Oh no I support the Canadian military, and most other militaries whole heartedly. I believe they are a tool for good if used the right way.
The US military is a tool of corporations and corrupt politicians to extend American hegemony. It is an evil that must be fought openly and aggressively if the future of our world is to have any chance of peace. Along with the US government it is an evil that the world must unite and destroy, before it's short-sighted greed and corruption destroys the entire world.

Goods thing you know SO MUCH about the military, Tibby. :facepalm:

You are a ****ing idiot.

get out you waste of carbon.

just when i thought you couldn't be any more of a ****ing retard...

Look, just because you get your heroin from the DPRK, it doesn't mean their propaganda is right.

Yes, take on the US military, the one thing the US is best at. That'll go over well.

(And look, I didn't even have to make fun of your conspiracy theory!)

Countdown to Tibby's false confession of trolling.

I just sneezed all over my red white and blue

Remember that one time in the 60's the US Military was used by a war criminal as a tool to extend it's influence into southeast asia and "contain" communism, which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, including thousands of it's own citizens? Or that time it was used by a war criminal, with the urging of a corporation, to invade another country and kill hundreds of thousands? Including thousands of it's own citizens? Oh and that time it quite literally was a crime.

Or what about the fact it sucks down a stupendously huge amount of resources for developing stupid bull**** like the F-35, or building another useless carrier, at a time when it's parent country is in a recession and doesn't even have a nationalized healthcare system.

The best argument you can give is something about history (Did I say anything about the US military pre-1950 being bad? I thought this was a thread about the modern military, what would that have to do with it.), and Jon'Cs usual insults about "Trolling". Which are, at this point, childish and absurd. Either argue a point or don't even post.

The US military is the greatest evil on earth*, and joining it would make you take orders from said evil. Please don't.

*Israel may be more evil, but it isn't capable of worldwide reach like the US military, just attempting genocide on direct neighbors.

As much as I'd like to avoid completely derailing this thread, the stuff Tibby is posting is so monstrous and awful that it really calls for it.

Why?

Recently, members of JTF2 have been accused of war crimes (executing prisoners of war) and failure to report war crimes, and the leadership of JTF2 has been accused of encouraging criminal acts. The Canadian Forces in general has been accused of knowingly handing prisoners of war to the Afghan government to be tortured (on the advice of CSIS.) In the 90s, two members of CAR beat a Somalian teenager to death and officers tried to cover it up, eventually leading to the entire unit being disbanded.

That's just off the top of my head. It's exceptional behavior, but it's no better than the United States (per capita.) If you're going to condemn the US military - not even its civilian leadership! - as a force for evil, I see no reason why you shouldn't also condemn the Canadian Forces.

What way is that? You didn't say, so now we have to guess about what you mean.

Let's review the ways that a military can be used.

Militaries are organizations formed for the sole purpose of using violence to resolve capital disputes between members of the political elite. Their members are trained to do exactly two things:

1.) Commit violence, and
2.) Maintain the ability to perform future acts of violence.

(Note: to their credit, the members of a military are generally trained to limit their violence to a socially-acceptable quantity.)

Militaries are not very good at anything else. For example, they may be used to distribute relief aid. In this capacity, though, they are little more than a store for unskilled manual labor. They may also be used as a temporary police force, but soldiers are not properly trained for this work. I really don't consider either of these roles as legitimate uses for a military, so even though they are quite common I will ignore them for this discussion about "good uses."

By my criteria, a "good use" for a military must be based on violence. I believe that invasion and occupation is generally an evil act, and I imagine that most people would agree. War is pretty evil. Garrisoning and defensive patrol are neutral.

I thought for a good, long time about what you meant, Tibby. After racking my brain, the only "good use" I can think of is to protect world trade by securing international shipping routes.

The only military force doing that is the United States Navy.

"War is peace."

Really? This is what you're going with?

Even if you were right (make no mistake, you aren't, but even if you were,) fighting an open war against the United States would be suicide.

In a thermonuclear standoff, the United States is going to win. (No, a full-scale nuclear war would not kill everybody. Shut up.)

