The Military and Armed Conflict

[Thug Bubbles]

Given some recent posts by Nielso, I'm now curious what Anarchists (and others) here think of the military as an idea, and a reality and what they think of armed conflict. So I'll start with a series of questions:

<ul type="square">1. What do you think of people who join the military, and why?

2. Do you think armed conflict is sometimes unavoidable?

3. What avenues can one take if they wish to help in an armed conflict on a soldiering level?

4. What do you think of private military contractors?

5. What do you think of private security forces? (emphasis on "forces" and not a department store security guard)[/list]While I can understand and disagree with some positions about government and military as a structure, I cannot understand a hatred of the soldier. I ask these questions because I believe that armed conflict is inevitable and if one wishes to help in a very direct way the Military is an excellent avenue to take given the vast resources it has. We need to look no further than Rwanda, Somalia, and other times in history when ideology compelled a group of people to slaughter another group. No ammount of diplomatic intervention will change the fact that people needed to pick up a gun and defend their home and life.

I am not arguing that absolution of a nationalized military would create a vaccum; certainly people would come together to solve these issues in some manner, but currently there seems to be no incentive to create private security forces that would have stepped in these situations, the exception seems to be private contractors that still only provide ancillary support for the existing military structure, rather than taking on a conflict alone.

To "serve" your country a willful submission to the national populus, through a medium of governmental policy and military dicipline. This is what I can respect. When one looks to the Coca-Cola helpdesk monkey with contempt because his company employ's slave labor is assinine. Anger towards the Shoemaker because Nike makes deals with genocidal rulers is misplaced. I see hateful comments towards soldiers a similar light.

The military follows orders from policy makers who gauge the support of the country and ulitmately need their vote come election, so the Military by proxy is serving the people. Yes, it's flawed, and yes, it can have disasterous consequences, and may not be as efficient as a privatized system, but these are all arguments for the puppet master and his strings, not the puppet.

The method to deploy and use the soldiers may be quite flawed, but the concept is still valid. Some may think that even the concept is nefarious and evil, so to those I ask the above questions.