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More and more US troops deployed to West Asia are expressing doubts about fighting in the war against Iran, including having to “die for Israel,” the Huffington Post reported on 23 March.
A veteran and reservist who mentors younger officers told HuffPost that troops she speaks with are expressing a loss of faith after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu helped push US President Donald Trump to go to war against Iran.
[…]
Interviews further revealed that troops are worried about inadequate protection from Iranian ballistic missiles and drones targeting US bases in the Gulf region.
“Getting random indirect fire is not the same as watching the entire gym and coffee shop and some dorms get blown up from a door less than 50 meters away,” said one service member.
Depends on what you mean by “vulnerable” and “impoverished”. If you mean actually in poverty, the US Federal poverty line in 2025 was an annual income of $15650 for individuals, $21150 if you’re in a household family with two children. However, if you look at the below infographic:
Source
The vast majority of US military recruits are well above the poverty line. Even if you could extrapolate most of the 19% of recruits who fall beneath the annual income of $41691 as being at or close to poverty line, that still puts the remaining 81% of recruits in a broadly middle/ upper-middle class income bracket.
Just for reference, the average median income (that’s the 50th percentile of all income earners, not the average which tends to be skewed by the upper class) in the US was only $43222 in 2023. That means the majority of US military recruits came from a household that was already earning more than 50% of the US population.
So by any of these metrics, you cannot consider most US military recruits to be impoverished.
Additionally, the racial and ethnic demographics of the military, especially in the higher ranks, is disproportionately White by a huge margin. I think it is reasonable to say that these majorly White recruits are nowhere near as vulnerable to discrimination or poverty as someone who has a non-White background, such as a black person whose family descended from slavery, or a Hispanic who migrated from a poor Hispanic country that could very well be deported by ICE any day now.
What can we ascertain from these facts then? That most people that join the US military are White, middle class individuals who are very likely joining not because they are desperate to leave poverty, but because they like the idea of being a stormtrooper of the empire whose propaganda they willingly ate up. There are far more Graham Platners than Mike Prysners in the US military.
On your other statements about purges and pragmatism, it is ironic that you say purges lead to counter-revolutionary outcomes when purges are what prevented the USSR from being completely destroyed from the inside during WW2 (see the number of Nazi collaborators in the occupied Baltic and Ukrainian territories), and is why the PRC and the DPRK still exist today.
As a non-American communist, I fail to see how it is pragmatic to try and defend the jackboots of the American Empire who are willingly carrying out war crimes and imperialist atrocities while completely ignoring all the actually impoverished, brown people they are currently murdering in the Middle East.
If empathy is ‘pragmatic’ as you claim, then I will say it is far more pragmatic to empathize the victims of the empire and materially support them to bring them to our cause, than the stormtroopers who carry out the orders of the Empire without question. It is like saying we should ‘pragmatically’ empathize IDF soldiers who are genociding Palestinians because they are all conscripts who came from all socioeconomic backgrounds and maybeeee 1% will defect if we just keep saying Free Palestine.
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Boris Yeltsin wasn’t purged. Gorbachev kept him around naively because he thought he was a loyal, valuable comrade that would carry out Glasnost effectively. Look how that turned out.
Deng Xiaoping purged liberals like Zhao Ziyang, the then General Secretary of the CPC that was expected to replace Deng as paramount leader, was one of the biggest supporters of Glasnost-style economic reforms and fully supported the colour revolutionaries of 1989.
By purging Zhao Ziyang, the PRC is still alive today. By not purging Boris Yeltsin, the USSR is not.
By not continually cleaning up shop in the party, you invite the exact corruption and implosion you warn of.
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You:
Also you:
Also you:
You are so all over the place and full of contradictory statements that you are incoherent. But so far as I can tell, what I’m getting is: “We need to have empathy for imperialist murderers and counterrevolutionary traitors but not for their victims.” Gotcha. You’re a reactionary.
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Empathy is pragmatic. Empathizing with victims is not pragmatic. No, those are not consistent, I’m sorry you are so blinded by this us vs them framing.
While saying that empathy for perpetrators is.
But rather than recognize that imperialist troops made a choice to literally become the enemy, willingly placing themselves on the opposite side of the class conflict from the working class and those of us who fight for it, we should give them a pass because free college is so tempting, and it’s cruel and not pragmatic or something to keep child murderers out of our orgs. Also purges are bad. Yeah, ok.
