re: Why do people join the military and then not expect to actually fight at all?

"YES SPACE CHEF! RIGHT AWAY SPACE CHEF!"

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Why do people join the military and then not expect to actually fight at all?

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This started in the early 2000's.

The country hadn't been in a real fight since Vietnam and most of the enlistees looked at it like a soft landing spot to get paid a little and not have to really work. Get some college funding.

Basically asking what the country could do for them instead of what they could doo for the country.

When little Bush went to war (specifically expanding operation to Iraq) and more units started getting pulled in, you first started hearing the cries, "I joined to get an education, not to go to war".. blah, blah.

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When you join the military, you’re swearing an oath of allegiance to the commander-in-chief

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I think you're referring to the SS not the United States military.

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We’re fighting to protect American security interests;

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right, of course we are. Netanyahu visited the White House every weekend to advocate for the safety of families in Des Moines.

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They hold no cards here.

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Oh sweet summer child. I guess Miriam Adelson donated hundreds of millions of dollars to Trump for him to not go to war with Iran. I'm sure it's a coincidence that Trump disavows American Christians like Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, etc. while championing fricking Mark Levin. If you dont think Trump is Israel First at this point, you're beyond help.

eta: and of course Rubio admitted that the US only began pre emptive strikes on Iran because Israel told the administration they were going in themselves with or without the US. But of course Israel doesn't hold any cards here

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The politically incorrect answer is that the military is a jobs program for rural boys who don’t have much of a future.

Studies have also found that poor kids out of high school join the military for medical insurance they otherwise wouldn’t have gotten working as min wage laborers. In rural areas where it is common for poor 17/18 year old boys to already be impregnating their girlfriends, medical benefits are an especially attractive job perk

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I don't think that's politically incorrect. A vast majority of the people I know who joined the military did so because they didn't have many other options. That is how the recruiters operate.

I know a few from the service academies that have made wonderful careers and I know one SEAL who had family money who joined originally for the fight.

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This started in the early 2000's.

The country hadn't been in a real fight since Vietnam and most of the enlistees looked at it like a soft landing spot to get paid a little and not have to really work. Get some college funding.

Basically asking what the country could do for them instead of what they could doo for the country.

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That was me. I joined in ’98. Growing up when I did, “war” to me was watching Desert Storm on TV as a kid and seeing what looked like a quick trip to kick some arse followed by victory parades. I wasn’t scared to fight, it just didn’t seem like something that was actually going to happen. Cold War was over, the USSR had collapsed, everything in my frame of reference said war wasn’t in my future.

I was right for my first enlistment. My first tour was with 2ID in Area 1 Korea, which at the time felt like about as “hardcore” as it got outside SOF, and even that was pretty chill. Chill enough that I reenlisted for six years in Kuwait on August 10th, 2001 to lock in a $40k tax-free bonus.

Thought I was playing it smart.

A month later I’m sitting in a chow hall watching the towers fall and realizing, in real time, what I just signed up for.

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When little Bush went to war (specifically expanding operation to Iraq) and more units started getting pulled in, you first started hearing the cries, "I joined to get an education, not to go to war".. blah, blah.

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Yeah, there were always a few guys bitching. There always are. But the part you left out is what actually happened when shite hit the fan. Early Iraq and Afghanistan, we didn’t fold, we didn’t hesitate, we went and did the job. And you know who made up 90% of that force? Guys like me. Guys who joined for college money, bonuses, whatever you want to call “selfish,” who never truly expected war.

Didn’t matter. When it flipped, we flipped with it.

We followed orders. We completed missions. We rolled out in chem gear fully expecting gas attacks. We fought, over and over again. A lot of us stacked more days in combat than any generation before us. A lot of us didn’t come home.

So yeah, I’m pretty fricking tired of people obsessing over why people joined like it’s some kind of purity test, while completely ignoring how they served when it actually mattered.

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When you join the military, you’re swearing an oath of allegiance to the commander-in-chief and the country

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This is mortally wrong. The military is not the personal army of the CINC. Both enlisted and officers swear loyalty to the Constitution; enlisted swear to follow the orders of the President.

Pedantic but critical difference. No one is swearing personal loyalty to anyone.

