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One ethical complication in the US is that the military is effectively a jobs program for people from lower economic classes - it offers you both pay and experi
by geofft 6y ago
One ethical complication in the US is that the military is effectively a jobs program for people from lower economic classes - it offers you both pay and experience straight out of high school as well as funding for a college decree, and you can turn that into a promising career. (As long as you're not physically or mentally broken by the whole experience, that is.) For many teenagers from poorer parts of the country who aren't getting into good colleges and don't see many other prospects, the military is one of their best options. And, at least in the last few decades, there was a pretty decent chance you wouldn't see combat at all.
(A side effect here: the military finds it harder to recruit in places which have good job markets and higher minimum wages, because their value proposition isn't as strong in comparison, and the risk of moral injury and regular old injury weighs against that choice. Here's an article about it, from a right-leaning news site no less: https://dailycaller.com/2019/01/02/us-army-recruiting-problems/ https://dailycaller.com/2019/01/02/us-army-recruiting-proble...)
While "just following orders" isn't a defense for war crimes, I think there's a lot of sympathy for people who enlist and follow the rules of war, and we don't see them as morally culpable for making the wars happen (or giving the military the ability to engage in war). Most of them would prefer to finish their agreed term of service and go back home.
Meanwhile, defense contractors profit specifically from military engagements ("Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired...") and have more of an incentive to see wars happen, and they generally employ people who can find equivalent jobs and careers outside of defense, so if you're the sort of person who finds the military-industrial complex unethical, it makes a lot more sense to pin it on the industrial part of that complex.