Do members of the military get too much respect? What profession do you respect the most?

[Xin Baixiang]

Doctors deserve 100x more respect than hired guns.

You are absolutely right. Hired guns are really not that important. It's a good thing that the military is a lot more than a hired gun, isn't it?

 

[legend of duty]

i sorta respect the military mostly because my grampa and cousin are vets but many of their practices seem quite hypocritical and just wrong. I'm talking about he recruiters that sucker teens off their highschool and into the desert because of misinformation and the setting of high expectations. Not to mention how they say its wrong for two men to have a relation then they came to our school with a humvee with an xbox that was playing UFC undisputed where they played men putting other men into various sexual posistions and they thought that was the manliest thing in the world!

 

[Volkov]

There is no point in being overwhelmingly the strongest and unloading tons of money to maintain the superiority. Slightly stronger than #2 is perfectly fine. Or even being #2. I mean, we are not even in the top 10 in most things that actually count for civilians (like health care or education).

Er...as much as I don't agree with it, that's not to say there is no point in maintaining a dominance over the rest of the world.

Depends on what you mean by "no point", I think. I really don't think that the civilians' lives' quality (and the quality of a civilian's life, including average length, freedom, availability of energy, transportation, education and health care, and so forth, is the entire reason that countries/social systems/militaries exist to begin with, at least formally) is increased by having a country's military be overwhelmingly #1. Even if you look at it from a risk estimate perspective, many countries whose militaries couldn't compare to the US's in any way, like Australia, still enjoy a far lower risk of serious attack (and if we are going to quantify shit as insignificant as terrorist attacks, we might as well quantify risks of dying from lack of available health care due to lack of funding, for instance - which are far greater).

But if instead of considering the civilians' lives' quality you considering something along the lines of national pride, then sure, there is plenty of point in maintaining dominance. Thing is, even from this perspective, there is far more point in maintaining economic and technological dominance, and in those fields the US is slipping fast, primarily due to lack of federal funding for high risk/high return R&D in the respective fields.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Doctors deserve 100x more respect than hired guns.

You are absolutely right. Hired guns are really not that important. It's a good thing that the military is a lot more than a hired gun, isn't it?

Yeah, I heard they usually buy their weapons outright from manufacturers, rather than renting them out from middle people.

 

[Char-Nobyl]

It depends. No really, it depends on the situation.

Did the soldier sign up DURING a time of war (or when war was imminent)? That deserves respect
Did the soldier sign up for COLLEGE MONEY (as QUITE a few do)? That does NOT command nearly enough respect.

Did the soldier serve honourable, and obey the rules of war? That deserves respect.
Did the soldier get drunk, shoot a few locals in the night and brag about it (as have some soldiers in recent wars)? That does not deserve respect.

Did the soldier really sign up and fight for the right reasons, as in they wish to defend democracy and their people? That deserves respect.
Did the soldier sign up because they wanted to KILL things and feel like a big man and only follow orders because they've been trained like a cattle dog to do so? That does not deserve respect.

Right...while I see the distinctions you're making, they're rather difficult to actually apply. If anything, they just confuse things. Save for the "drunken murder" bit, you're not likely to know about the others.

And, to be honest, the 'not deserving of respect' entries are loaded. You spend too much time on them, rail on eerily specific things, and overall come across like Mark Antony during his eulogy of Caesar whenever he says something followed by, "But Brutus said he was ambitions, and Brutus is an honorable man," ie, stating 'good' things, but lacking any sign of sincerity and only stating them to accentuate the bad.

If every soldier signed up for the right reason, then why does the army put SOOOOOO much effort into showcasing the financial/career perks of joining (as in, college money)? Let's be honest here - not every soldier joins for the "right" reason.

Want the simple reason for those? It's twofold:

A) Soldier salary is terrible.
B) Noble intentions are not a legal tender. Contrary to popular belief, 'good' people are not inherently 'dumb.' Show me a man who volunteered full-time at a soup kitchen while he himself slowly starved and I'll show you a corpse. Hell, that's one reason why soldiers have salaries in the first place. It doesn't make them mercenaries: it just means that they're smart enough to balance patriotism with the need to provide for themselves, their families, etc.