Everyone who responded to you about how ridiculous you were being fully understands that they are human and it is incredibly bad faith of you to pretend otherwise. As for the second part, let’s take out the double negative there so what you are saying can be parsed:
“they are not just acting as if they aren’t victims of the system that corrupted them” -> “they are just acting as if they are victims of the system that corrupted them” Ok, yes, I tend to agree, they often do just act as if they are victims of the system. If what you’re trying to say is that it is their material circumstances, the system they exist within, that led them to being imperialist troops, I would say that yes, material circumstances are ultimately responsible for the shaping of social factions. But that does not preclude anyone from having any responsibility for their individual choices and actions. Once again, the logical conclusion to that argument is that as communists we should not denigrate or hold anything against cops, presidents, capitalists, or any mass murderers since they are simply the product of their circumstances.
You’re really reaching to try to salvage something from this dumpster fire of a position, aren’t you?
It’s really not, which is why it’s so disconcerting (but also a little funny) to watch you flail about, trying to make any part of what you said earlier fit some sort of tortured material analysis.
I am not against empathizing with the enemy, and I never said otherwise. But no, it is not necessary to empathize with them to see any of the systemic issues that play a role in producing people like them, nor is it necessary to empathize with them to correct for it in the future.
I’m sorry you think that the very basic Marxist concept of class conflict is “us vs them framing.” lol
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Which you claimed was because vulnerable, impoverished Americans join the US military apparatus for desperation. Neither of which are true as I just proved in my previous comment. By continuing to use this false narrative which comes from liberals who defend Democrat military vet “progressives” like Graham Platner, you are not inacting any real change but just perpetuating the system.
Well I guess Marx, Engels, and Lenin were completely wrong in his theories then! The October Revolution was the first mistake they made by removing the provisional bourgeois government that just wanted to “educate” the peasants hey!
By your logic then, Americans who are born poor are not predestined to join the US military industrial complex and can actually just, you know, choose to not become an imperialist war criminal?
Empathizing imperialist war criminals also doesn’t help anyone except the war criminals. You still haven’t made any good case for how this benefits the international left at all.
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None of this relates to your premise that purging people in positions of power is somehow wrong and means “you’ve already lost” to put it your words. Re-education is not purging, it is a rehabilitative measure, which would definitely have not worked in the historical conditions of the early to mid-20th century USSR. They were literally fighting an existential war against Nazis and Tsarists ffs. You can’t “re-educate” someone who is actively trying to kill you. There are certainly criticisms to be made in the excesses of Stalin’s purges, but to completely ignore these historical conditions that necessitated the purges is pure idealism on your part.
I personally think many American government officials and all billionaires are also incapable of being re-educated because they have proven time and time again that they will stop at nothing to protect their class interests and countries like China and Vietnam punish billionaires the proper way, but you do you.
Again, this has nothing to do with defending the military apparatus of the imperialist state that is the USA, which you are doing by (falsely) claiming the stormtroopers are poor, oppressed workers who are just trying to get a decent income and education. I’m just curious if you would make the same argument for the IDF or the Wehrmacht which had many working-class individuals in it thinking they were doing no wrong.
If the average US soldier is actively involved in the current Iran War or any previous war/ invasion the US has engaged in, yes, they are war criminals.
You’re never gonna convince me that the people who killed hundreds of Iranian schoolchildren on the first day of the war are somehow innocent victims of the system. Please get some perspective.
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These are your exact words from earlier comments:
Stop with the revisionism please.
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And I have clarified many times now that the US foot soldiers (many of which choose to stay and move up the military career ladder or join the civilian government btw) are willing war criminals that support the imperialist system, which you keep making excuses for.
Empathy allows you to convince people to join a cause, which does cause material change down the line. Showing empathy for the victims of the empire allows them to be radicalized and increases their chances of joining a socialist movement. Showing empathy for an imperialist war criminal solidifies the superstructure and encourages more people to follow the same path. Get it now?
That only became your point after your previous arguments were shown to have no bearing on reality, and it’s also a point no one here would argue with. We all agree that systemic roots need to be addressed. We don’t all agree that troops should be given a free pass for being child murderers just because they selfishly saw a way to get free college out of it. We don’t all agree that troops deserve more empathy than their victims. We don’t all agree that class traitors and counterrevolutionary wreckers should be coddled instead of purged. You can’t make all these absurd, reactionary statements and then just say your only points are “that systemic roots need to be addressed.” Wildly disingenuous.
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