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by queuesorcs 1763 days ago
I want to preface this with the fact that a few specific incidents left me disillusioned with the military and that I don’t think people really understand just how horrible war is. That being said I wouldn’t change the decisions I made. I truly believe the work that I did was a net positive and that my work contributed to saving the lives of both military members and civilians. Unfortunately not everything goes perfectly and I still struggle with those things mentally to this day. The things that do still haunt me aren’t the extremely hard to avoid tragedies, they were the events caused by poor leadership and people being placed in positions they didn’t deserve to be in. I think one thing most people don’t consider is that at the end of the day the military and government overall work and function very similarly to the businesses they work or have worked at. The big difference is that the incompetent manager doesn’t mess up part of a presentation, order, or whatever else you may be working on. It leads to innocent lives being lost to an avoidable situation and ends up being referred to as a tragedy.
1 comments
loonster 1763 days ago
Back when I enlisted, I decided that I would rather live with the regrets of joining than the regrets of not joining.
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sangnoir 1763 days ago
If you may indulge me as someone who's not martially minded, may you please give a few examples of what could be the regrets of not joining?
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loonster 1762 days ago
It was simply something that I wanted to do. Not joining would not be true to myself.

A friend and I were having a discussion about the merits of the war. He was antiwar, and I was not opposed to it. During the discussion he asked me "Why don't you join up then?"

I didn't have an excuse. Either I need to change my political beliefs, I am a coward and a hypocrite, or I should join. I joined.

My political beliefs have since changed. I am much closer to a libertarian now than I was before. I still am not antiwar, sometimes violence is the answer.

I learned firsthand the meaning of "It was the best of times. It was the worst of times."

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