A fair few, more than a fair few, joined because they have NO IDEA about their future and the military in the US now accepts anyone with two legs and two arms due to recruitment troubles. Notice how recruitment tends to nosedive during a time of war? That suggest to me that a fair number of soldiers who signed up in peace-time wouldn't have if they knew a war was around the corner.

Correlation doesn't mean causation. Ice cream sales also rise at the same time that shark attacks go up. Show me solid evidence, or leave the claim out.

Anyone who has been in the military knows this: You KNOW there are bad soldiers in your squad or your platoon or your company. You KNOW a lot of them did not sign up because they are super-patriots who have tattoos of eagles crying emblazoned on their chest. You KNOW a fair number signed up simply because they wanted a stable job, or because their father or mother told them they must. Soldiers should know more than anyone else that members of the military are just as human as anyone else, and while they should not be hated, I'm certainly not going to go around thinking that every single one of them is a hero who would sacrifice his life for his country.

Wait, what? Do you really think that men have jumped on grenades because their only thought was, "My God! That grenade is threatening AMERICA!" They joined the military for their country. They committed acts of heroism for their comrades.

Now, there ARE heroic soldiers. There ARE soldiers who command our respect - soldiers who signed up for the right reason, who possess sound and well-developed moralities, soldiers who fight bravely to save their fellow soldiers, soldiers who follow the rules of law, soldiers whose dedication to duty and setting an example overrides base desires for revenge and violence. They exist, and I respect them immensely.

You clearly don't. You respect the concept of them. Everything above this has been reason after reason that pits a vague ideal against a hated reality, and you're obviously assuming the latter.

Even the examples in the past sentence: you list no fewer than five separate qualifications that you only set up because you know they won't be achieved. "Sound and well-developed moralities"? I can't imagine how many of your internal/unspecified standards affect that one alone.

But just as not every doctor becomes a doctor because they want to help someone, not every soldier joined because they wanted to serve their country. You know that's true. It's a very uncomfortable fact, but that is true.

This is like some sort of bizarre, occupational racism. You're assuming that any given soldier is a money-grubbing war criminal until they can present you with a missing leg and a Medal of Honor to prove you otherwise.

If you joined for college money, I'm sorry, but I don't have that much respect for you.

And if the aforementioned veteran reveals that the military put him through college, I imagine you'll spit on him.

If you only jump because your commander says jump (like a well trained seal), then I don't have much respect for you.

*facepalm* You follow orders every day of your life. Every time you stop at a red light, you're following an order. Every time you pay your taxes, you're following an order. How many people do you think would do either of those if there was no repercussion for not doing them?

If you only dumbly follow any order passed on from above with the INCREDIBLY simplistic mindset of "I'm serving my country" even when said orders might be illegal or immoral, then I don't have much respect for you.

You remember that thing about comrades that I mentioned earlier? The same applies to commanding officers. The soldiers under them trust that they won't tell them to do "illegal or immoral" things. Stopping to consider during work if your most recent order is "illegal or immoral" is a luxury that soldiers don't have.

That one really gets my goat - soldiers, more often then not, you are NOT serving your country.

Well, there it is. You could've saved me the time and just said "I only respect Captain America." It would've saved you the trouble of writing all these justifications, and at least it would have been honest and straightforward.

You are serving the politicians who send you out there. Sure, the people elected the politicians, but very often politicians do not do what is in the public's interest.

This seems to be a trend in your post: the idea that "maybe somebody, somewhere, is doing something they shouldn't be." This is just a nonspecific conspiracy theory: you justify your standpoint by assuming that someone maybe did something immoral at one point along the line.

You can't hide behind the notion that "I'M SERVING MY COUNTRY THEREFORE YOU CANNOT CRITICIZE ME". Well, buddy, ANY soldier can say "I'm serving my country". It doesn't make their actions automatically right. Soviet soldiers were "serving their country" when they crushed the Prague spring! French soldiers were "serving their country" when they went around Algeria massacring locals in the 50's and 60's. You see how just because your nation orders you to war, that war might not be justified?

And yet, I respected (and still respect) a longtime friend's grandfather who served in the Wehrmacht. Do you know why? It's because I did what you will never do: I judged him by his own actions and motivations, not by those of the man in Berlin.

