Can’t speak for others but the most damaging part of direct combat is watching people that you consider to be family die or be maimed.
Can’t speak for others but the most damaging part of direct combat is watching people that you consider to be family die or be maimed.
> the most damaging part of direct combat is watching people that you consider to be family die or be maimed.
I've heard from various places over the years (documentaries, friends) that soldiers really fight for their comrades at the end of the day. As in when asked "why are you here fighting" if they are in front of a news crews or something where they have to say "we're bringing democracy to ..." they'll just say something like "those fuckers blew my buddy up and I am here to pay them back".
That's a well studied topic in military history/science called unit cohesion. The saying goes that morale gets the soldiers to the battlefield, cohesion is what keeps them there. In order to withstand the psychological horrors of combat, soldiers need that comradery otherwise they'll run off at the first chance they get. There needs to be some anchor keeping the soldier in the way of danger, whether that's social pressure or years of intense training together.
Brett Devereaux has talked about it multiple times on his blog in various different contexts (most recently two weeks ago)[1][2][3]:
[1] https://acoup.blog/2026/07/24/collections-pre-modern-armies-...
[2] https://acoup.blog/2022/07/01/collections-total-generalship-...
[3] https://acoup.blog/tag/cohesion/
I was in the military and in my experience people that chose to go into war zones, it's optional, are fucked in the head and literally enjoy killing people, I've seen it a dozen times. They want to kill.
Id recommend anyone to give "Generation Kill" series a watch.
You are absolutely fucking full of shit.
I chose to "go into war zones" many times and none of it was to "enjoy killing people".
Not sure what military is being discussed. In the US military, you do not choose to go into combat zones. You receive orders to deploy you to a combat zone.
Then you aren't one of the dozens he has seen?
You ought to be able to back this up with sources other than trust me bro
No one runs into machine gun fire to bring democracy to someone else I can assure you of that.
That's probably false as you can see historically that ideological armies have far better morale and better effectiveness
"Bringing democracy" is a very weak ideological motivation. I would rather call it plausible deniability. As in "we're doing this to bring democracy" and people might be left with the doubt that it's true.
It is a very weak ideological motivation for people who would never enlist in the first place.
However, I think people are generally too cynical towards a very real belief system. There are multiple examples of US pushing for democracy against its own interest. Bush with the Hamas Gaza elections, Obama with the Egypt Muslim Brotherhood government and Carter with pre-revolution Iran are such examples
Bush knew what he was doing - Hamas has the influence it has because the US wants it to have it. When Trump decided he wants them to release Israeli hostages he forced them to do it rather quickly, all things considered, showing who really controls Hamas. Restraining American "allies" is key to how America understands its interests and Hamas is an excellent lever to pressure Israel, or Hamas-controlled Gaza wouldn't be flooded with American and European money.
Similarly, Obama supported the Muslim Brotherhood because he did; in Ukraine for instance the same admin supported a coup against the elected government (this is not to say that Russia's actions in Ukraine are "justified", it's just a fact.) Democracy has nothing to do with any of this
> Hamas has the influence it has because the US wants it to have it
I doubt this is backed by US intentions and actions historically
> Similarly, Obama supported the Muslim Brotherhood because he did
That seems like a tautology to me, care to expand? I vividly remember Obama throwing his autocrat ally under the bus
> in Ukraine for instance the same admin supported a coup
The protests in Ukraine hardly seem like a US coup and were organic according to my understanding, but maybe you can point exactly to the US involvement
>The protests in Ukraine hardly seem like a US coup and were organic according to my understanding, but maybe you can point exactly to the US involvement
Most coups are organic. The US involvement in the Iran coup of 1953 was not very much, but the signal of support was meaningful. Ditto Chile in 1973. Ukraine's overthrow was not like those coups. It relied on popular support from the region near the capital. However, this support was not uniform across the country, and support for the protests hovered around 50% and never reached 60%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromaidan#Public_opinion_abou...
>According to a January poll, 45% of Ukrainians supported the protests, and 48% of Ukrainians disapproved of Euromaidan.
>In a March poll, 57% of Ukrainians said they supported the Euromaidan protests.
The polling variation was large. The government was overthrown in February. But the western regions were massively in favor, and surrounded the capital, while the southeast was mostly opposed. Well-functioning states rely on political processes instead of simply overturning the government whenever a majority of citizens opposes it.
Given the polling data and the division of public opinion, I don't support what happened in February 2014. But that doesn't make it a coup -- a coup is a transfer of power that originates specifically within the government, and Ukraine's protests weren't like that. Nor does it justify Russia's invasion. What happened was more like a feudal power struggle. It doesn't help that before new elections could be held, the interim government banned several political parties. Maybe they were "pro-Russian", but democracy means voters deserve a say in a country's geopolitical alignment, so that doesn't seem like a valid reason to ban a political party to me.
>but maybe you can point exactly to the US involvement
Now this sounds like a joke. US politicians, including Vice President Joe Biden and several senators, attended the protests. This makes American support pretty obvious. US media at the time also tended to minimize domestic opposition to the protests, even though this was a significant position within Ukraine.
> Now this sounds like a joke.
OP alluded to the Euromaiden protests being an orchestrated Obama-led coup. I still don't see how this is the case. There's some difference between diplomatic reactions to proactive overthrow