Uncle Sam University

There is no way I would be able to do that. I have total respect for those men and women.

ah, martyrs for uncle's college money!
"out there in the excitement" - that's how he talks about war!
never mind the misery and brutality and horror of war; it's 'part of your duty' to go to class in your uniform, get shot and killed in your uniform, and finish college not just mystified but even mutilated! War is the most disgusting ritual of all, and there's no respectable honor in being a soldier when most of your sacred duties are done by contractors who get paid hundreds of times more than you. I have zero respect for militarism. rotc sucks up resources that should be used for the student body as a whole, gets tons of money from the government that the rest of the school doesn't, and if schools don't want them on campus they get huge chunks of their overall funding denied.
there's nothing special about having drilled into you the same work ethic that everyone else gets slowly screwed onto their brains over years of slavery to work, and there's nothing productive about joining the military, which is in fact completely unproductive and (of course) destructive, both of the minds of these young people and the lives of the people of southwest asia, whose killing, young rotcie students, will soon be just part of your 'duty' as big tough soldiers.
so there's 20000 kids in rotc? well way over that many of the reserves are AWOL.
The state-sanctioned killing of foreign citizens in order to attack their governments is still mass murder.
ROTC is not an education. It's a terrorist training camp.
Support our troops who refuse to kill.

So you're anti-war Wordless? Then how do you explain our Independence. I don't agree with the current war right now, but to say WAR in general is "...the most disgusting ritual of all..." is a little far fetched. You are more than entitled to your opinion, but being disrespectful to the members of the ROTC is as you so put it is..."the most disgusting ritual of all."

yes, i'm against war and militarism
the american revolution? that wasn't some hugely overfinanced standing army, but irregulars.
american independence? well, we're certainly not independent financially or ideologically from europe.
we killed a hell of a lot of indians.
the disrespect i have for the military is nothing compared to the disrespect the military brass has for life, lying to these kids for years, and sending them out to die in the great and grand task of just shooting and arresting people they don't know, occupying foreign countries they don't understand, and beating up on domestic protest so they don't have to listen, etc. rotc is a glorified fraternity, and it is more than fair game for critique.

hm. I was never a part of the ROTC program and I'm not for the war that's going on, but I am in the military. And to say that it's not productive is ridiculous. I'm not shoothing people left and right or occupying a country I don't understand. I'm helping to heal the soldiers and sailors that are out there fighting. For whatever reason they may have. But I know i've done a lot since I've joined. A lot more than I thought I'd ever do.

Well, what DOES the military produce?
it's the biggest polluter in the USA. It proliferates hierarchical power and petty, invidious distinctions. Granted, it produces a lot of death... And not just of foreigners; the soldiers themselves are regularly sacrificed for the brass to save face. It costs 455 billion dollars a year or more to maintain the military, and for what?
They're out in southwest asia right now fighting for a lie; dying for a land grab; killing for industry.
I'm sure you've done a lot since you've joined the military, monroe, but if you were a military contractor you'd have made a lot more money for what you've done, and I'm sure you've seen them around doing the same or less than you and making many times as much.
I don't think it's so ridiculous to call the military unproductive. it can protect and destroy wealth as it pleases but it certainly can't create any.
Productive in this sense means "relating to or engaged in the production of goods, crops, or other commodities."
A worker in a factory is productive, a farmer in the field is productive, even a poet or writer is productive. But the military bombs factories, sprays agent orange and depleted uranium on fields, etc.; what's productive about that? You trying to heal the broken soldiers and sailors that went out there and got hurt is nice, but it'd be better to try to stop them from getting hurt or hurting others in the first place.
now that you've proven to yourself that you can do more than you thought you'd ever do... please, i beg you, get out of the military and do it for yourself instead of for "superiors."

Thank you, magnusdeus.

shut the fuck up! again and again! wow. what brilliant commentary. :)
if you think i'm "blaming the americans that joined up to defend their country" you haven't read my post. i blame the existence of militarism for the misery and devastation of thousands of lives. And I still think the military is completely unproductive, and destroys kids like you. You have yet to show me that it produces any reason why i should shut the fuck up.
the military is a machine. they don't have any answers, they only have a rule book and a bunch of orders.
so you're a soldier? at least don't just be a cog in that machine. you can stop the war, just like your fellow soldiers did in vietnam. rise up against the officers and brass. fight back against the military from within it.
@"ROTC is a liberalizing force on the military... etc"
well, when i was in college the rotc guys used to go around taking down political flyers that criticized the war. they teach them submission by the repetition of routines of brutally scheduled work, and then they promise them 'a real exciting time' on the battlefield.
the military recruiters on campus used to accost people in support of war all day. if you don't think seeing uniforms walking around campus militarizes the campus you must not think that we're occupying iraq right now. just the presence of robotic attack dogs like the military breeds is enough.

