a reply to:
makemap
First of all, as other posters have mentioned, NATO has no military of its own, so no one is going to be joining up with its service.
Second... Hell no.
When I was a boy, ten years old or so, I thought it would be a good option to join up with a military outfit. My father worked for the MoD, both my
grandfathers fought for our nation in WWII, I thought it would be something to do my bit. But as I grew older, did my research on the wars fought
since, the reasons for them, the things our government were involved in, I realised that there was no way that I would be doing any honour to either
my family, or indeed my nation, in going to war under the instructions of its government. The reason I came to that conclusion, is that there has not
been a war that needed fighting SINCE WWII, with the arguable exception of the Falklands campaign. The first Iraq war, the ongoing War on Terror...
while I respect that people who thought they were doing a good thing, donned fatigues and went to war in good faith, the people leading the nations
involved in those campaigns, were not acting in the best interest of the people of this or any of the other countries who contributed forces to those
campaigns.
Indeed, the intelligence services of the two most gung ho nations involved, were actively supporting terror networks as part of a proxy war with
Russia, something they had been setting up since before I was ever born. The specific detail only became available to me after the fact, but something
about the whole War on Terror stunk from the beginning, and I had already made up my mind, after examining military history between WWII and the
beginning of that mess, that I could not join up, without being potentially used as a tool to achieve unjust aims, using amoral means.
If I thought for a moment than joining up would have meant that I would get to fight a good fight, against an enemy worthy of combating, then I would
have made moves at age sixteen, to get moving down that path. As it is, even before the WoT, I knew that to place myself under the direction of people
less morally advanced than I was, and frankly less intellectually capable, would be a folly and a vast one at that, and so I did not take that option.
Those who came before me, my grandfathers both instilled in me the importance of only fighting if the cause is just, pure, righteous. There was no
question at the time that they joined their respective branches of the UK military, that the fight they were training for was about as perfectly
justified as it is possible for any act of violence to be. Even despite that, it was harrowing, brutal and cost both of those stalwart men a decent
portion of their sanity, a sacrifice that they both, independently of one another, said that they were proud to make under the circumstances. But no
such circumstances have existed since, and both men had been vocal in their opposition to many of the uses of UK military assets in other conflicts
since, highlighting the moral collapse of governance in this country as one of many reasons to be VERY distrustful of any modern call to arms.
Even if I were at peak physical condition, and of an age where my joining up would make me of long and fulsome use to my nations military services, I
would not. I cannot trust that I would not be used to do something that should not be done, against someone who is not actually my enemy at all, nor
the enemy of my people. Until my government can be trusted never to enter into a war of its own creation, against an enemy it helped construct, NO ONE
should join up to its military services. If we want to win a victory for truth, for justice, for our people and our freedom, our futures and those of
our children and our children's children, the best thing we can do as Britons, is refuse to hand over our children into the arms of the military,
refuse to join up ourselves or offer any support to our military other than by way of the taxes we have no choice but to render unto the government.
Other than that, there is no enemy on the horizon, nor is there a commander or a politician in power of a just and noble sort, who could convince a
reasoning and intelligent person, that there is a good reason to join them in any of the endeavours that are afoot now, or any endeavours likely to
come about in my lifetime.
Now, it is vital that people understand that I respect those who hold a different enough view that they did join up back in the day, or are thinking
of doing it now. Those who serve, those who intend to... I cannot and will not insult them or attempt to attach labels to them which do not fit, since
that would be amoral. All I will say, is that I hope that those people are careful about how invested they become in their work and its legitimacy. I
would hope, though it is unfortunate to have to say it, that they are of the sort who can ignore the right and wrong of a matter, and simply comply,
because if not, once the dust of their actions settles, and they see what they have wrought upon other human beings, it would be a shame if they had
to feel the weight of the wrongs they had done others, on top of the lack of justification for those wrongs.