I have immense respect for soldiers who realize this and make a stand. There was an American soldier who refused to go to Iraq, because he thought it was an unjust war. He was willing to go to Afghanistan, because he thought it was a just war, but not to Iraq. Regardless of your opinion of whether or not the Iraq war was justified, that soldier proved that he had a morality, that he had a sense of right and wrong divorced of the military chain'o'command.

*facepalm* So let me get this straight: you only respect soldiers who disobey orders on the grounds that it violates their sense of morals? Not because of the order, or the morals themselves, but solely because they objected and claimed it was morality-based?

I don't even need to stretch this one to say that you have just claimed respect for every bigotry and hatred ever seen in the military. There have been soldiers who refuse to serve alongside women on 'moral' grounds, or refuse to serve with gays on 'moral' grounds, or even refuse to serve with non-whites on 'moral' grounds. And do you know why? Because individual morality is inconsistent.

He wasn't a well trained cattle dog willing to fight because a general said he must. And I respect him.

For the love of...will you just drop the illusion of respect already? Just say that you think soldiers are animals. This is the second time you've used an animal motif, and your allegations are just getting more and more transparent.

Hell, if you think Iraq was a justified war (and there are grounds for thinking so), then I respect those who do fight in Iraq, provided that you actually believe in the mission you are given, I have respect for you. But if you just shoot whoever the man-with-the-ribbons-on-his-chest tells you to shoot because he is the man-with-the-ribbons-on-his-chest and you must never question the man-with-the-ribbons-on-his-chest, then I have little respect for you.

You've set up nigh-unachievable goals for most soldiers to earn your respect. You've set up a hilariously easy standard for them that only involves not fulfilling their duty as soldiers, and added (for the illusion of neutrality) that maybe soldiers who actually go to war can earn your respect, but only by an undetectable standard that leaves them physically indistinguishable from those that you openly revile.

You know what the worst part of this is? How you dance around the issue. You're clearly expressing resentment for virtually all soldiers who don't have a Medal of Honor or refused to act as soldiers, but you don't have the guts to just say it. You dress up your prejudice until you can convince yourself that it's not prejudice if you have a nonspecific, idealized version of a group that you admire. It doesn't matter that you're railing against soldiers for everything from financial responsibility to aspiring to higher education: just so long as you approve of Captain America, you're not being prejudiced.

 

[Xin Baixiang]

Doctors deserve 100x more respect than hired guns.

You are absolutely right. Hired guns are really not that important. It's a good thing that the military is a lot more than a hired gun, isn't it?

Yeah, I heard they usually buy their weapons outright from manufacturers, rather than renting them out from middle people.

Sadly we usually get them from the lowest bidder, who rushes production and skimps on important features like quality assurance. Then our guns end up in a storage facility gathering dust for a few years, usually with leaky rooftops. After we get them, they're usually pre-owned, and frequently haven't been treated nicely.

 

[Greni]

Stop being a fucking dick,[...] if you died I think I would laugh about it.

Irony at its finest.

 

[Volkov]

Sadly we usually get them from the lowest bidder, who rushes production and skimps on important features like quality assurance. Then our guns end up in a storage facility gathering dust for a few years, usually with leaky rooftops. After we get them, they're usually pre-owned, and frequently haven't been treated nicely.

Could you please provide any proofs of any of this? Particularly the assessment that US military's weapons are "usually" (i.e., >50% of the time) pre-owned?

 

[Thaluikhain]

Depends on what you mean by "no point", I think. I really don't think that the civilians' lives' quality (and the quality of a civilian's life, including average length, freedom, availability of energy, transportation, education and health care, and so forth, is the entire reason that countries/social systems/militaries exist to begin with, at least formally) is increased by having a country's military be overwhelmingly #1.

Being the world's dominant power gives you all sorts of options that could/should (not necessarily are) used to increase those things, though.

Even if you look at it from a risk estimate perspective, many countries whose militaries couldn't compare to the US's in any way, like Australia, still enjoy a far lower risk of serious attack (and if we are going to quantify shit as insignificant as terrorist attacks, we might as well quantify risks of dying from lack of available health care due to lack of funding, for instance - which are far greater).

There are many and varied reason why Australia hasn't been attacked, but powerful and warlike allies such as the US is a definite factor.

Again, not saying I agree with that the line of thinking which requires such a massive expenditure, but there are reasons for it.

