[mattnewton]

The article makes it feel like these changes happened because less people are enlisting or know people enlisting. I think that’s just another symptom of how some military programs lost a lot of legitimacy in the minds of some of my generation who were coming of age around the war on terror. It’s hard to feel like the good guys in a lot of these issues like drone warfare against non-combatants, and so the military was never a career I considered as a result, and I suspect I am not alone?

Edit: I’ll add, my generation clearly remembers 9/11 and the response to it. I think it’s not a lack of awareness of the current mission but _because_ of awareness to parts of it that many people write off the military.

Disclaimer: I am a Google engineer, but with no work relationship to their AI efforts and my opinions are my own.

[NotAnEconomist]

I think the media has a lot to do with that.

They run stories about how the military bombs some civilians while fighting jihadists, but not about how those same jihadists routinely round up and torture children, kill scores of locals, etc.

Outside of Iraq, which fuck Bush, can you name something about the "War on Terror" you think we'd be better off not doing?

I think it's a really shallow view to say it's better to not bomb a few civilians... then leave them to be preyed on by violent locals instead.

I'm a millennial, and didn't enlist at 18 because I didn't want to go to Iraq (and still don't support starting that war), but I'd have gone to Afghanistan, and as I get older, I find myself much more willing to support the military.

I suspect I'm not alone in that, either.

[the_duke]

You seem to be implying that it's perfectly fine for the US to bomb a family home if a terrorist is in there, accepting civilian casualties, because they might harm the population?

Who gets to make that determination? A random drone pilot? An officer?

Also please don't pretend any of the US military engagements since WW2 had any other purpose than serving national interest.

[darawk]

> Who gets to make that determination?

We do. Because we can. That is how the world works. If you don't make the decision, it gets made for you in the other direction.

> Also please don't pretend any of the US military engagements since WW2 had any other purpose than serving national interest.

This is a pretty childish sentiment. Reasons for war are complex. The world is actually a complicated place, and admits multiple concurrent motivations.

[the_duke]

> Reasons for war are complex.

Yes they are. I only said that the motivation always was national self interest not benevolence.

> We do. Because we can.

I think that exhausted my tolerance for further discussion with you.

[darawk]

> Yes they are. I only said that the motivation always was national self interest not benevolence.

I'm not even sure what that is supposed to mean. Nobody has ever fought a war for 'benevolence'. It's a silly concept. If you know anything of history, you'd also know that WWII was not fought for 'benevolence'.

[duckMuppet]

He's a millennial. All us Millennials know that it's 2019, and there isn't a reason for war in 2019, anywhere..

[abugheratwork]

You just claimed that if we don't get them they'll get us, and then called someone childish.

[darawk]

> You just claimed that if we don't get them they'll get us

No I didn't. Read what I said again.

[avmich]

I read this - "If you don't make the decision, it gets made for you in the other direction" - and I understand that just as GP wrote.

[JohnFen]

So we haven't moved an inch past the old lie that "might makes right", then? How utterly depressing.

[darawk]

> So we haven't moved an inch past the old lie that "might makes right", then? How utterly depressing.

Might makes right to decide what is right. That is now and always will be the case.

[JohnFen]

I guess that depends on how you define "right". Might lets you impose your will on others. Being successful in doing so does not speak to whether or not your will is right.

[CamperBob2]

We do. Because we can. That is how the world works

That's all well and good, but I don't want to hear a lot of whining from your corner when the next 9/11 happens.

[avmich]

Indeed. While I understand shock in USA at 9/11, I also understand where opinions that "America deserved it" had their merit.

[ambicapter]

> any other purpose than serving national interest

Spreading democratic and egalitarian values is in the national interest.

[sullyj3]

As much as I'm extremely reluctant to endorse the actions of the US government and military, I don't think the right answer in cases of moral uncertainty is "I guess we'll just leave things as they are and hope they turn out for the best".

[NotAnEconomist]

> You seem to be implying that it's perfectly fine for the US to bomb a family home if a terrorist is in there, accepting civilian casualties, because they might harm the population?

Yes, just like you should throw the switch on the trolley car to kill one person instead of let it kill five.

Other people don't agree.

[loeg]

The US's military engagement in WW2 and prior was also primarily to serve national interest.

[slg]

Part of it is also how we teach history. US schools have a tendency to only focus on the wars in which we are clearly the "good guys" until you get to the post-WWII wars in which things become much more clouded morally. This gives off the impression that the US and its military have sort of lost our way in the last half century or so. The truth is that all war is generally bad and only our perception of it has changed. Look through the Wikipedia page of US conflicts and you will see a long history of wars in which our actions were morally questionable that we are never taught about in school. And even our "heroic wars" like WWII include plenty of war crimes at the hands of the US.

[mc32]

You’d be surprised then by how history is taught in other places. Even when people look at themselves introspectively, most people will see the good over the bad.

I don’t think were much worse than any other major actor in this regard. I have an incling we do a fair bit better than most at catigating ourselves.

[hopler]

Bad wars are a standard part of history education, from the Trail of Tears to Jim Crow to the Spanish-American war.

People are willfully ignorant.

[potta_coffee]

Or we could stop arming our proxy armies who are out there killing civilians on the daily.

[EliRivers]

can you name something about the "War on Terror" you think we'd be better off not doing?

Blowing up people's weddings via drone? Corroding civil liberties? Equipping small-town police forces with military equipment and mentalities?

I could go on. There is a lot more to dislike than just the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

[cordonbleu]

yes, as a country we have to stop playing into the fear that is being peddled to us.

Terrorism is not about fostering abuse of constitutional rights and responsibilities, it is about fostering fear of our constitutional rights and responsibilities.

[Consultant32452]

Almost everything about the war on terror I think we'd be better off not doing. I supported going into Afghanistan, but nation building/occupation was a non-starter. We started (CIA pushed the Arab Spring) the civil war in Syria, which has already cost a half a million lives and likely will scale over a million. So that was a terrible idea. We're still selling weapons to Saudi Arabia so they can genocide Yemen, where there's now open air slave markets.

It's really hard to name a single good thing to come out of the war on terror.

[JohnFen]

> I think that’s just another symptom of how some military programs lost a lot of legitimacy in the minds of some of my generation who were coming of age around the war on terror.

It's not just your generation. I'm in my 50s and this opinion isn't rare in my age group either.

[Latteland]

I'm in my 50s. All my friends have similar feelings to yours. We have endless wars, bombing, drone strikes with no goal other than vaguely stopping terrorism. We are in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Africa now, Pakistan. We kill militants and/or terrorists that wish us harm, and we annually bomb a number weddings and kill a lot of innocents.

We don't have a strategy or goal or even clear enemy. We just do it because we are powerful. Of course there are people that want to kill us, blow up our airliners. But it's not clear we are doing anygood.

We have to set actual goals, not just being there and bombing targets of opportunity, saying sorry when it goes wrong. What's our goal? We don't have one.

[loeg]

You might be just too young to remember it in real time depending on where in your 50s, but people slightly older than you got really jaded with the US military due to the Vietnam war around the time you were born.

[JohnFen]

Yes, you're right. I was a kid (in a military family) at that time, but not so young that I don't remember it!