this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2026
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They did nothing to deserve being starved by our own government. This is the most likely scenario:
They are not the problem.
Trump is not the first president to send soldiers to war, the USA is a war machine, since the '50s there hasn't been a year the USA wasn't invading or bombing another country, even though the last country to have attacked the USA was Japan in 1941. Trump is just the first to call the Department of Defense by its real name. Absolutely no sympathy for the cogs of the war machine.
How very privileged of you to say.
You're attacking the messenger. Look at what they said and just take it on face value. What did they say that was false or untrue? I don't see anything false. One of my grandfather's fought in World War ii. The other in korea. My father was drafted into Vietnam. What about all our military mucking about in Afghanistan and Iraq and now Iran. Bosnia/Serbia? The African continent and South America. All the myriad of miscellaneous groups we armed with the goal of destabilizing governments in the region.
Now step back for a moment from whether you think X or Y was justified. Just look at the overall volume and frequency of it. Yes some of them were in response to Russian imperialism. But just the sheer number of military or weapons aid interventionism on the part of our country we absolutely have a problem. One that I definitely see China taking up the banner of as we collapse. But that doesn't make it right. Or make those pointing it out wrong.
Imagine what kind of healthcare we could have, how much our cities and communities could be, how good our schools could be. If our first response wasn't to blow people up or enable others to blow people up. Imagine what goes effective hundreds of trillions of dollars could have gotten us at home if it hadn't just been blown up or thrown away.
I hate starting sentences with, "I'm not a tankie, but", but:
I'm not a tankie, but, China has leaned a lot on economic soft power and seems to be steadily taking over Africa with consensual development deals that would be in a US context just a pallet of M-16s shipped to some random pedophile warlord.
I know China domestically is pretty gross, especially in Tibet and with the Uighurs, but as far as foreign policy goes, China is light-years ahead of the United States.
The same China that's currently saber rattling at every single direct neighbor they have? The United States Used to Know the value of soft power too. But it's the nature of states. They always corrupt. And the corrupt don't value soft power or diplomacy.
And don't bother trying to argue that China isn't corrupt. Billionaires and millionaires exist there. Allowing that from the start was a corrupt move. Don't question that the state doesn't covet that power. Just because they will imprison or kill those Millionaires and billionaires if they cross "the state". Does not make them uncorrupted.
As to the tanky bit...... Honestly outside of the horrendous social policy, China has actually done a number of things right or at least better than the US, which isn't a great achievement. I honestly wouldn't mind discussing and dissecting those things if it wasn't for disingenuous defense of their cultural and social abuses by them or the ML. That think the world will be a better place if they were the bully. Without understanding that who the bully is, isn't the problem. It's the existence of said bullies.
Yeah, I remember not being able to express any criticism of Ana Kasperian (feminist using video games to explore feminist themes and idea) without being immediately disgusted by the people agreeing with me, which is the same problem from a different end--that is to say, it's difficult to have a neutral discussion on some topics on the internet.
Honestly don't follow the news that much, but notice that for all the saber-rattling, China hasn´t actually done anything, in contrast to the US over the last, oh, 200 years. And I find the Belt and Road Inititiative creepy AF but a welcome change from the United States funding civil wars and murdering leaders to get its way... so, yeah, there's plenty there to discuss. But you did say it looks like China's stepping up militarily, so maybe it will fill the hardpower vacuum left by the United States' overpriced military (though I think the technology that has all but defeated the United States in the Persian Gulf also makes US-style interventionism increasingly obsolete).
I also have a theory that power eventually corrupts society as the powerful enrich themselves to the detriment of their supporting society--the parasite kills the host. It's already happening the United States. I'm honestly wondering how China, with it's centralized authority structure, has managed to not only survive so long, but actually make advancements as a whole.
Honestly, China has had a history of it as well. Though that China technically isn't this china. There were technically at least a China or two between then and now. Maoism was mostly toxic at home. Dengism ramped it up and will eventually export it sooner or later. This China is only just getting to the position where they can start doing it. Which is why they are starting. The main reason that it hasn't escalated into military conflict. Is that most of the people they've been intimidating know that they would lose in that sort of conflict.
The same way the US did. If we would be around 250 years post Chinese empire. I would 100% wager you that they will take a very similar path as the us. Because the US did similar to the countries that came before it. And they did similar to the countries that came before them. I'm 100% on the same page with you about power corrupting. That's why it happens and with their centralized system they may not let the information or data out that it is happening. But it is happening.
You just added that last sentence, I have to delete this now.
You didn't have to (it wasn't "homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist" nor discriminatory in any way, I was just wishing they succeed on their enterprise they initiated themselves) but it's very convenient so your last comment claiming higher moral ground doesn't look bad. See you never.
So, let's just propose that your government is dirty and has a fascist in power. You'd be cool with your best friend who joined the military because he doesn't have a dad and is too poor to move away to get a better job somewhere, starving while on deployment?
I'll answer for the other guy.
Of course I wouldn't be "cool" with it. I feel terrible for these soldiers in this position.
But I can't help these soldiers without simultaneously supporting their mission, which leads to more deaths.
That's the problem: you feed these guys and they'll just be able to load bombs onto planes faster, so more city blocks get destroyed, more schools and power plants get bombed, more hospitals get bombed, more bridges get destroyed, more people die directly from bombs, from injuries due to bombs, and from otherwise preventable causes if infrastructure was in place. etc., etc., etc.
These deaths can easily number in the hundreds of thousands.
But, of course, it's actually quite sensical to want your friends not to be hurt! I understand where you're coming from and I'm not saying you're wrong to want them not to starve to death or throw themselves overboard. I'm just saying that there are other people in the world, people that your friend's professional mission is to kill, and those other lives also have value no matter how hard we shut our eyes.
Would you be so sympathetic if your friend had joined ICE and was hunting your other friends or just if you friend joined a machine to hunt people far away?
That's a really good point, I would not be sympathetic towards a friend that joined ICE, probably because I have no friends that would join ICE.
You didn't answer my question though. Last comment.
Likewise the victims of your military did nothing to deserve to be killed.
It’s not ethical, and the needs of these people is so far down on the things to worry about list but troop fetishisation gives them unwarranted attention.
What’s next posts about ICE agents not getting paid and unable to make rent or dinner?
Soldiers are always a problem.
You kind of do need soldiers to fight wars, so their existence as volunteers is sort of a problem [edit: if wars of aggression are a problem for you; maybe they're not].
But tell me, if you live in reality, your options are either:
a) to feed these soldiers well and thereby by making them more able to kill other people
b) do nothing and allow these soldiers to starve, thereby making the war machine less effective and saving lives of other people.
I mean, if you want to be morally serious, it's either:
or
and, you know what? fuck it. I'll go there:
along with
You can feel sorry for them all you want, but you can´t feed them without supporting a war that will probably ultimately cause a lot more starvation than on a few ships.