By those same dynamics that you are referencing, we need to accept the fact that, using as a reference the current material conditions, the US military personnel are class enemies due to their settler colonial nature and other reasons as previously discussed by 6-6-6.

By this same reasoning, civilians in the imperial core are enemies of imperialized countries. Which isn’t necessarily a misguided way of looking at it for people who live in imperialized countries and are contending with empire in their territory, but accomplishes nothing other than hair-shirt-ism (pointless guilt and self destructive obsessive with moral purity) for people living in the imperial core.

Obviously people who go to another country and commit atrocities are a step worse from the rest of us living in the imperial core, but what about those who know capitalism is exploitative and still go about their day buying whatever product? At what point are we complicit? What about service members who don’t directly participate in war crimes, but only operate logistics (desk job, etc.)? What level of complicit is that?

What I’m taking issue with is largely binary thinking obsession that fixates on imperial core veterans as an oversimplified group, while implying that anyone who doesn’t agree with this is a person who wants to work with and support “baby-killers.” I went over this kind of subject with another poster recently too. My point then was much the same as it is now. Consider all of the factors involved, rather than considering it as a binary thing of either work with them without reservations or treat them like pariahs who couldn’t possibly ever contribute anything positive.

I’m not in favor of chasing after imperial core veterans as some kind of liberating saviors of the west, if that’s what some people are thinking. But the way some talk, you’d think that’s what I was saying and that it’s either that or they’re all demons.

The idealism part is the obsession with moral personal choices. You are not doing that. You’re looking at the conditions veterans face, the incentives, and so on. The other person in question was telling people to block them, telling them to “fuck off”, etc., because they weren’t on the same page about veterans. They were further going on about it as if it is some kind of “you’re with me or against me” thing and if you even accidentally hint at any sympathy for veterans in the process of discussing their conditions, you are essentially taking the side of “baby-killers.” They further went on to drag it into general discussion in a back-biting way.

Had they approached it as you have, I would consider it unfair of me to say the least, to have accused them of throwing a tantrum. I want to be especially clear on this because the discussion of the “soldiertariat” is a reasonable one in itself and I would have quite a problem with myself if I thought I was trying to leverage accusations of misbehavior in order to dismiss a valid point about material conditions. It’s why I tried to focus more broadly and not factor that into things when I said what I did.

I will try to say more on your specific points later. Bit distracted at the moment and wanted to get out some thoughts on the other angle.

Ok, have some time to try to go through this in more direct detail now, focusing on the discussion about “soldiertariat [myth]” with personal conflicts between people on here aside.

First, I want to emphasize that if the data shows that USian military is largely not exploited poor people, I see no reason to deny or downplay that. However, if some percentage of it is exploited poor people, that is still a certain number of people existing in that realm of it. If the majority comes from a class that is higher class and more just directly benefits from imperialism, no question about it, that obviously doesn’t bode well for the revolutionary potential of such people overall. Exceptions may exist, but in that case probably the expectation would be that most are a hard nut to crack in that regard and energy is better spent elsewhere.

Going through your breakdown:

Complete destruction of the incentives provided by the empire for active members and the prestige offered to Veterans. In other words, they need to experience an existential crisis that threatens their lives and forces them to organize agains the gov’t. (If the shutdown stays for months, we might see this possibility due to the internal dissidence rising up)

One distinction I want to focus on here is active members vs. veterans. Although veterans might have a degree of “prestige” in the sense of people who say stuff like “thank you for your service” or whatever, my understanding is some of them are disabled and struggle to get proper help for it. Those kind of people I don’t think are quite in the same category as others.

I do agree what you outline is a possible vector for people changing their allegiance to some degree. It is still a question in my mind with people like that whether they will be sympathetic to a more socialist-like cause or if they will just be “blue maga” for lack of a better term.

Complete class awareness that fighting their gov’t for a revolution will mean the loss of their privilege and the exceptionalism due to the dismantling of this structure. There are no concessions here.

There may not be that much privilege for those who exist in the sphere of disabled, but for others, sure, I see how there would have to be a certain degree of… how do I put it, “long term over short term.” Understanding that they can be part of something better even than what they have, but that it requires a significant shift in the structure of things.

Accept the process of decolonization and the process of generating empathy with the oppressed(aka victims of the Iraqi war and other victims of US interventions for example).

Complete acceptance of the role of the US military in war crimes, genocide and destruction around the Global South.

Here I do see it more as something like I emphasized before in another thread, the idea of “they may be helpful with supervision.” I don’t see them as likely to be reliable people who are leading anything, but some may still be able to help with advice or training under the right circumstances. I’m trying to remember a parallel I’m thinking of, maybe it was in the context of China’s revolutionary efforts? How there was something about those who would change sides and the liberation forces would accept their help, but keep them more at a distance in terms of proximity to the power structure. This may be the way it has to be with those who are too close to enforcement of empire in actual execution of it.

So as you may see, I’m not trying to make a case for major focus on recruiting from imperial core service members. Never have intended to be doing so. But it has, from how it looks to me, been made out like myself and perhaps some others are saying that simply because we don’t agree that 100% of them are a lost cause of conscious baby-killers no matter what.