouse worker with a BS in physics, I could've joined the military as an officer and made several times what I've made instead, but I didn't. But no doubt, no matter what my story was, you'd find a way to dismiss my perspective. Perhaps the fact that I had enough support from my family to afford college in the first place, even though my degree was never useful and I left burdened with loans.
But it doesn't fucking matter because regardless of my experiences, how about the experiences of people living in the countries we've invaded and bombed? You don't hear shit from those people, do you? Isn't their perspective just as valid? Have you sought out their perspectives, or even tried to consider what they might be? It's so fucking stupid to dismiss critiques of the troops just because the person saying it doesn't meet your standards of moral purity, it is, again, literally a textbook example of ad hominem. The truth is still the truth regardless of who says it. And the truth is that the troops suck.
The audacity of this argument is infuriating. It deliberately dumps the entire weight of America's foreign policy disasters onto those with the least say in the matter. This perspective serves no purpose except to create convenient scapegoats so privileged individuals can feel morally superior without doing anything to change the system.
Dividing the working class against itself is exactly what the ruling elite want. We're all trapped under the control of the same oppressors, yet somehow soldiers—many who enlisted because of economic necessity—are supposed to shoulder the blame for decisions made by politicians WE elected? It's shortsighted, cruel, and completely ignores how power actually works.
What entitled nonsense expects people who often joined the military because of limited economic options to just disobey orders and risk court martial? Easy to make these moral judgments from behind a keyboard when you're not the one facing those consequences.
The stench of moral superiority in this argument is overwhelming. If you want to criticize something, direct that energy toward the people actually calling the shots instead of those with the least amount of control. The politicians, defense contractors, and corporate interests profiting from war don't care about your philosophical arguments—they just want us fighting each other instead of them.
This whole "blame the troops" mentality accomplishes nothing except further dividing those who should be united in demanding better from our leaders and our system. It's not just wrong—it's counterproductive.
Do you apply the same perspective to people who escape poverty by selling crack or scamming the elderly? Do I need to refrain from criticizing such people because otherwise I'm "dividing the working class?" Absurd. The only difference between those people and the troops are the proximity of their victims. Defending drug dealers and scammers is what divides the working class by alienating their victims. And in the same way, defending the child murdering troops divides the working class by alienating their victims.
You lecture me on "privilege" while completely writing off all the people who are vastly less privileged than either of us, the people who are orders of magnitude poorer and less privileged, who face terror and brutality beyond what either of us, or any US troop, can expect to face. Every troop had the option to spend their days as I have, working at places like Amazon, with a roof over their head, three square meals a day, and no worry about bombs falling on their house. Relatively speaking, that is a privilege, compared to the conditions that Iraqis and Afghans have experienced.
Working class solidarity means international solidarity, and international solidarity means not only considering the needs of the global poor, but prioritizing them. If you claim to be a leftist, if you claim to care about privilge, and if you condemn Americans who screw over other Americans to get ahead, then you should even more vehmantly condemn Americans who screw over people from poorer countries to get ahead. You are just a chauvanist, the reason you defend the troops is because you view their victims as subhuman, unworthy of consideration.
This "working class solidarity" that somehow includes troops that murder working class people in other countries, does it also include cops who murder working class people in their own country? Or are they not included because you can actually recognize their victims as human beings? Surely "working class solidarity" cannot include working class people who actively oppress and harm other working class people, like cops, troops, con artists, etc.
This critique shows a profound disconnection from reality. Comparing military service to working at Amazon reveals someone who's never faced the economic deserts that exist in many rural and impoverished communities. In countless American towns, there is no Amazon warehouse, no stable employment options, and limited educational pathways. The military often represents the only viable escape route from generational poverty.
It's remarkably privileged to assume everyone has access to the same opportunities. Many join the military precisely because companies like Amazon haven't reached their communities, or because they need immediate access to healthcare, housing, and education that other paths don't provide. These aren't abstract philosophical considerations—they're immediate survival decisions made under severe constraints.
The argument completely misses how military recruitment deliberately targets economically vulnerable communities. It's not coincidence that recruitment centers cluster in impoverished areas while being noticeably absent from wealthy neighborhoods.
Painting complex issues in such black-and-white terms might satisfy someone's moral superiority, but it does nothing to address the systems that create these impossible choices in the first place. Real solidarity means addressing the conditions that make military service one of the few viable options for so many working-class Americans, not condemning those trapped in these systems with few alternatives.
Replace every instance of "joining the military" with "becoming a police officer," or "selling crack," or "scamming the elderly," or "scabbing on striking workers." Do the same arguments apply? Yes or no.
Hunger and survival instinct are strong. I know very few who could overcome them willingly. I'm not saying it can't be done, just that it takes a very trained mind and will to do so that very few have.
Not a yes or a no.
There is no "solidarity" to be had with people who kill or severely harm members of the working class. If you pull others down to get ahead, you are not my comrade.
Every time a person chooses that path, they create even more desperate situations for other working class people. The people who join the military to "escape poverty" force others into poverty in the process, and they force them into situations worse than poverty. How many people became mujahideen because all they had to put food on the table was a gun? And how many people are growing up not only in poverty, but also as orphans, because of the troops' actions?
This is complete insanity. If we can excuse the actions of the troops, then we can excuse the actions of anyone. Maybe Jeffery Epstein just did the things he did because of how he was raised, or because of his brain chemistry, or because of this or because of that. Regardless, he still needs to be condemned and failure to condemn him is a disservice to his victims, and alienates people who could actually be valuable allies.
Everyone understands this when it comes to other "professions" like the ones I mentioned, that pull others down to get ahead. But when it comes to troops, troop worship is so ingrained, the propaganda so deep, that even when people consciously reject it, they still want to justify and make excuses for them. Rationally speaking, if you accept that we should condemn those other professions, and you accept that troops are just as bad if not worse, then you should condemn them in just as strong terms.
Apologies. I could have explained my reasoning. Many would look upon my living conditions as not good, but not abject. I've been extremely privileged in that I've turned down not great-paying jobs because while trained in them, I found them morally objectionable. I'm close to old age than not. I've been fortunate to have had some help. And if I didn't? Would I spend my last twenty on a few meals or a bit of crack to rerock to sell for profit, buy a little more, rinse and repeat? I'd love to say I'd take the moral high road. I still have extra weight, you know?
I trust the universe and I trust myself. Plus it's highly likely that at this late hour, any addict would likely be highly suspicious if I suddenly started trying to sell dope. I'm acknowledging there are things we see and are unable to see at various vantage points. Your post just prompted questions to which it's easy to say I'd this things and not the other, from this vantage point. Perhaps later in life I'll have attained a point with more or less ability to see clearly. We hope and trust, potentialities are infinite -- in every imaginable direction.
This makes accountability neither more nor less important. Just an observation.
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Is that the best argument you can come up with? No wonder we lost the election.