As for the OP, those kinds of people have always existed in our military. The military is better for it. Having soldiers and marines with the ability to think for themselves has been a strategic advantage for this country since its inception.

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You just described every government agency. They are all job programs for low IQ people who can’t cut it in the private sector.

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This is not true at all. There are morons in the government, no question, but there are also some extremely intelligent people, including many who succeeded in the private sector during other periods of their careers.

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I think you're referring to the SS not the United States military.

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Why does the left always invoke nazi imagery? The enlisted oath includes an allegiance to the constitution which includes the office of President being the commander in chief, and the oath includes obeying the orders of the President regardless of who that President is which fits his main point about soldiers not being able to pick and choose what conflicts they fight in when they join. If that’s what they believe than why join. It also means they can’t pick and choose which President to defend and support all of the constitution and “bear true faith and allegiance to the same” or which President’s orders to obey. President’s and conflicts change. Don’t join just because of the present President or conflict situation at the time of signing up. There is no transfer portal for soldiers.

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eta: and of course Rubio admitted that the US only began pre emptive strikes on Iran because Israel told the administration they were going in themselves with or without the US. But of course Israel doesn't hold any cards here

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Rubio and other explained that this was not about the why but the why now including the intel on location of the supreme leader and the other targets and that the US response was always going to happen based on the regime leaders not showing good faith in negotiations and because of other actions by the regime.

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Link to the Text of Rubio’s full remarks

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This was Rubio's actual argument for imminence, as the full clip shows. He pointed out that Iran's capacity for missile production exceeds our production level for anti-ballistic missile defenses, and the gap widened every month. Iran may have been about a year away from having so many ballistic missiles and drones that they could have pursued weapons-grade enrichment with impunity and openly developed nuclear weapons. The regime had already resorted to large-scale massacres of its own subjected people to maintain power; their "apocalyptic" theology would have encouraged them to use nuclear weapons against Israel and the US. Their refusal to discuss any limits on any of these ambitions became clear last week, and as Rubio argued, we needed to act while we still could.

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https://www.axios.com/2026/03/03/rubio-trump-iran-israel-attacks

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"We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action" against Iran, Rubio told reporters on Capitol Hill on Monday. "We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces" by the Iranian regime.

"And we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties ... And then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn't act," Rubio continued.

Rubio added later: "Obviously, we were aware of Israeli intentions and understood what that would mean for us, and we had to be prepared to act as a result of it. But this had to happen no matter what."

The widely repeated translation: The U.S. couldn't stop its ally — a far smaller nation that America arms, funds and protects — from attacking Iran on Saturday. So the U.S. had to strike Iran, too.

Not quite, U.S. officials said later. Regardless of Israel, they said, Trump ordered the strikes because he felt Iran was negotiating a nuclear deal in bad faith, and the U.S. needed to destroy the country's offensive military infrastructure.

"This operation needed to happen," Rubio told reporters, because Iran was developing too many missiles too quickly and was rebuilding its nuclear capabilities.

…Reality check:The picture critics are painting — of a U.S. reluctantly pulled into war by a smaller ally — obscures the deep coordination between the two countries in the weeks before the strike.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been urging Trump to strike Iran since December — but Israeli officials say he wouldn't have moved without Trump's explicit approval.

It's highly unlikely Netanyahu would've struck Iran without Trump's green light, Israeli officials added. If Trump had preferred to keep negotiating, the strike would have been postponed.

Over the past year, Trump has repeatedly reined in Netanyahu from aggressive military operations, including his bombing campaign last year in Syria.

And Trump essentially forced the Israeli prime minister to accept a Gaza peace plan that resulted in Hamas releasing all of its remaining hostages and the remains of others.

Netanyahu pushed back Monday night, telling Fox News' Sean Hannity that Trump "can't be dragged" into anything — and that the president acts on his own judgment.

…Philip Klein, editor of National Review Online, wrote that those who think Rubio "said that Netanyahu forced the U.S. into war ... are conflating the question 'Why?' with the question of 'Why now?' ... Rubio was not trying to argue that Israel dragged the U.S. into this war."

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Couldn't have said it better myself.

Well said