Great points all around. Whatever someone’s background or the lies they’re exposed to growing up, there’s no justification or excuse for playing a role in the imperial death machine. However, these might be mitigating factors, and almost everyone should have a path back to society, even if they commit serious crimes. We really need to iron out the contradiction in how we talk about people who commit violence in a criminal context and people who commit violence in an imperial context. Assuming similar individual acts, I don’t think there’s a big difference between someone who joins a gang at 17 and someone who joins the Army at 17. So we can’t talk about rehabilitation and decarceration on one hand and then turn around and use “law and order” rhetoric on troops.
Unrepentant vets must be treated like cops; you can only consider them assets for socialism if they reject the systems they supported as well as their part in doing so. And they are not ripe for the picking by default; they have a lot more shit to work through to end up a socialist than the average imperial core citizen.
Also great points, although I’d add one thing to your last sentence (and least with respect to non-chud troops). They may have more of certain types of shit to work through to become a socialist, but a lot of them don’t glamorize the military the way even a lot of left-leaning libs do. They’ve seen the business end of imperialism, or are at least close enough to it to know the propaganda is bullshit. That can be useful, as can the narrow but vibrant tradition of “my buddies are alright, but everyone above us is corrupt/callous/out to lunch/ignorant.” This stuff isn’t a step directly towards socialism, but it’s a step outside political orthodoxy, which is at least headed in the right direction.
Most troops don’t, either. Most don’t even see combat. I’m all for holding troops responsible at an individual level, for acts they personally carried out, but the contradiction I see is that “fuck all troops forever” is the exact same rhetoric as “lock up every criminal and throw away the key.” It doesn’t make any sense to talk about prison abolition for a civilian who assaulted their partner but then talk about gulags for a troop who has a desk job at some base in Kansas.
Because literal act itself is not what we charge troops with. Its serving a war machine which irradiates cities. Those desk jobs serve the immiseration of the global south, they are not just harming their community, they are destroying other people’s communities. Also i didn’t even say throw em in gulags ever last one, I said gangs don’t irradiate cities.
The point of comparison is moot, they are not comprable. Soldiers participating in an international crime and a crime against humanity are not the same as a domestic abuser. I don’t give a damn where you come down on what to do with them, my objection is to the conflation of gangs with the US military. Helping a gang wont make you on some level responsible for Fallujah