Even if you assume only conventional weapons, the best outcome from professional strategists and war gamers is that a war between the United States and the entire rest of the world would be a draw. There was a good thread about this on SA a few years ago.

Either way, fighting the United States "openly and aggressively" is the most ignorant and short-sighted thing that has ever been said about military strategy in any thread on any forum on the entire internet. Congratulations.

You're going to have to be more specific.

Fiscal policy is an important and effective way for the government of a country to influence their economy.

Deficit spending, in particular, rounds out troughs in the business cycle. It also allows the government to finance projects and utilize capital at times when it will not crowd out private investment. On the other hand, balanced budgets effectively amplify the effects of a downturn.

In other words, a recession is the perfect time for the US government to spend a large amount of money.

Your dig at their healthcare system is too arbitrary to make a meaningful response.

Really? You can't think of any people worse than the US military?

Not North Korea, which starves its own people to make room for their opium crops, and routinely abducts people from other countries as servants?

Not the Sudanese, Chinese, Guatemalans, Pakistani, Burundians, Equatorial Guineans, Indonesians, Belgians/Congolese, Russians, Ethiopians, Iraqis, Somalians, Vietnamese, Turks, or Azerbaijanis, who have all committed acts of genocide since WW2 ended?

Not Coca-Cola, Dow, Monsanto, DynCorp, Academi, Bayer, Halliburton, Nestle, or Pfizer?

Not even - just to be clear on this, because you've already said this much - but not even the United States government, which directs the United States military? You assert that the United States military is worse than the organization that tells it exactly what to do?

Do you at least understand why this makes you sound like you don't know what you're talking about?

If genocide is an Israeli goal, I don't think they're very good at it considering that 20% of Israel's population is Arab (and 11% of their government.)

Oh **** off, you're retarded. I don't know why I waste my time.

Back to a previous post about OP not having discipline in school means he will certainly have no discipline in the military:

I have to agree, I'm sure the training is excellent and will push you to limits you never considered if you allow it you, but consider this, if you can't follow a professors instructions and learn some easy material while sitting with your feet up and having a Starbucks orange mocha frappochino, how are you suppose to carry out orders that endanger your life and the lives of others while you're under fire and fearing for your own life

I'm pretty sure Tibby forms his "opinions" by reading way too much Reddit and parroting some of the utterly stupid views that seem to be popular there...

Discipline will be had. Either that or he'll get *really* strong. One way or another, he will do his part. Or he'll end up being a screw up that gets a bunch of people killed. If it isn't him, it'll be someone else. At this point you have to count on him actually getting good training. Also, consider the fact that he's talking about joining the Air Force or Navy. The guy isn't going to be a grunt. I don't know much about Reid, but I'm going to assume right now that he's not cut out for the SEALs, Combat Control Team, Pararescue, Security Forces, or any of the other elite units that make up pretty much the only infantry combat units in the Navy and Air Force. He could always be a Corpsman, I guess, but personally I think you'd have to be insane to pick the one job in the Navy that is most likely to put you alone with a group of Marine grunts. From what I hear, you gotta have some seriously thick skin to pull off any of these jobs.

Being a POG, on the other hand, I'm sure Reid can handle.

Pog, eh

So basically Tibby thinks the USA is WW2 Germany.

I still find it funny that Tibby thinks going to war with the USA is a good idea. The only country I would give even a fighting chance would be China, and that's just because of raw manpower. That's of course assuming nukes aren't involved.

I don't agree with the US Military's actions (as set by the government) very often, but I don't think the money goes entirely to waste. Just like NASA, much of the research in new technology there trickles down to citizens and the rest of the world. Of course, NASA does it more often and much more cheaply, but hey, at least it's a thing.

Trying to say that the US Military accomplishes nothing positive is ridiculous, though. Do you think the world was really better off with Osama Bin Laden, or the dozens of other terrorist leaders that have been captured or killed?

