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That's propaganda. When i was young and naive and thought being a soldier was a moral line of work, I went to MEPS. I was shocked. A huge percentage were absolutely butterball-level fatties. The recruiters simply put them on 2 week binge diets, everyone did their part in fudging the numbers, and that was that. Moreover, recruiters in my area actively pursue high-school dropouts, knowing that they are generally the only ones dumb enough to go play soldier in a sandbox for money. They massage these kids, the dumbest in our society, for a few weeks while they help them with GED Prep. Then it's off to MEPS.
Make no mistake-the dumbest kids in our society serve in the military, not the other way around. I went through the line to get my physical with a kid who murdered a man, pled down, got a waiver and was joining the Marines.
Sad state of affairs. Thank God the douche in processing tried to lie to me and I got pissed and walked out. Walking out of MEPS without signing a thing was the greatest decision of my life to this day.
My nephew went to Iraq (ARMY) he has a college degree. I have talked to several Soldiers and Marines and most have a college degree or they are working on one while serving...
You should be ashamed of yourself for talking down those that serve...
I get a feeling that you would have never made it through boot camp!
Arguably, the only thing that was attacked in WWII was a military installation on an mid-ocean island claimed by the US. No civilians were attacked, nor were any troops stationed on our shores, so it can be argued that the US was not attacked. You can define "attack" and "war" any way you want, but nothing happened in WWII that threatened any Americans in their living rooms.
Nothing happened to threaten Americans?The 2403 that died at Pearl Harbor would beg to differ with you.By your logic we should have just waited until the Japanese sailed into Los Angeles and San Francisco and then greeted them with deep bows?Sorry,but when you are threatened you take the fight to the enemy and hit them where they live.Or will it take a nuclear device exploded in one of our cities,a poison gas attack,a water supply poisoned,germ warfare,or perhaps just another good old fashiond 9/11 type bombing to convince the "Its all our fault blame America first" crowd that we do have foes that are determined to kill as many of us as they can?
It was a formal military attack sanctioned and directed by a foreign government against our military. That's justifies a response in kind. Attacks by small groups of civilians from a country do NOT justify a similar response.
That's propaganda. When i was young and naive and thought being a soldier was a moral line of work, I went to MEPS. I was shocked. A huge percentage were absolutely butterball-level fatties. The recruiters simply put them on 2 week binge diets, everyone did their part in fudging the numbers, and that was that. Moreover, recruiters in my area actively pursue high-school dropouts, knowing that they are generally the only ones dumb enough to go play soldier in a sandbox for money. They massage these kids, the dumbest in our society, for a few weeks while they help them with GED Prep. Then it's off to MEPS.
Make no mistake-the dumbest kids in our society serve in the military, not the other way around. I went through the line to get my physical with a kid who murdered a man, pled down, got a waiver and was joining the Marines.
Sad state of affairs. Thank God the douche in processing tried to lie to me and I got pissed and walked out. Walking out of MEPS without signing a thing was the greatest decision of my life to this day.
yeah, i'm gonna have to go with futurebrennandad on this one; you don't really have any idea of what you are talking about. you are taking anecdotal experiences of *meps* for crying out loud, and trying to pass that off as statistical data for the entirety of the armed forces.
for some reason, it makes the rest of your claims suspect as well. gee, i wonder why that could be.
in the mean time, since you are obviously so much more intelligent and wise than those of us vets out here, maybe you can go read up on some material about logical fallacies and realize that your entire argument is a load of crap.
but, yes, i would agree, walking out of meps was probably the best decision that you have ever made.
from my own anecdotal experience: i actually went in with a delusion that i would find mostly stupid people in the military. i also went in with the delusion that combat was a physical challenge.
turns out, both of those were wrong assumptions to make.
combat was a purely mental exercise; the physical had almost nothing to do with it. though i was naive about what combat would be like in and of itself, i had realized before joining that everything else in the military (especially boot camp and similar training) would be a mental challenge. i went into boot camp expecting brainashing, expecting to be screwed with, and expecting to need to make it a mental game in order to do well.
some of the smartest people that i have met in my life were in the military. one of my passions is debate, especially regarding ethics or religion, and i was not disappointed in the guys that i conversed with in the military.
one of the squad leaders in my platoon before we went to iraq has a masters degree in classical literature or shakespearian studies or something similar. before that, one of my staff seargeants in georgia was a foreigner with two bachelors and a masters in something, none of which i recall. one of the guys that i went through infantry training with was a wall street broker that got royally pissed off when terrorists crashed a plane into his girlfriend's office building and tried to kill her.
i myself had almost 5 years of experience as a freelance graphic artist, closer to 8 years as an intern journalist for an outdoors magazine, over ten years as a grunt worker in a magazine printshop for the same company, and 2 years as a religious missionary for my church (i didn't join the usmc until i was 23, so i had time to travel the world and get a bit of life experience under my belt first).
now i am finally going to school to get a degree in the digital media that i have been freelancing in for all in all close to a decade, and i entered school with another assumption: that i would find smarter, more motivated people at college.
those of you that have also been through both college and the military are probably laughing right now. if it weren't for the immature, high school mentality at college, there would be a higher percentage of smarter, more motivated people there. as it is though, college is just as much about partying, being irresponsible, and coasting through life as anywhere else in the world. there are good and bad individuals in every nearly organization in the world, because they are all made up people.
back to futurebrennandad's comment:
Quote:
Originally Posted by FutureBrennanDad
You need to face the fact that our volunteer amred forces are a cross section of society, the same demographics as our country. Just sit back and find any justification that will help you look into the mirror. You insulting everyone that served while sitting behind a keyboard is brave stuff.
