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"How to Control the Military"
By John Kenneth Galbraith
Which demonstrates the danger any military poses to any democracy.
I read it in Vietnam the year (1969) that is was published. It completely changed my view of the military draft.
Galbraith makes, among other points, an excellent case that having non-lifer military conscripts - involuntary draftees - serving on active duty is essential to keeping military establishments from seizing control of governments.
And of the Waffen Schutzstaffel
And often featured in propaganda images:
There is, to my mind, no question that we - The United States of America - are well down this road.
You REALLY have to try harder to come up with something original.
Inoway can you say he was not! 
and 1 or 2 weeks a year, correct? So you can also hold down a FT job, with bennies, correct? And get paid for those weekends?
Housing may not be free, but aren't active, enlisted military given a housing "stipend" in their paychecks?
Of course only active duty military should have access to free medical care. 
Of course the military should have to pay taxes on their income.
It's not a job you can quit. That's why one should think long and hard before enlisting.
By the time I was in the ANG, the "one weekend/two weeks" paradigm was largely untrue. All five branches have come to rely heavily on their Reserve Components.
The Air National Guard is responsible for 100% of defending the airspace of the continental U.S. That's a little more than being a "weekend warrior."
You can hold down a FT job and I'll be the first to say that it was a hell of a lot easier for me in peacetime. For about the past 20 years (or more) being Guard/Reserve is very close to being AD because of all the deployments.
How you hold a civilian job has a lot to do with what degree (if any) of support your employer gives you. Some employers are really generous. Others are not. It's a fallacy that a Reserve component troop can go off to duty, whether for AcDuTra (Active Duty For Training) or actual hostilities, and then come back with everything at their civilian job intact and all is hunky-dory. The law states that your employer must hold a job for you. That does not mean it is the job you held when you left. It can well be the shittiest job the employer has and be the minimum to comply with the law, and the employer can look for other reasons to fire you that they say is unrelated to your service, especially in hardcore right-to-work/employment-at-will states.
I had a former friend (note the emphasis on "former" who was a management type. He told me openly he would never hire someone in the Guard or Reserve because it was "too much of a pain in the ass" for him to try and figure out the laws about Reserve component service and civilian employment.
If we had full, national health insurance the health care problem wouldn't exist. In Canada, full-time military and their dependents have to use the military medical services. Reservists are covered like any other Canadian when not on duty, and when on duty they're covered by the Canadian Forces Medical Service. There's no gap (chasm) like there is here.
Of course one should think long and hard before signing your John Hancock on the dotted line, because once you do, your life is not your own, even when you're in the Guard/Reserve. Fortunately I had a recruiter who really stressed that to me.
I personally would not make a good recruiter, because I would be very frank with a potential enlistee. I would tell them openly that you run the risk of getting your ass shot off, you become a cog in a very big wheel and it can be the best thing, worst thing, or somewhere in between that you ever do with your life.
That is an absolutely ignorant and idiotic response, considering what I shared in Post #87.
And all the more shameful, considering your username.
Looking for a MEDIVAC image made my eyes tear as I looked through all the photographs Google turned up. I could hear again "Whop, Whop, Whop ... Go, Go, GO" and smell the dust and the blood .
Semper Fi
Even if the country is not.
As a medic in Vietnam my base pay was ~100/month - of course, added to that, was the great $20 month combat pay.
I dislike the military establishment, I despise worship and aggrandizement of the military.
However, those men and women are repeatedly putting their lives on the line in a way that you, and no one who has not SERVED, can ever begin to understand.
Our current wars are wrong and a disgrace to our nation - but We The People are the ones who started them. Do not presume to denigrate those who go off to fight them for you.
VOLUNTEERED
Yeah-when I can't eat my home fries without this nonsense it has gone too far. I think 3 days a year (Memorial day, 4th of July, and Veteran's day) is plenty enough recognition without nagging condiments. It's starting to look like Germany just before they jumped Poland.
And this thread isn't silly at all...
First off, I wore stripes. I did not wear brass. What I did in other services could have qualified me to hold Warrant Officer grade, but the Air Force doesn't have WO's.
I was no hero. I did not see combat. I showed up, did what I was told and got a piece of paper with the words "Honorable Discharge" on it.
I worked in C3I - Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence. I was in a unit that was primarily NORAD-dedicated, working in partnership with the Royal Canadian Air Force to defend North America. Although NORAD units were not immune from overseas deployment, our primary focus was defending the North American continent. That was part of the appeal for me - defending State, Nation and helping our Canadian partners. I certainly didn't want to see Tupolev-95's in our skies.
