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Is It Ethical to Serve in the U.S. Military?
Can we hate the war but love the warrior?
American society has such a militaristic, patriotic ethos that to even ask the question posed in the title will garner me the worst type of condemnation — before I have even had the chance to layout my answer one way or another.
Somewhat ironically, it’s easy to condemn the actions of the U.S. Government, and the military operations they have ordered. The purpose of this article is to try to see if these things can be separated from one another: If the government engages in a foolish or immoral war, is the soldier that fights in that war then guilty of the same wrongdoing as the government?
In the last 50 years, the U.S. Government has officially fought in four wars: 1) the Vietnam War, 2) the Persian Gulf War, 3) the War in Iraq, and 4) the War in Afghanistan. Three of the four are roundly seen as failures.
They had unclear objectives resulting from murky motivations, and they concluded with lots of destruction and loss of life with no real change for the better. Again and again, we compromised our morals to go after an enemy that was often nebulous at best.
We fought against ideas, like “communism” or “terrorism”, instead of for objectives. The one exception is the Persian Gulf War. This was…
