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Calling American soldiers "Professional" for shitting their diapers in Iraq and Afghanistan is a stretch. Underground militas blew the American soldiers out of the water multiple times.

I meant professional because that's what they do for a living. They spend their day staying fit, drilling, maintaining weapons, and shooting. It does not mean they are better than an organization of trained people in asymmetrical warfare. Many people in Iraq and Afghanistan "militias" received training as professional soldiers once but then acted in irregular armies.

It's not "ultra-leftism" to want the ghouls of the American empire to be tried and to not repeat the historical mistakes of America trying officials of Nazi Germany. Despite my hardline stance, I've had one combat-experienced veteran and another veteran actually show appeals to leftist ideologue. The thing is, they're retired. If you want to be "a good veteran" then the correct stance to take is to immediately do whatever is in your immediate possibility to minimize the damage already done while you're in service. Otherwise, most soldiers in service already have a sense of camaraderie and generally have the issues of alienation causes by capitalism alleviated only by a slight degree of collective service. You're appealing to someone who took an oath, is junked up on propaganda and has likely had or serviced the "machine" that acted in violence towards people like us, foreign-born comrades and women/children. My experience is absolutely anecdotal, but what I said about who you're appealing to isn't.

I completely agree that the armed forces of any imperialist country is one of the most reactionary institutions. However, even so, there should be propaganda and agitation directed to them. If we think we cannot break their entrancement from ideology then we better lose hope of a revolution, because almost everyone in capitalist society is entranced with the dominant ideology. Let's not forget that many working class leaders came from a military background. Luis Carlos Prestes, Carlos Lamarca, Hugo Chavez, Thomas Sankara, Ibrahim Traoré, Josip Broz Tito, among others.

Further more, there are plenty of us who have had horrible, abusive relationships with soldiers in family, etc. Beyond that, there are those of us on here who are direct victims of America and Isn'treals genocide? It is ultra-leftism and emotional to question recruiting the wolves to the flock? To question why we target these people in the first place when there's way more valuable targets? To understand why some have a hesitancy or a disgust to the very idea?

Trust me, we have plenty of shitty Jarhead fathers in Brazil. I knew a guy who was embarrassed of taking his shirt off because it would reveal the scars from all the beatings he received from his soldier father. My grandfather was also one of them. Although he thankfully didn't serve the army during the military dictatorship, he raised all his children like they were in a barrack. However, Marxist theory is not about workers being the most pure hearted and good people, it's about convincing them that they are oppressed by a system. And fighting it is a necessity because of that opression, and not about any kind of moral superiority.