Now I will agree that there is gang members in the military, everyone well, at least I would think everyone knows this. Also yes, some people have joined while they are in the military. I am not so sure about ones that enter the military just for their organization. I guess, there may be some, and probably ones of smaller lesser known gangs in this country that do this for that purpose.
I found it out on the History Channel. There is a show called "Gangland". It mentioned all kinds of gangs such as Nortenos Gangster Disciples, Skinheads. You are suppose to abandon your allegiance to the gang before you join the military, but some people lie their way into the military, then use it against law enforcement in some cases, such as what happened in Ceres,California. A police officer was killed because the gang member knew a military tactic that the officer didn't know and that gang member used it. The irony was that this gang member was on military leave from Iraq.
That isn't the only thing. There was a gang initiation in Kaiserslauten,Germany. This person was getting initiated into the Gangster Disciples, which involved a group beating. He was in the air force. He later died from his wounds.
Two skinheads from Ft. LeJeune,NC went off base and shot an elderly African-American couple to death. The person who did it, James Burmeister, did it because he wanted the spiderweb tattoo. He thought it was for killing someone. He later found it was for doing time in prison.
There is a pretty good sized pool of well qualified applicants that are not being allowed to serve—homosexuals. If they let gays serve openly in the military they might not be in such a recruiting crunch now.
Nothing happened to threaten Americans?The 2403 that died at Pearl Harbor would beg to differ with you.By your logic we should have just waited until the Japanese sailed into Los Angeles and San Francisco and then greeted them with deep bows?Sorry,but when you are threatened you take the fight to the enemy and hit them where they live.Or will it take a nuclear device exploded in one of our cities,a poison gas attack,a water supply poisoned,germ warfare,or perhaps just another good old fashiond 9/11 type bombing to convince the "Its all our fault blame America first" crowd that we do have foes that are determined to kill as many of us as they can?
The Americans who died at Pearl Harbor were battle-ready armed forces in an attack position, thousands of miles from the American mainland, They were a threat to the Japanese, who followed your advice---take the fight to the enemy.
When you make rules, both sides play by them. Be careful what you wish for.
I found it out on the History Channel. There is a show called "Gangland". It mentioned all kinds of gangs such as Nortenos Gangster Disciples, Skinheads. You are suppose to abandon your allegiance to the gang before you join the military, but some people lie their way into the military, then use it against law enforcement in some cases, such as what happened in Ceres,California. A police officer was killed because the gang member knew a military tactic that the officer didn't know and that gang member used it. The irony was that this gang member was on military leave from Iraq.
That isn't the only thing. There was a gang initiation in Kaiserslauten,Germany. This person was getting initiated into the Gangster Disciples, which involved a group beating. He was in the air force. He later died from his wounds.
Two skinheads from Ft. LeJeune,NC went off base and shot an elderly African-American couple to death. The person who did it, James Burmeister, did it because he wanted the spiderweb tattoo. He thought it was for killing someone. He later found it was for doing time in prison.
I fully agree that there are gang members that are former military and use knowledge gained for their benifit. But, typically they are not being told to join the military by the organization for that purpose. And btw, the show gangland, isnt always the best source of information on gangs. Most of their episodes are not acurate. Not saying that some of what they produce isn't correct, but you can't take everything that the show says as fact.
I was severely myopic and got into the NAVY by memorizing the eye chart. I skated through boot camp by avoiding frostbite at Great Lakes. I went to "Nam and served in the Riverine Group as a machinist and part time thug. Those were interesting times.
The basics of the infantry have not changed much since the beginning of time although the tools have become more complicated and effective. You don't IMHO need a HS diploma to be an infantryman. Most people can be taught to handle the weapons because generally the more complex the easier they are to use. If some kid is obese that can be cured in boot camp, if they use drugs, so what drugs are available everywhere, a number of my compatriots used dope and alcohol to stay somewhat stable and I think a couple used heroin. I preferred amphetamines. Stability was not one of my goals. Quicker reactions were a priority.
The military should not be so fussy unless they are so dependant on complex technology they forgot the basics. It does not take an educated man to win a fight. It takes a killer. That can be a natural trait or be learned from training and experience. A properly trained, experienced and supported infantry squad is the most dangerous thing on the planet. It always has been.
The big difference between now and back then is that back then, the draft was there. There were ways to avoid it, but most likely, if you weren't in college, if you were the first born son(and one of a few boys in the family and the father was still living), and able-bodied, you were going into the military whether you liked it or not. I am not suggesting the draft because as I know the military isn't for me. The thing is, there are many people who don't want to be in the military for various reasons.
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