I see soldiers as humans.
The military has changed many times throughout history and across different cultures. In many nations, the military and the police are effectively the same thing. It's something that sets heavily westernized nations apart from many other parts of the world where there really is no distinction between police and military - who are essentially the enforcers of a hegemony (be it a sole dictator or a more complicated ruling caste).
In America's history, the soldier was often a common man who wanted to make something of himself. The officers were educated land owners and were largely responsible for operating their assigned unit with a high degree of autonomy. They handled their own procurement, managed their own training, and in many cases decided their own direction unless they had orders conflicting with whatever scheme was in their head.
In many cases - those who took up arms against Britain were the convicts and debtors who either fled or were evicted from Britain (or the descendants thereof). It wasn't quite the romantic story that gets told over and over - but it is a very powerful story, still - that these men would decide to take on the greatest empire in the world with no promise of success or no guarantee they would ever see payment if they did succeed.
It is interesting to note that, not long after the formation of the Articles of Confederation, Washington had to plead with his officers to not stage a coupe due to the failure of the politicians to provide adequate pay for the services during war-time.
The soldiers who followed - the ones who fought in the War of 1812, signed up with a more clear idea of what they were defending. These were the men who believed that the fledgling nation was both in need and worthy of protection. The national military, at this time, was still a very loosely organized deal. Federal officers would take command of several State militia units and direct them in the theater. It was a bit of a different idea of what the military was.
The exception to this would be the Navy. The Navy was directly commissioned prior to the Declaration of Independence. Out of those contracted privateers, a more organized system of authority began to develop as well as a variety of Naval 'infantry' - the boarding parties - the Marines.
The Navy was one of the first major foreign influences of the U.S. as a government.
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The Civil War was, ultimately, very damaging to the U.S. military as an institution, and something that it has never quite recovered from.
The Civil War saw the military used as a sort of 'palace guard' for the Lincoln administration - a taint that never completely went away. Soldiers became enforcers of political doctrine and more directly arms of presidential agendas. This time period also saw a subtle shift in the mentality of what the military was about. No longer was the military about defending the home land. It was about carrying out orders from politicians who decided that another group of people had to live as they decreed.
Now, we can go over the reasons for the war, and there were many, and decide whether or not we would agree with what the Confederacy was doing - but that doesn't really touch on how the political wars at the time influenced the military for over a century.
When you go from protecting your ideology/way of life to protecting your hold of authority - it leads to tyranny and oppression in the end.
The generation that fought World War 1 is something of an example of this. We were fighting and didn't seem to know why. Being a soldier was a job ... but ... it had a very vague description that seemed to be applied in ways that didn't stack up with the stories in the history books.
This led to a general anti-war sentiment with a trend toward isolationism. America wanted to leave the rest of the world alone and not fight for reasons that were not entirely clear.
Then came the generation that fought in World War II.
This is really where the "Modern Military" began.
After the anti-war, isolationist sentiment expressed by the U.S. populace - the military built up during World War I was largely abandoned. There were few in the military with experience in organization, let alone warfare. Military contractors were small and largely offshoots of civilian manufacturing. While we were not exactly defenseless, the military was a sort of secondary curiosity and political pork project.
Then public opinion shifted in the wake of Pearl Harbor and increased media coverage of events coming out of Europe.
This made the idea of a global threat seem credible in the public eye. Men didn't just sign up for the military to defend the nation - they signed up to defend the concept of a 'free' or 'western' world. They saw it as being attacked by imperialistic systems of government and decided it was time to help other nations resist.
This is where the military's over-used legend of efficiency came from. Having very little leadership in place, the government set to work bringing in business owners, managers, CEOs, etc of various companies. They were immediately granted officer positions, some of them fairly well ranked; while others were put into the higher ranks of the enlisted side.
These men literally moved mountains at every level. They cut through political nonsense, streamlined procurement, and wielded manpower expertly. While it was still a bureaucracy - it was effectively giving innovative business owners/managers several factories worth of willing and able bodies with a budget several times that of what they were used to working with.
This was how the U.S. went from a group that was largely untrained and inexperienced to fast and adaptive combat troops pioneering tactics and strategies that would set the tone for the foreseeable future of warfare.
In a sense - it was the 'brotherly' and fraternal nature of our military that led to a much more candid relationship between soldier and officer.
It is easier to understand this with a bit of experience and a knowledge of other systems.
The 'caste' systems of other nations dominated the mindset of military command structure within many countries (even those where that caste system was disappearing). The officers were the educated few and the enlisted were the peasants. Warfare was a series of drills that were taught to the peasants. The officers selected the action to be performed and issued the order which was followed by the peasantry.
