Very generally speaking, no matter how I slice it, at best military defends against military. I know you can't just dismantle unilaterally overnight, but the qu

Very generally speaking, no matter how I slice it, at best military defends against military. I know you can't just dismantle unilaterally overnight, but the question whether it fulfills a useful function in the big scheme of things, much less one that would excuse the atrocities, is an open one to me, to say the least. I tend to think "no". Though it's absolutely not on to just blame the military for the military, civilian society elects the politicians that send soldiers into wars, civilian society ignores issues like this and elects the politicians that allow them to fester. If this actual person didn't do their job because they considered it immoral, everything else being the same, someone else would be found for the job. If "everything else" changed, and the person would be the same (assuming for the thought experiment he's a horrible monster), they would still not get to do the job of lord space death or whatever. So indeed the finger pointing at soldiers or generals is way too easy, and not productive. As skeptical and critical I may be of them, it's between themselves and their friends if they meet their responsibilities as human beings, just like it's for all of us. That person is much less interesting than the wider questions, and it's positively diabolical to spend more energy on demonizing people working within our (incentive) structures, than examining our potential propping up of those structures. Not that anyone is doing that, just generally speaking. All that said, bleh to the militarization of space, there is no excuse for allowing it. Occupy Cape Canaveral!