Yes, when you get to Basic Training, you get a lot of Basic Bullshit from the Military Training Instructors (AF version of drill sergeants). Some of them are actually instructor/mentor types and some of them are just assholes (those words are a direct quote from my recruiter). Mine was mostly an asshole. The process is meant as "shock treatment" to acclimate from a civilian to a military mindset, but there are those who throughout the whole process are able to discern the useful knowledge (teamwork) from the bullshit (becoming a "killing machine" . Others don't. The ultra gung-ho types I usually kept my distance from. Officers...you salute the rank, not necessarily the person wearing it.
The vast, vast majority of enlisted/NCO/officers I knew treated it as a job we had to do. Alright, the fighter pilots in my Wing were like fighter pilots everywhere (How do you know you're in a room with a fighter pilot? They'll tell you.) who lived, eat, breathed and shat what they did, even though most of them were airline pilots in their civilian jobs.
Yes, the USSR collapsed under its own overburdened military weight. Afghanistan was the straw that broke the Bear's back. However, I thank God that there was a man like Mikhail Gorbachev who could have the humility to notice this, rather than a Brezhnev or an Andropov who would have used that collapse as an excuse to make a strike against the Western world.
I don't think those who join are under any illusion that it's a job like one on civvy street. You live under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). You can get killed, and you can be called upon to kill another human being. From my point of view, that was a frighteningly sobering possibility. It sure as hell wasn't one to get excited about.
OK, you could say that because I was Guard and served in peacetime that I don't know what I'm talking about, and maybe in comparison to the way things are now I don't. However, there are times when a military member can be directly involved in saving a life...maybe YOUR life. What if your fishing boat capsizes in the Great Lakes? The Coast Guard will do whatever is humanly possible to save you (yes, the USCG is a military service). Tornado, flood? The National Guard (usually the Army Guard) is at the disposal of a state Governor for humanitarian relief. However, the Bush years took a hell of a toll on the Guard/Reserve forces.
Several services have civilian, volunteer, unpaid noncombat auxiliaries to assist with the humanitarian work. The USCG has the Coast Guard Auxiliary. The Air Force has the Civil Air Patrol. I have been a member of both and there are a lot of dedicated volunteers in those auxiliaries.
I don't worship the military, nor do I want to be worshipped because I was in the military. I don't think most military people do.
FWIW.
But I think your view is a very reasonable one.
I was a draftee, went to Infantry OCS, and was commissioned as a 2nd Lt. at 19 (it was wartime). I served in combat, leading an Infantry rifle platoon in combat in the 101st Airborne Division at 20.
But I think it's perhaps your job, more than mine, that epitomizes how the military protects our freedoms. Because it's not any particular war that does that. It's guys like you, and all of us who served, who were part of our "standing army" that served as a deterrent to attack. That is what has prevented our being defeated and conquered and losing our freedoms.
None of the vets I know are looking for "worship." They just want somebody to understand what it was like, and how hard it could be. That's all.
Thanks for your service, DissidentVoice. 
And welcome home, brother! I know your time in the 199th must be more meaningful to you, but I also was 101st, 2/501 Infantry.
In the other thread I posted:
I hold my head high
Even though I served in one of those fucked up wars in which we never should have been involved.
I knew many dozens who died for that mistake, and far more who were wounded and maimed.
But I'm proud to have served with honorable men, who were willing to lay down their lives for one another.
When a friend of mine--an officer--was down with a sucking chest wound and the medevac chopper couldn't get in because of intense ground fire, my platoon sergeant came to tell me that my platoon of 36 men had voted--unanimously--to rappel into the firefight to take the pressure off so my friend could be extracted. It would have been a suicidal mission, and our higher HQ nixed the proposal.
My friend didn't make it. But I'll never forget those good,good men with whom I was privileged to serve.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2096038
I noticed your Vietnam service ribbon straight away. A lot of people in my ANG unit had those, including the wing commander (who had many, many hours "downtown" in F-100's and F-4's).
I came along too late for 'Nam. All I remember was you guys coming home and in many cases being treated like shit.
Man...being a Platoon Leader in Combat Arms at 19 during 'Nam. I can't even begin to imagine what that was like.
Thank you for your generous analysis of what I did being a "deterrent to attack." That's really what it was all about for me and many others I served with. I remember very, very few of the "gung ho," "blood makes the grass grow" types, not even from my former-Marine flight commander, a very low-key guy as it happens.
Like I say, I showed up, did what I was told, got an "attaboy" or two out of it and have a blue uniform hanging in my closet and an honorable discharge among my important papers.
I hope what I did contributed some to The Day After not becoming reality.
And thank you too, Sir.
