[scarecrowbob]

Just anecdotally, most of the folks my age who joined the military did so not out of a sense of duty, but strictly to better their chances, for the same reason they might go to college.

I don't have a lot of respect for that particular decision, and that is not a popular sentiment where I live. I believe that mercenaries, which is more or less what they are, are morally culpable. But I, too, made bad decisions when I was 20, and it's even cloudier when there are a lot of folks telling you that you're making a good decision and that the nay sayers are basically cowardly traitors.

That said, I don't know how useful it is to attack the problem from that direction; between the entrenched fantasies about how legitimate that violence is and the real social and economic circumstances that push people into those kinds of decisions.

There is plenty of blame to go around, if we are okay saying that this use of force is in fact immoral, but in my opinion it doesn't do a lot of good to blame anyone, beyond analysis... all we can really do is look at what we ourselves are doing and decide what we change directly or in concert with our fellow travelers.