If it is the corporate perversion and infiltration of all aspects of our life that you deplore, why not take it out on the greedy top execs instead of common soldiers?
Nobody goes in the Army to save or to serve AIG. Your quarrel would be better placed with the (purchased) politicians, not veterans.
Our military humor was black as well; I don't expect those who weren't there to understand. You're at a murder scene and in the back of your mind you still cannot believe people can do this..... but you have to keep on, and you can laugh or you can cry.
I understand where you are coming from. None of us are perfect, and I am only expecting people to stop doing something wrong that they know is wrong. My only beef with some veterans and most active soldiers is a seeming lack of personal accountability and a seeming lack of an honest assessment of what they are really doing.
I don't understand why people keep going back to these pointless, deceitful and rapacious wars. I wouldn't do it. I also feel like I've got legitimate questions about a guy who would blow away children, laugh, and then sign up for another tour, especially when it is a proven fact that government has been infiltrated by corporate monsters and the whole premise for the war is a lie.
Maybe nobody every grabbed the guy by the shoulders and shook him saying, "what the hell are you doing?" I am sure there are a lot of ways to justify it, but I don't buy any of them.
In the end, I don't "hate" the common soldier. I see them as victims of a wicked and greedy society who have ultimately bought into a self serving fantasy. People do that all of the time. It is a bad decision, like serving a mafia boss and killing kids in a crossfire, while trying to take out your bosses rivals. We've known that the government is a bunch of lying corrupt thieves and the wars have been pointless, rapacious, profiteering, crimes against humanity since the sixties and people still put that aside and buy the slick marketing.
I don't think we should give people a pass on that anymore. I don't think we should worship people who choose to serve a bunch of drug dealing, thieving, gangsters. If we ever want to put a stop to it, we need to stop participating and we need to change how we think about people who choose to participate. It is a matter of accepting the reality of what we are facing and making real decisions about what to do about it.
We are all going to end up in the same boat, veteran and civilian. The corporations/banks will use the government to grab our pension plans (and eventually all of our assets it seems) and throw them into the derivatives black hole, and the thieves will make off with it all.
I don't want to see anyone spit on or disrespected. I want some accountability. I want to see people deal with reality and be honest with themselves. I want people to have some empathy for what our soldiers are going through, what the people on the ground are going through, and to understand that we all own a piece of this tragedy and that we have a duty to stop it.