 

[Xin Baixiang]

Sadly we usually get them from the lowest bidder, who rushes production and skimps on important features like quality assurance. Then our guns end up in a storage facility gathering dust for a few years, usually with leaky rooftops. After we get them, they're usually pre-owned, and frequently haven't been treated nicely.

Could you please provide any proofs of any of this? Particularly the assessment that US military's weapons are "usually" (i.e., >50% of the time) pre-owned?

Sorry, that part was intended to be tongue in cheek. The rifle that I was issued was used by someone before me. That individual, unfortunately, was sent home for being...not entirely well. So I ended up with their weapon, and the armory sergeant informed me that the weapon was "cursed". We all had a good laugh at that.

As for lowest bidder, that's how military contracts work. It's standard for the companies interested in the manufacturing of military goods to "outbid" each other with lower bids until the lowest bidder gets the contract. They then jack up their price and delay shipment to earn more money. It's capitalism, it's how it works.

 

[StarCecil]

Sadly we usually get them from the lowest bidder, who rushes production and skimps on important features like quality assurance. Then our guns end up in a storage facility gathering dust for a few years, usually with leaky rooftops. After we get them, they're usually pre-owned, and frequently haven't been treated nicely.

Could you please provide any proofs of any of this? Particularly the assessment that US military's weapons are "usually" (i.e., >50% of the time) pre-owned?

In the Marines, at least, your rifle has probably belonged to at least five other Marines before you, and is in shit condition. We don't get the best funding.

Notice how recruitment tends to nosedive during a time of war? That suggest to me that a fair number of soldiers who signed up in peace-time wouldn't have if they knew a war was around the corner.

That's not at all accurate. Recruitment rates have shot up (and actually tend to during wartime) in the last ten years. They were telling us that the military was actually going to downsize, so there were fewer recruits being taken in.

I have immense respect for soldiers who realize this and make a stand. There was an American soldier who refused to go to Iraq, because he thought it was an unjust war. He was willing to go to Afghanistan, because he thought it was a just war, but not to Iraq. Regardless of your opinion of whether or not the Iraq war was justified, that soldier proved that he had a morality, that he had a sense of right and wrong divorced of the military chain'o'command. He wasn't a well trained cattle dog willing to fight because a general said he must. And I respect him.

That man was a coward - myself and every Marine I know agree. He took an oath that he then reneged on because he didn't want to go and then he dared to use morality to justify it. For your information, there are laws allowing a soldier - sometimes compelling him - to disobey an unlawful order from a superior officer. Refusing to deploy is not one of them.

 

[khy]

Well, I'm a soldier and I've served in Iraq. To answer the original question I think that US service members receive the proper amount of respect from the civilian population.

I'm always a little surprised and humbled when someone walks us to me and thanks me for my service when I'm in uniform. The first thing I say back to them is, "Thank you for your support."

I would like to point out that a couple of you seem to think that very few service members overseas actually put their lives in danger or see combat, that's only partly true; and yes I'm just talking from my own experiences here. The post office on one FOB I went to was named for a 42A (human resources) soldier who was killed in a mortar attack. The dining facility on another FOB was named for a female soldier also killed in a mortar attack, I don't know what her job was. My point is, everyone over there is exposed to some kind of danger at one time or another. For example the C-130 I took from Kuwait to Balad, Iraq caught fire before it left the ground, not for combat related reasons, it just happened. On JBB the area I lived in got mortared about every other day. Yeah it's not the ground combat that the combat arms guys see everyday, but it's still danger and it's still real.

I'm not saying that I expect respect for my service or anything, but I am grateful for it. I think I helped the Iraqi people as much as I've served my country during my deployment.

Damn, this is a wall of text. In closing, I would say that respect should be on a personal level, not a professional level. There are cops I wouldn't trust or respect as far as I could spit them, and there are cops that I'll always be grateful to for their service to our community. There are soldiers I know that don't deserve the respect they probably get, but there are real heroes who wear the uniform to, any MOH recipient would be an example to me.

tl;dr = respect should be a based on a person to person basis, not just because of a person's profession; having said that I believe that most military have earned the respect they get.

 

[Xin Baixiang]

Oh, right. I forgot to say, I respect High School teachers who are there to actually educate the most of all professions. Without one specific HS teacher, I'd likely be a total waste of carbon.

 

[-Samurai-]

I don't think military personnel get too much respect, for various reasons that have already been stated here.