To go along with that, we also regularly conduct rescue operations. For example, during the last 5 months of my ship's deployment, we've medevac'd 2 civilians from fishing vessels (one had a heart attack, one had appendicitis) saving their lives, and we also saved the lives 28 chemical tanker crew members, after they abandoned their ship in shark and jelly fish infested waters after it caught fire and exploded several times (one crew member died in the explosions, sadly).) So in the 5 months of our (approx) 7 month deployment, we have been directly involved in saving the lives of 30 individuals.. By contrast, we have been involved in 0 acts of violence. (The closest we have come to violence is manning our weapon mounts and standing next to them for the purpose of showing the Iraqi government that we are alert. (We don't even touch them to aim them at our threats, lest we be seen as aggressors.)

Can you atleast stroke the weapon mounts affectionately and smile at the Iraqi's?

(Btw I think you are overusing (). )

Aren't you supposed to use brackets inside of parenthesis?

((((((shut up antony))))))

To be fair to Tibby, a lot of Americans think this way (and rightly so, I'd say).

And the sad thing is that we could technically have both, since national healthcare would be cheaper than this.. thing.. we have now.

The only two reasons we don't have a real health care system in this country are because it's too profitable for certain people and somehow a good chunk of people have been convinced that having access to health care will turn this country into the USSR.

I like how you think national healthcare is so cheap. I'm not confident that if we cut the entire military budget (1/4th of the US budget entirely) and put it to national healthcare, that we'd still be able to fund it. Hell, Medicare alone is outrageously large, and people pay into that!

The U.S. spends more money on health care per capita than any other country. And we are not ranked #1 by a long shot. Too much of the money goes to insurance, administration, and overcharging by hospitals etc.

We have really good, modern care and some of the most cutting edge procedures.. but the average Joe isn't going to be seeing them.

I actually think he takes his views from well-upvoted troll posts that he is unaware are actually trolling.

Yeah he's got a syntax error. Left one of those parentheses open.

the healthcare system in the US makes me so angry. once, i came in to the ER due to major piercing abdominal pain / throwing up / etc at around 9pm. was stuck in the waiting room in major colicky pain until 3am when i was finally admitted into a room, where i talked to a nurse about my issue. was put on morphine, got an x-ray and CT, finally able to sleep for about 2 hours. doc came in to talk to me for about 30 seconds, told me he didn't know jack ****, sent me away at 6am after giving me a prescription of antibiotics and something to inhibit peristalsis. a week later i was sent a hospital bill for $10k, and this doesn't even include the money i had to pay the x-ray/ct techs, the doctor, and other misc costs. had insurance but ****ing still.

tl;dr: was billed approx $11,000 for 3 hours of care, an x-ray, ct scan, morphine, and a 30 second chat with an incompetent doctor.

edit: for starters, i want to take a **** in the mouth of the president of the AMA.

I think your face closes it

Yeah alright, I went off on a tangent.
My point is the US army is forced to do plenty of ethically questionable things, and designed so that you can't refuse said orders. Keep that in mind.

A military where you aren't allowed to refuse orders? THAT NEVER HAPPENS ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD...

oh wait that's every military to ever exist

i.e. "I am too lazy and/or ignorant to respond to all of the people who called me out for being ignorant and/or stupid."

Like every military. Ever. Including the ones you "whole-heartedly support."

**** the chain of command!

You're one of these people who would insist that he is absolutely open minded and isn't any other way, right?

Now we're changing scope to just the US Army? Or did you not realize that US military and US Army are not the same thing? Besides which, you're still wrong. Since I'm sure you're too lazy to actually click those links and/or read the articles they represent, I'll post the pertinent quotes:

Wait, what? The unethical US army employs a Professor of Ethics at its War College and he encourages high-level military personnel learning strategic leadership responsibilities to encourage their troops to DISOBEY unethical orders. Did I just blow your world view? (next time, maybe you do even half an ounce of research first?)

Not convinced?
This article then goes on to discuss multiple examples of people being persecuted for following illegal orders, but with your short attention span, you've probably already stopped reading THIS post, so there's no way in hell I should expect you to read the whole article.

And finally...
I don't really have anything to add here.

If you could refuse orders, drafting in any military would basically not exist. This would be idiotic, for any military.

Thank you, Sarn. We're agreeing for once!

Don't most militaries, including the US military, have a trial by which things like insubordination can be determined? It's probably not insubordination if your commanding officer tells you to rape women and children and you tell him to go **** himself.