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

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I included “legal” orders. Have any illegal orders been given by Trump as commander in chief during this conflict or others?

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Irrelevant to the discussion.

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Does that oath and allegiance to the constitution include the part about the lawful President being the Commander in chief regardless of who the president was when signing up for the military or who the current president is giving the legal orders? Or what conflict the legal orders are about?

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NO! Citizens and those who are also in the military are not required to

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Lastly does anything you wrote go against what the poster wrote right after (that quote is below this) which seemed to be the main point of him bringing up the oath when joining the military before it got off on this tangent?

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swear allegiance to any human. It is just that simple. Don't overthink it. There is a semicolon in the enlisted oath for a very important reason. There is no mention of the president in the officer's oath for a reason. Alligence is unqualified, while following the chain of command is qualified and is not an oath of allegiance.

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Lastly does anything you wrote go against what the poster wrote right after (that quote is below this) which seemed to be the main point of him bringing up the oath when joining the military before it got off on this tangent?

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No, I was not responding to that, and I think it is clear I was not. I was responding to the fact that he was dead wrong about the oaths that soldiers take. As an American, the idea of giving an oath of allegiance to a human is repugnant. I wanted to make it clear we don't do that, and it was a horrible, and horribly incorrect attempt to support his point.

I do not disagree with his point that you don't get to pick and choose your conflicts, but if one of my soldiers had decided he was a conscientious objector, I would want him out of my unit ASAP. Have the MPs pick him up, and JAG can prefer charges under Art. 92. Leaving him in the unit is a cancer and will likely result in fellow soldiers dying. So, in a way, he could choose not to fight; there are just consequences for that action.

Recruiters spend more time pitching perks to borderline retarded people than explaining the job

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I know a few from the service academies that have made wonderful careers

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this is like an ivy league person saying they know a bunch of successful english and philosophy majors. yeah, no shite

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Might be due to recruiters and the marketing doesn't mention fighting and possibly dying. They hold forth for hours on end about the educational benefits, the travel, the pay etc but watch what happens when someone asks about fighting and all of a sudden the recruiter wants to discuss the weather....it ain't crazy to just show up and collect a paycheck when you are 17 or 18 years old and most likely not from a good school system and most likely some pretty basic living situations and some slick talking 30 year old tells you all about the benefits and what not and never mentions fighting. In fact it is crazy to expect someone in that situation to expect to be asked to fight....

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maybe but there still aint no way 15% of the military will ever even come close to combat, even with the loosest definition.

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Maybe, but that’s not what I was pushing back on. My issue was with the claim that you could move the decimal one or two places to the left.

.15% is far too low, and 15% is far too high. There isn’t a clean way to measure “under enemy gunfire” across the entire military, especially when you factor in services and roles that are not designed for direct combat, along with millions who serve entirely in peacetime.

The closest real-world data I can find is on Iraq. Roughly 70% of returning personnel reported at least one “combat experience,” but that’s using a very loose definition. It includes things like incoming mortars on a FOB, IED exposure, or even just being in a situation where you felt at risk. That’s not the same thing as sustained direct engagement, so call it 40% if you want to stay conservative. And that’s among deployed troops, not the entire military.

But you’re closer than I originally gave you credit for. I answered through my own bias filter. I was an army 11b so when I hear “military” I default to combat arms in my mind. In Iraq/Afghanistan, combat exposure felt common to me because for Army and Marine combat arms it was.

But that’s not the whole force. Once you include Air Force, Navy, stateside units, support roles, and long peacetime stretches, the percentage drops a lot so your instinct that it’s a small percentage holds up. I just think pushing it down to a fraction of a percent undershoots it. The real answer sits somewhere in between and depends heavily on branch, job, and when you served.

That said, “pulling a trigger” isn’t the same thing as “doing something necessary.” Modern militaries are systems. Infantry doesn’t operate without logistics, comms, intel, maintenance, medevac, fuel, and transport. Those roles make the rifleman possible.

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Yeah, my little brother joined in late 1999, to avoid some criminal charges, re-upped to get housing for his wife and child, then got sent to Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. Certainly not his choice but changed his life for the better with structure and discipline. Now a NP on the GI Bill.

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Sounds familiar. When I started the process I told my recruiter I’d been in “a little trouble" (I'd actually spent 16–17 in a juvenile detention center ). He sent me to my probation officer to pull my record. I brought it back, sat down and watched as his eyes got wider with every page, figured I was cooked.

He finished, stood up, walked to the trashcan, threw the whole file in, and said, “Look. I can get you in, but if this ever comes up later they're kicking you out, and I will say I never saw this.” I said understood. It never came back on me.

That was 28 years ago. Since then, not even a single traffic ticket (had my share of article 15's early on though). Went from a dropout headed to prison to a stable life, college education, and a productive tax-paying member of society.

I also had a pretty kick arse time.

What’s the percentage?

Hell yeah. Makes me want to go back to war lol