I stopped having sympathy for service people and their families after enough time passed for them to realize how fucked the leadership is (and the US culture that fuels it), and to have at least not reenlisted. At this point my attitude is that every casualty is tragic, but y’all actively deserve it.

My family is friends with another family who have kids of similar age. All three of their kids have enlisted and/or reenlisted during all of this. So far, I have avoided communicating my opinion to them, but if circumstances force the issue, I’ve already decided that I’m going to be honest with them about my attitude.

That's easy. I have had a friend die in a previous war, a war i didn't approve of either. All human death is tragic. Most wars are unnecessary and perpetrated by a minority in power, a minority who would never be first to a battlefield. Show me someone in power willing to die for their cause and I'll consider it a candidate for a worthy cause.

The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.

People are gambling with their lives when they sign up. I feel sorry for the poor who have little other choice, but that's about it

Same reason why you care more about friends and family deaths than random other people. Basic tribalism.

It's pretty easy when you understand how many young men and women join the armed forces because they basically don't have any other options. They join it to try to escape crippling poverty, because they have so few other options. Which is by design.

That these young people are being thrown into a meat grinder to serve the vested interest of an elite few. The vested interest of the Epstein class. They're dying for lies of a pedophilic elite. Their lives are being thrown away for no good reason. How is that anything but tragic?

Because Americans live inside a special reality where they are never wrong, so if someone kills one of American who was trying to kill them. The soldier is a martyr and the person who killed in self defense is a murderer.

Because propaganda and indoctrination of course

It's simple: Americans are a kind of fascists

I'm legitimately curious if you are asking this because you think only Americans kill other country's civilians during conflict or if that's the only country whose murder of innocent civilians bothers you.

Why would I direct my anger at the every day people who decided to sacrifice to serve our country and not the people that sent them to fight in an unjust and unnecessary conflict?

Can I fault a teenager for believing their country is worth fighting for? No

In-group vs outgroup.

But also,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBF3K1J9wHI

Donovan - Universal Soldier

Soldiers deaths are always tragic. What is even more tragic is the reason they are dying this time around. To protect the trump-epstein class. For God and Country? No, for Don and Jeff.

"They might be known murderers, rapists and thieves, but they're OUR murderers! Also, the death of brown people is not really sad like that, come on..."

It's ingrained in their culture. From very young, the education system has indoctrinated the belief that their wars were justified and have romanticized the means because the ends promised a better future. They just left out the relevant parts that they eventually manipulate because if they told people the real reasoning, people wouldn't "fight" for the causes.

The instinctively blind and gullible, short-sighted "patriots" follow the orders they are given because they refuse to see beyond their cult. They buy into the promise and because the story they were told was nice and pretty, they conflate everything and are manipulated into serving the corrupt evil they should be destroying. It's ironic.

I can understand how people in those circles want to pay respect and may even find some attachment to the idea because someone they were close to got involved in the same cult, but at some point you need to have some kind of moral compass that tells you what you're doing is wrong. You need to separate the idea from the reality. They don't.

The death of any soldier is a tragic event. They are at the end of the day just a human being who had wants and desires.

Sure, there will always be some select zealots who really did sign up for "the love of the game", as it were. But the vast majority of almost all enlisted or conscripted forces are a bunch of regular folk who are either forced into this by desperation or necessity, or fed enough curated propaganda that they think they're doing the right thing- and don't know any better.

This applies to even the worst countries, US, russia, even Nazi Germany; most of Germany's troops in WWII were a bunch of scared kids scammed by propaganda or forced into the service when Hitler's back was against the wall.

And that's really the crux of it- That soldier died because of their leader's actions, and that's where the blame should lie. Lemmy's insatiable dehumanization of most "colonizer" military forces is frankly downright disgusting.

It's unclear "Americans view this". Government's Zionazi permawar must dress up all defeats as mandate for escalating permawar. US establishment only recognizes Zionazi supremacist genocide, and always will justify amplifying it.

I don’t. Anyone still participating in the U.S. military is a fascist puppet, terrorist, and a fool.

You obviously haven't heard of the Westboro Baptist church. Louis Theroux has a couple of good documentaries on them.

It’s not soldiers who start wars. There is some cognitive dissonance, but one can be angry at corrupt politicians sending troops to unnecessary wars, and respect those same troops as heroes risking their lives for the country.

I actually don't think the death of any soldier is tragic. It's tragic, that they existed as soldiers in the first place. Other than that, if every soldier in the world dropped dead, I would be happy about it.

You wouldn't feel sorry for the death of any murderer that initiated the aggression?