"Excuse me private do you have change for a quarter?"
"uh, yeah... hold on, I ..." [searches pocket]
"YEAH? you do not say 'yeah' to an officer! an officer is always addressed as 'sir'! I learned that in ROTC and in basic training, private, and so did you. Now I wanna hear you tell me 'i am an idiot sir'!"
"i am an idiot sir."
"I CAN'T HEAR YOU"
"I AM AN IDIOT, SIR!!"
"Good. Now let me hear you answer my question one more time, loud and clear. Private! Do you have change for a quarter?"
"NO, SIR!!!"

"we were just doing our job" said the nazis at nuremburg.
"humans fight, period" said the makers of nuclear bombs, as they encourage them to go on fighting.
"give the gun to someone else" how about we break them all in two?
"soldiers rising up ... is almost never a good thing" i beg to differ. think for yourself, soldier.
Anarchy in the sense of total self management among the people of iraq and the american military people would be a lot less bloodier than what we've got right now.
what's idealistic bullshit is to think that the military does any good for anyone in the long run. they don't protect us, they work with the corporations to make people hate us. the military is the reason for our economic collapse. the military is completely unproductive. and rotc is not an education, it's indoctrination.
i agree with you that the neocons and christian right should be told to shut the fuck up, but just telling someone to do so doesn't really have any effect. a good healthy critique and dialogue about the military itself goes beyond partisan politics and extremist influences on politics. the military exert a hell of a lot of power on the political system; they essentially control the budget. and would the military be any less polluting if run by democrats? i think not. besides, democrats were in charge when the military went into vietnam; and soldiers rising up helped to make that war a lot less bloodier than it could've been. I'm sorry if you find it disrespectful, but I don't care, in my humble opinion the military should be disarmed and all its branches disbanded.

Right, maybe we can just disband the entire military, abandon our corporate offices in our high rise sky scrapers, and take to the woods to tend to our gardens and humble cabin villages.

Your whole point is moot. Militaries will never be disbanded, much less the largest one on the planet. You clearly don't understand ROTC because the whole point of a training outside of a military environment is independent responsible thinking. It's not indoctrination at all. That's boot camp, if you didn't know, and we don't go to boot camp. We go to Leadership Development and Assessment Course where they ASSESS our LEADERSHIP.

ha ha, i win because i don't really care. :P
you apparently care a lot more about defending the military and rotc's rep than they ever will about you.
but whatever, lead on.

p.s. neither you or anyone else ever explained how the military is productive. i would almost say "get a real job" but i'm not really so obsessed with work and don't think it has intrinsic righteousness any more than i think simple 'leadership' does. so whatever.

The military is not productive. The military's job is to destroy (duh)? Nevertheless, there will always be war and your condescending idealism is a hell of a lot less productive than the army.

great, "there will always be war," so glad you believe it, thanks i guess for helping war continue to exist.

i guess you probably think it won't matter anyway since in a couple hundred years we'll all be dead, so we might as well just accept everything, since "you have the poor (and war, pollution, profiteering, torture, etc) always with you."

i'm not idealistic. the idealists are these kids in the rotc who think they're about to go 'have a real exciting fun time' at war, 'liberate' and 'bring democracy' to people abroad, and don't believe they're just out there defending profits 'n power.

You do not understand ROTC, so just shut the fuck up about it. 10 percent of the army serve in combat roles, the rest are support. Most cadets will never have their lives endangered and most have no desire to.

Again, you are confusing ROTC cadets (future officer corps) with enlisted men who volunteer. There is a vast difference, and anyone concerned about the welfare of an occupied state should appreciate that.

i understand that you want me to shut the fuck up.
i hope you understand that i don't feel intimidated and will not.
i understand that rotc diverts university funds that could be used to help students learn how to be productive instead of learning war.
i understand that officers are also enlisted volunteers.
i understand the u.s. military bases cover 47000 square miles of the earth, but that ours is not the biggest military in the world (that dubious distinction goes to china).
i also understand that rotc was kicked out of 5 of the 8 ivy league schools, san francisco state, stanford, and more, and that jrotc just got kicked out by the san francisco school board. it can and should be done.