People Twitter

Unironically yes. You don't get to be the center of the universe without showing up on the periphery to kick someone else's nuts in from time to time.

This clip -- of Tom Friedman saying the attack on Iraq was morally justified because we had to take out "our big stick" and tell Iraqis: "suck on this" -- is one of the most deranged and psychosexually twisted war justifications ever.

no sometimes they start wars to get rich people richer

but for reals its not the soldiers starting wars its the higher ups and the people who make weapons who start wars

I came here for this but found people already pointing it out.

DeFeNdInG as seen by everyone else: going to places 5k km away and murdering every living thing there.

VeTeRaNs as seen by everyone else: steroid micro-penis assholes murdering women & children

This is what Americans call "defending the nation"; making war in other countries than their own, believing themselves to be the world police.

I think America has only ever been attacked... Twice... In all of history (Pearl Harbour and 9/11), and both times the defense was pretty piss poor.

Yeah. That's kind of America's whole thing. Making money. Exploiting everything. Americans are the Ferengi.

Defending America = defending capitalism = doing whatever they can to make American, capitalist companies more profitable.

I don't hate capitalism. Don't get me wrong, but I generally don't like capitalists.

There is an argument to be made that they are defending American hegemony though Trump is fast eroding that in favor of the Chinese.

Broadly speaking, yeah. We send every member of the US Army through "Basic Training" even though 95% of them will never actually fire a gun or climb over a fence or jog ten miles in the rain for the rest of their careers.

Parade March is a thing we don't bother to drill into units (except specifically tasked "Parade Units" that exist to do little circus acts for the high command's amusement). But we could do it instead of the GI Joe training for the private class janitorial staff if we felt like it.

The bigger picture is that the US Military is a fountain of economic waste, social abuse, and pointless bloodshed in the name of machismo. Trump's parade is just the cherry on a seven layer cake of squandered national wealth.

But it's the thing liberals will fixate on, because we can't ever actually say "The Pentagon sucks ass and makes the world an objectively worse place to live in". It always has to be about this one Great Man Of History doing things wrong in a way his hypothetical liberal alternative would not.

I mean the honest truth is the military hates Trump just like the rest of us

The key difference is you can actually march to that music. Fortunate son is slightly too fast for a proper pace which is why the front of the one group was wavy and people were out of step. Also if anyone was actually calling cadence, the people on the left side probably wouldn't have been able to hear it over the music.

It is genuinely, such a hilariously piss-poor excuse.

My wife is in the Canadian Forces. She is ridiculously good at her job, and everyone in the CAF is trained to a ridiculously high standard. By the time she exited occupational training she was already qualified on more weapon systems than most US soldiers ever touch in their entire careers. Her unit shoots sub-MOA groupings for fun. They meet and often exceed the physical standards for Ranger school. And this is just reg-force infantry.

And despite all that, she is also so completely capable of keeping a tight march that she actually has to stop herself from automatically falling in perfect step next to me when we're walking down the street. And no, the excuse of "Oh, you can't march to Fortunate Son" doesn't count for shit. My wife can mark perfect time with no music at all. Christ, one time in training her MCpl made her unit all put on their gas masks and mark time while singing Oh Canada, and they didn't get to stop until it was perfect. And no, they did not have a fucking drum or backing music. She's not on a drill team; Canada doesn't have drill teams. This is just something they do because it's part of the basic standard of being a soldier.

I did the last sentence and got punished when I was in school ☠️

Did they even know locking knees feel painful already?

Made more sense back in the day when you didnt have TV or anything to do for most of every day.