The families of US soldiers who have died in the US-Israeli war against Iran are battling to ensure they receive appropriate pay and benefits for their loved ones.
Libby Klinner, a widow, wrote on social media that the US air force had deemed her ineligible for additional benefits following the death of Major Alex Klinner, her 33-year-old husband, because Congress had not officially declared war.
He was one of six crew members of a KC-135 refuelling aircraft that crashed in western Iraq in March while supporting US strikes against Iran.
please stop joining the military
I 100% agree. But also, some folks have little choice as it’s the only path they have out of poverty. Could be their only chance for a decent education too.
Edit: I understand the backlash I’m getting. But I also realize that poverty produces desperation, and desperation can push people to extreme decisions. Easy for me to say “don’t ever join under any circumstances” when I’m not the one suffering in extreme poverty.
I don’t understand the backlash you’re getting. It’s not very surprising that a poor 18 year old sees the military as a way out of their hardship. I’m not saying it is, there’s a very good chance it is not. But that a struggling teenager can see it that way, and getting drawn in by recruiters isn’t odd.
100% agree with your edit. You’ll see people used as drug mules, not because they’re hardened criminals, but because they’re desperate enough to do something they know is wrong.
I think a lot of the people taking a hard stance against you here haven’t seen hardship up close and dont realise how tempting it would be to do something to get out of it
the “have little choice” is just being able to shift guilt. we 100% know this is a genocidal fascist regime, and i have more support for someone who chooses to be gifted “life’s plan” of hardship over joining this mil.
fyi: this is the plan. the capitalists who profit from war know they can only profit if there is a cohort of poor, hungry, stupid kids they can use for the human parts.
If you want people to take you seriously, you could make less childish arguments.
explain how this is childish. machines like weapons require people to operate. it’s always been the working class and poor who are scooped up to operate them. “ain’t no war but class war” is not just a bumper sticker.
so: try your reply again.
Are you upset that you can’t refute the 100% accurate point?
The troops are pretty much there to go kill or die for some billionaire’s profits, and Smedley Butler said as much decades ago and it’s only gotten worse since. Once they get the killer robots working, they’ll cut out the troops and not have to worry about people complaining about pay.
I’d rather be poor than murder people 🤷♂️
Are you poor?
I was when I was enlistment age, and I told the recruiter to go fuck himself when they came asking, and then to go find a squadmate to assist if he couldnt follow the directions himself when he didn’t like the first answer.
I had enough combat vets in my life to know what was up. No glory seekers, only people who saw the brutality first hand.
yes.
Are most people who join the US military? Answer: no, the contemporary US military is overwhelmingly middle class. The “backdoor draft” isn’t nearly as popular as advertised.
If the only path out of poverty is killing poor people abroad then I’d rather stay poor.
You’re probably not poor then
Maybe you’d just enjoy killing people even of you had money.
‘No true Scotsman’ but for poor people choosing not to kill strangers for corporate profits.
The US really pulled off a propaganda masterpiece with this military fetish
Becoming a disposable weapon of the state is still a choice, they still have blood on their hands, whether or not the game is rigged to coerce desperate people into becoming murderers or cannon fodder
Honestly, if it’s this bad, why is this put up with?
For a country that has spent so much time telling others how free it is, its citizens take a lot of shit
If it’s that bad, no point waiting around any longer, shut the thing down.
All you gotta do is tell people they’re free.
Then you place them in freedom shackles, and give them freedom bucks to trade around inside their freedom cage. Why do you hate freedom so much, don’t you like your freedom slop?
The most cutting scene in Easy Rider. I reference this often, but for a reason.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gu2ouJNmXc
Lots of people here probably don’t deal with poor people on the regular so they don’t understand. Once I talked to a 40 year old homeless man on a train ride home and he was talking about enlisting. His options were very bleak.
Sorry i have to kill brown people. Some rape is expected, but i really didn’t have a choice.
Id rather see them in poverty than more dead girls abroad. We should start spitting on their faces again.
You may not believe it, but dead nieces sisters and daughters also foments desperation and inspires violence. The sniper who develops ptsd because he killed three generations of men in because he had to do that or be a wage slave is a product of what republicans want. If that guy had a UBI and more socialism in general, guess what? He isn’t ending three generations of men because he has literally no reason to do it now.
Sadly, there is no historical evidence that anyone ever spat in the faces of returning veterans, that’s just a scene from Rambo that conservatives decided was reality.
Sorry I had to serve in the SS cuz it was the only path I had out of poverty, for a chance at a decent education too, I 100% hate those Nazis please don’t put us on trial 🥺
The US military isn’t the SS.
You’re right, it’s worse, the SS “only” massacred and tortured Europe, the US Military does it to the entire world, biggest stain on the planet since the Nazis.
Not for the lack of trying.
The Israeli-US Alliance essentially murdered Iranian schoolgirls.
Essentially?
The military is never anyone’s only choice out of poverty. The military is a career you choose. Just because you were in poverty when you made that choice does not mean you didn’t have other choices.
Officer grades…sure.
Rank and file… Nah. Not if you want OUT of poverty.
TBH mostly middle class people join the military, and a lot of them end up homeless afterwards. Your conception of this situation is basically backwards.
Its not worth it.
I grew up in an area where that was absolutely the case. A whole lot of people on things like food stamps and so on.
I don’t have exact numbers, but I’d say at least one in four males (and not a few females) went into some branch of the military. They are promised a lot and most of it is not delivered.
My parents were pacifists and extremely suspicious of the industrial military complex, and did everything possible to keep the recruiters at bay, while they scrimped and saved and got loans for my siblings and I to get a secondary education or vocational training. They were not rich, but given they were both gainfully employed and very frugal, we were in a more stable home than most in my area.
Many kids did not even graduate, there was a fair bit of teen pregnancy, too. I have the same suspicion of the military my parents had, but I also understand that many of my school mates did not have a lot of options.