Why I am "Pro-US Military"

allrighty. The facts are these: I have a brother in the U.S. Navy. I have been involved with in-depth discussions about the psychology of a U.S. soldier during wartime, although I am no psychologist myself. I'm not talking about war in general, just the U.S. armed forces in general.

Last quarter I took a class -- Visual Anthropology. Virtually everyone in the class was a photo or film/animation major, so we had a lot of liberal opinions, a few conservative ones, and a few wacky ones, as per any class populated by mostly art majors. When the topic of joining the army came up, (looking at advertisements for the various branches of the military), the class was mostly united in crying brainwash, entrapment, deciept, falsification, and pretty much everything else that usually accompanies American marketing strategies. This, of course, sparked a discussion about recruitment techniques, which led to a conversation about conscription, free will, and the questioning of whether there should be recruitment for the military at all. Frankly, those couple days that we talked about these things I left the class feeling really discouraged. I'll tell you why:

I looked around at the people in my class, and at myself, and wondered what any of us has really ever had to sacrifice. How many times have we placed ourselves completely and utterly at someone else's service? How many times have we griped and complained about the obedience and respect we owe to our teachers or parents, sometimes disregarding our duty in that sense alltogether? When was the last time we disciplined ourselves to the point of depriving our flesh of something it craves in order to better an aspect of our own life? When was the last time we fought for something with everything we had inside of us... something completely apart from our own ambitions and desires? And when was the last time we genuinely thanked those who provide for us to live in the country with one of the highest standards of living in the world? *note: we were number 12 in 2008!

Convicted: check.

The principles that I saw both in the ads for the military (like the ones that accompany most movies in the theatre these days) and in the recruitment of my brother to the Navy (although he did most of the searching and research himself) were obedience, humility, service, and basically living through what is admittedly a horrific experience for a purpose larger than yourself. This was backed up by my brother's experience with boot camp. First off, boot camp for any branch of the military is horrible. The recruits are dehumanized, screamed at, held accountable for the actions of almost complete strangers, and deprived of sleep. Very quickly, they learn to stick together and unite underneath their drill seargent and do EXACTLY as their told. They're forced into a state of being that almost no one in their right minds would place themselves. They trust their lives and their health to people they've never met, regardless of their reasons for enlisting. They hold each other up and accountable. My brother was in charge of making sure his division could meet their academic requirements. He quizzed them on protocol to prepare them for their tests. Just one example.

My point here is that military training does more than provide the manpower to run the United States' War effort. I'm not trying to belittle the horrors of war and the mental, physical, and emotional scarring that results from battle. But if anyone I knew were seriously considering joining up, I'd be all for it. I believe that the men and women in our military are some of the most self-sacrificing and admirable individuals in our country, and the principles that go into their training would serve most in our generation incredibly well.