I had a worldview very similar to the author's when I first exited the service. Who the fuck were these college kids who knew nothing about the world? I'd meet people in my classes who had never left the city they were born in, save for maybe a vacation with the parents to an all - inclusive resort in Cancun. I'd hear them complain about such petty shit and it would drive me up the wall - how can a person like this be in the same place I am? What good is the stuff they're learning going to do with such a limited worldview (because mine was so complete because I went to iraq...)? When I was 19 I was nervous about my Chinook flight from Bagdad international airport to the intermediary fob before going to my patrol base. When you were 19 you were nervous about the next semester. I made the same mistake the author made and applied naive kid stereotype to a diverse group of people. But I got over it and I suspect that sometime in the near future the author will regret writing that article. The only takeaway I got from it was something I'm still working out for myself, which is the foray many veterans took into the darker side of human nature. It's one thing to be the victim of malice and sadism and a whole other to grab the reins and enjoy doing it. I'd never dreamed of intentionally hurting people for the fun of it, but over there I was a demigod. I punched children, shot a lot of dogs, burned small mammals, spit on detainees, out my rifle barrel in their mouths while they were blindfolded and laughed to their face about it. I perfected a tone of voice and intonation in order to make them think the rumors about what Americans do to detainees were true. I never let them sleep. I knew most of them were likely innocent. They were blindfolded before we put them in the humvee and stayed so for up to a week. Usually this all begins with a raid. "Raiding," aside from its practical definition, means we can destroy everything they own. This meant cutting open their mattresses and pillows to find whatever, rolling their tvs down the stairs, throwing everything they owned onto the floor, just generally making sure their lives and everything they owned would be fucked for a good while. After we had the detainee in the humvee it was free reign. The gunner did his best to knee him in his face and stomp on his balls and feet. The roads were bumpy so our rifle butts ended up in his ribs. Etc etc. I enjoyed all of it, which is weird for me to say. And let me assure you it wasn't a feeling limited to myself, because most of my platoon mates disliked the limits of what we could get away with. Many people have done much worse. I don't know if anyone cares about any of that, or if my Catholic-esque confession was necessary to make my point. But I was a "normal" teenager who would've had a life experience similar to the college kids the author pretends he's not complaining about, because of my choice (it's constantly necessary to emphasize it was my choice when talking about veteran stuff otherwise people will tell me about the choice I chose to make) I learned about what the kind of darkness every person is capable of if the circumstances are right, first hand, because I was that. I don't think it makes a dichotomy of gen y so much as it has made a dichotomy of every veteran/civilian generation from every war. In college you don't have abject power over the entire populace of a country, as least in the face to face kind of way. Other than that, the differences between military life and civilian life aren't really worth writing about. The danger isn't really that affecting. I get more scared riding passenger on the freeway with a bad driver than I ever did overseas. Everyone experiences loss. Everything is subjective and relative to that subjectivity. I don't know. This article isn't good and I don't think this comment is either. Wrote on my phone sorry for mistakes.
I think that your response is an interesting one, particularly when you mention this: which for me, runs alongside this line from the article: The thing of it is, that military or not, "college age" is about the age when people head out into the "real world" and have brushes with that darker side of humanity. I'd also say to the writer that "real world" is a strange term to use, since the majority of "the real world" does not exist in war. In fact, war is a very special circumstance where social norms, values and mores are suspended to make way for all kinds of behaviors. I've never been a part of the military, but from the outside, human beings doing awful things to each other is somewhat expected. It's not ok, but I can see how it would happen. Give a kid a gun and the backing of a military and a government and I think it would be really hard not to give in to a sense of power over other people. What I have seen, is some pretty awful behavior perpetrated by people who did things without any of that support, people who were not otherwise pretty decent people. People who chose to do shitty things through some sort of twisted rationale. In another thread, I mentioned that I haven't come up against anyone I thought of as truly evil and that's so. But I will say that I have met people of very odd morality and only through observing them for a long time was I able to understand where they were coming from. What I have seen even more often of college-aged people is people testing their limits as well as the limits of the societies they exist within. This is how an otherwise "good" person by the standards of a society might do something truly awful, for example taking sexual advantage of an inebriated person. The difference is, the kid in college who does something like that, still lives in a place where that is not ok, whereas the kid in the war zone might be surrounded by people who are doing similar things, without any consequences except for how it will affect them personally down the line. What I see this article suffering from the most is attribution: that is, projecting one's expectations on to another person or group of people and then not bothering to verify whether or not that is so. Of course, this is hard to do when choosing to speak in such broad strokes, but it is almost always easier. Military training as I understand it, exists to help soldiers function under circumstances that are not considered the norm for most of society. For example, if people's initial reactions to threats were to destroy, kill or dismantle those threats, it would be very hard to maintain the kinds of social bonds that allow societies to function in the ways that they do. From what I understand, transitioning from the military back to the civilian way of life can be really difficult and very much a culture shock. I don't know who this guy is or what he's been through, but I do think that you're right that his views may well change a bit over time.The only takeaway I got from it was something I'm still working out for myself, which is the foray many veterans took into the darker side of human nature. It's one thing to be the victim of malice and sadism and a whole other to grab the reins and enjoy doing it.
We may have had a later start in life on our formal education, but our real world knowledge runs deep.
Agree with the assessment of the article, disagree with the assessment of the comment. I don't see how a supply of weapons, a mandate to use them, and an indoctrination to remind a bunch of foreigners who's in charge won't affect teenagers. I also think it's important to note that kids going to college are experiencing an exponential expansion of their freedoms; kids going to war are experiencing an exponential reduction. The more vets and prisoners I talk to, the more parallels I draw: two years in lockup and two years FOB have a lot more in common with each other than either does with two years in community college. And that's what it comes down to: when you're deployed, your life is on hold. You are volunteering to give up your individual initiative to your country. This choice is usually made at or before the point of legal adulthood. There will be blowback. The article is a screed from an angry teenager. Following one of this links: I nearly enlisted for four years running through college and I'd have to say "d: none of the above." What I just read is an angry diatribe in defense of the unexamined life. I think this sort of thinking is where "thanks for your service" comes from: "I acknowledge that you have done something I have not, and I need a quick equalizer so that we can continue to communicate on equal footing."So you decided to join the United States Army because:
a. You are super patriotic. America!
b. Your high school sweetheart broke up with you.
c. You had nothing better to do and going to war sounds cool.