I respect the every day worker. The people that do the jobs that no-one seems to notice or care about. I respect those that have a job, and do their job.

But mostly, I respect the average retail worker. The cashiers that have to deal with entitled, generally rude, poor excuses for human beings on a daily basis.

People tend to think that they're better than the average retail worker. I'd love to see the super smart Neurologist purchase his bread when there's no-one there to make the bread, or put the bread on the shelf, and no-one there to take his money.

Retail workers often deal with some of the worst situations imaginable, at a pay rate that's nowhere near what they deserve, yet they keep working 5-7 days a week. That deserves respect.

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

Many of the arguments and claims in this thread are so insane that I'm not sure I can even get to all of them.

If you think EMTs, firefighters and the like don't have dangerous jobs, you are quite mistaken. I was told straight up day 1 of class by 4 different EMS professors that If I worked in the field for any extended period of time I was probably going to get tuberculosis. And that the first time a crack-head stabbed me with an aids infected needle to not worry because the chances of the disease actually transferring are only like .2%.

If you think soldiers are mercenaries then you are flat our wrong. A mercenary is part of an NGO that gets paid for activities relating to war. If you work for the government you are not a mercenary and if you say "but they get paid to shoot things that's mercenary" then you have just destroyed mercenary as a word and rendered it meaningless because that describes everyone. Hell, even the Vietcong/Vietminh were paid for their services and they were communist rebels.

If you think that a soldier does not deserve respect because he cleans bathrooms or flips burgers, you are wrong. If he does his job well, and he does it with the utmost effort he is deserving of respect.

If you think a soldier is deserving of respect simply because he goes into combat, you are also wrong. There have been plenty of soldiers through out history that have fought for violence, because they are/were psychopaths. There have been plenty who have fought to oppress people. I have never once heard someone say "I'm a veteran" and immediately thanked them. I ask them questions and try to determine a better understanding of the individual of their intent, and if they are respect worthy then I will give them that respect. I've even given my respect to a USAF vet who now works for XE(the company previously called blackwater.)

Always measure the individual, never the group. The problem isn't that soldiers get too much respect, it's that people don't respect each other enough as it is.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I think a LOT of people don't get the respect they deserve, military personnel included. How many of you--honestly--do not respect the person working the returns counter at your local shopping center? Or the cashier? How about the person that takes your order at your favorite place to eat? What about the janitor that keeps your school/workplace clean? Most people have a sense of, "You're beneath me," when they deal with the people in those positions. I know, because I see it in the way people stand, the way they talk, and the look in their eyes. Yet, without these people, you are stuck. Do you know how to cook your favorite meal at McDonald's? Do you want to clean up the crap in the bathroom because the person ahead of you couldn't aim? Sure you can go hold up a sign at a protest calling soldiers baby-killers, but are you willing to take a bullet for those soldiers if the roles were reversed?

Respect is something the vast majority of people--not all--deserve, regardless of how much they make or where they work. Sadly, that is rarely the case.

 

[khy]

Always measure the individual, never the group. The problem isn't that soldiers get too much respect, it's that people don't respect each other enough as it is.

^ this is a much more elegant way of saying that I was trying (and probably failing) to say.

 

[CthulhuMessiah]

I think they get too much respect. I think they should be respected.

I will, however, go completely "YOU'RE BETTER THAN JESUS" to WWII veterans, though.

 

[Torrasque]

I think most people unconditionally respect members of the military because they are "risking their lives to defend our liberty and rights"
Personally, I respect my favorite actors and musicians the most. Why? Because they can make me forget about this dismal world for a short time. No I am not some emo kid or suicidal, I am just really cynical and hate society.
Writers are also pretty damn awesome, and I wish to be a writer of some renown when I finally get around to writing something.

 

[Greni]

That man was a coward - myself and every Marine I know agree. He took an oath that he then reneged on because he didn't want to go and then he dared to use morality to justify it. For your information, there are laws allowing a soldier - sometimes compelling him - to disobey an unlawful order from a superior officer. Refusing to deploy is not one of them.

Pff. Who needs a moral compass when you have direct orders?
"You do as you are told, soldier! We talked about that 'using your brain' issue."

Seriously, from reading this thread I was starting to think that the army-men weren't brainless bots, then you came along. Good show.