While there was the need to be an effective leader - there wasn't nearly the kind of feedback system. The peasant wasn't encouraged to share his observations, usually. It is a very "do this because I said so - and because if everyone does their own thing, we all die."
By the time World War II rolled around, however, the distinction between officers and enlisted began to decline. Many of the people who were in the trenches were tradesmen, hunters, teachers, historians, etc. Their proof of practical knowledge led to the necessity for leaders to begin incorporating a more candid leadership style. The 'enlightened soldier' doesn't really care to listen to the douche who is giving suicidal orders no matter how shiny his collar is.
It was this that led to America's notoriously adaptive ground forces. The immediate chains of command became smaller, leaders/officers became more dynamically involved with their decision making and drawing on the experience of their groups. These leaders then shared information with each other, and the result was a set of very adaptive strategies.
In many respects, this was the "Golden Age" of the military. This is the heroic model of a soldier we frequently think of - and it produced generals such as this:
[video=youtube;dv2Wi-hFlJ8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv2Wi-hFlJ8[/video]
While the darkness of political agendas existed at the time - it was overshadowed, greatly, by the principles and virtues held by men at all levels of the military. It was a military built upon the response to a global threat, and it was fought by men (and, in many cases, women as well) who sacrificed everything for the idea that no one should live in tyranny.
...
And how they turn in their graves at what has come to pass, since.
The Korean war was an extension of World War II - though more a settling of territory lines between Russia and the Allies (and fledgling U.N.). That said, it was fought by many of the same people who served in World War II.
Vietnam was another damaging war. This was another confused war fought largely for political purposes. In theory - it could have been won - but, realistically, the U.S. had disenfranchised the Vietnamese with their insistence on leaders of the 'puppet' government.
Military history aside, the public backlash against the war (largely instigated by communist revolutionaries, which should surprise no one given the objective at the time) set an antagonistic tone between the military and civilian populations. It served to isolate those within the military. They were openly judged for their decision to voluntarily enlist or to obey the draft order.
The scars of this era largely sent the pendulum of public opinion rocketing back toward something close to uniform-worship. This has compounded strongly with nationalism in the recent years to form the idea that people serving in the military are heroes serving our nation - that it is unpatriotic to criticize the military.
This idea has tainted some of the minds within the military, I have noticed, and it is not healthy. Further, politics has turned the once-efficient military structure capable of moving mountains in the 40s to a immovable mass of politicized social experiments and corporate welfare not 80 years later.
A lot of the 'leadership systems' in place amount to "Yell by number" with those 'leaders' being those who put up with the political bullshit long enough to get promoted and tell others: "when I was..." so as to justify their completely illogical and unnecessary decisions.
It has led to a return to the caste system of authoritarian command that is simply not going to be tolerated by people in western societies.
There are basically two types of soldiers, these days.
Those who are doing it as a job.
Those who are trying to live out an idea that will be denied them by the political institution in place.
Granted, we aren't as bad as the Iraqi army was when we first went into Iraq (that was a blatant political system) - but we are only sinking deeper into that kind of system.
If you are an officer who questions the validity/effectiveness/necessity of a policy set by the progressives in the Obama administration (such as witch hunts for various forms of intolerance) - then you get passed over for promotion ... or told in no uncertain terms to resign.
The military can only take so much of that before it becomes little better than a political gravy train that has party lap dogs at all levels of command (placed there because they will do what the party/leadership says, not because they are actually effective). It is this slow corruption of the military compounded with the hero-worshiping nationalism that concern me.
As much as I have respect for my brothers and sisters who wear the uniform - I am gravely concerned about how that system is going to use their desire to do their job and/or serve their nation. I am also concerned about the long-term effects of how that type of political gravy-train changes the culture of the military into palace guards.
Already, you have people demanding that the federal government take over policing (because a bunch of white soldiers are going to police better than a bunch of white cops.... that's going to go over really well when classic redneck jarhead from the sticks wastes G-licious in a city, somewhere). While I doubt that's a realistic concern for the immediate future - it shows a trend toward the systems of other nations where the military is a guardian of the hegemony over the people it 'represents' more so than a defense of the homeland.
At the end of the day - I neither pity nor detest soldiers. I neither worship nor abhor soldiers. I try to keep a very literal view of what is going on at all times and not let my sentiments cloud my analysis.
That doesn't mean I don't have sentiments or emotions - but those are between me and soldiers I deem warranting an expression of those emotions.
