Thank you for a calm and rational response. I have no doubt that many soldiers would indeed lay their life on the line for another person, but why the military?

Couldn't you get that same satisfaction and accomplishment from being a police officer, or a firefighter, or an EMT or something else of that nature? I don't think anyone would disagree that we could use a few more police officers with moral fortitude. I personally believe all of those have a higher tangible benefit.

I too believe a standing army is necessary for practically any country with something to lose, and I certainly wouldn't advocate getting rid of it.

There are many corruptions in the US military, and that's an indisputable fact. Much of our economic crisis stems from unbridled defense spending, and downright malicious corporations taking advantage of it. Military, and especially patriotism, is too often a rallying call for people wanting to taking advantage of our country for their own personal gain. The issues with military itself are clear, and most people project that same negative emotion (however justified or not) onto soldiers. We can't easily go yell at Petraeus, McChrystal, Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney etc, but we can easily go bitch at that the nearest enlisted man, and for that I'm sorry.

But I do believe at the end of the day, in a small way, you are supporting a system that does more negative than positive. The major points of contention that really rile me up personally isn't servicemen in general, it's the small list of commonly used tactics of debating:

1. I am protecting your freedom and rights. No, soldiers, you are not. Our freedom has not been threatened (by a source worth being worried about anyway) for a LONG time. The only persons seriously jeopardizing our freedoms are right at home. You are not fighting for my personal freedom. You have not fought for my right to free speech, or any other right. You have fought for very little that affects me positively. You HAVE fought however, to keep a for-profit war machine running smoothly, whether you did so voluntarily, or tangentially is irrelevant.

2. You do not have the courage to do what I am doing, and therefore your opinion is misplaced anger: It does take a level of courage to risk your life (although as I've said earlier, I'm much more likely to risk my own life just by driving to work each morning). It takes more courage in my opinion to stand in the face of public scrutiny and cries of anti-patriotism and say "I believe what we are doing here is wrong, and I believe it should stop". You cannot possibly infer one's level of bravery and commitment to his fellow man from posts on a website that's famous for spamming pictures of cats and cakes your girlfriend made. It is an insult to your own intelligence (not you directly killyourfacego) to assume someone is a coward simply because they disagree with you.

Patriotism and camaraderie are too powerful recruitment tools. They prey on your sense of pride and wanting to belong, whether you own those trains because you are a good person, or because you are an insecure person, it matters not. At the end of the day many soldiers are simply emotionally manipulated into serving something that they do not understand, and by the time many of them learn what it truly is they are fighting for, their own egos and peers won't let them accept it.

I appreciate your sincere and well thought out response. I respect you and wish more people on both sides of the argument could behave like you.