1. In 2009, 6000 vets committed suicide. Why? Because they were so ashamed of themselves that they felt compelled to execute themselves. Think how many more vets are crippled with guilt who want to commit suicide but can’t quite bring themselves to do it. Do you want to risk marrying someone who deserts you by killing himself? Do you want to be married to a man who has committed deeds so terrible he feels suicide is the only way to atone for them? Do you want to be tied to someone who is so suicidally depressed that no treatment or medication helps? Do you want a man in your bed, or near your kids, who has committed deeds so unspeakably awful he is too ashamed to tell anyone what they were.
Psychopaths are incredibly charming. They appear to be kinder and more considerate than normal folk. They have to keep up this act because they don’t actually have normal feelings. When they are exposed, everyone is astounded that such a nice fellow could commit such crimes. Look at the evidence. If you partner has any history of killing or torturing others, he could well eventually come for you or your family under the right stressors. Even Hitler was kind to his dogs. Watching him interact with them, you would never guess what he was capable of.
Any man or woman can succumb to the overwhelming desire to kill themselves. Suicide is a real problem, but not one that can be avoided by avoiding a whole profession. This article actually states that Dentists (I've heard and seen this in many places so it is not the only article that says so) and other health care professionals actually have the highest rate of suicide. it does NOT site soldiers or service men. Maybe instead of suggesting that a soldier will inevitably kill him/herself we should work on reaching out to these soldiers, as a spouse you can be there for your soldier so that s/he never feels the despair, anguish and feelings of loneliness that surround suicide. having said this, I hope all spouses can be support systems for each other no matter the profession. (I am not going to respond to the psychopaths comment, except to say, if he is a psychopath without normal feelings, why would he want to kill himself because of his "unspeakably awful" deeds?)
2. Your loved one will be off for months and years at a time. He may be back only days before being shipped out again. This can be a pretty lonely life. If you have children, you will be largely raising them by yourself. Without a full time father, they are more likely to have behavioural problems. Your husband will probably be away when your children are born, leaving you to endure labour alone, and missing those crucial first hours of bonding. Ask any child of a military man. They make distant, aloof fathers. They don’t bond properly.
It is true, your husband will be gone for long periods of time, a lot of times. Not all marriages can handle this, you need to make sure that you're married for the right reasons and that you have an unbelievable amount of trust for each other. On the other hand, "distance makes the heart grow fonder" being reminded of what you have, by having to miss it, is a great reminder of how fabulous your marriage actually is. As for the father comment- there are many absentee fathers that aren't off fighting for their country. and I know many military fathers that are just as loving and amazing from 6800 miles as ones that are holding their babies in their arms, it just takes a hint of creativity. If a man wants to bond with his baby, he will, thousands of miles away or not.
3. The military whips recruits into good physical shape. It is hard not to be swept away by that trim athletic body. That is about the only plus, and even that won’t last forever. If you do decide to marry a soldier, that is probably the real reason. Hormones are taking over your brain. You are picking a good mate as if you lived in a cave and needed a muscular brute to protect you from wild animals. Think of the misery you know others have found marrying a handsome bastard.
Clearly the only reason I married Jake is because he's sexy. (sorry, I know I said no sarcasm, just too hard to resist here.) No matter what the profession if you are picking your husband based solely on his physical appearances, your marriage is going to have some problems. Maybe the reason people look to soldiers to find spouses is less the fit hotties, and more the honorable, brave, strong, and loyal men (and women) that make up our armed forces.
4. If your husband participates is an aggressive war (illegal first strike war) such as Afghanistan or Iraq, he is guilty of a capital war crime, even if he just peeled potatoes. The USA currently does not recognise the authority of the world court and acts to protect its vets from proscecution. However, the USA will not always be the world’s only superpower and won’t be able to thumb its nose at the world court forever. In the meantime, other countries are treaty bound to prosecute your husband if he steps on their soil. Most don’t do it, because they fear the American reprisal, but that will not necessarily always be true. There is no statute of limitations on war crimes. Prosecuted or not, you are still married to a war criminal, guilty of the same crime as the Nazis hanged at the end of WW II.
My husband and his comrades in arms are not Nazi's and do not do things the same way Nazi's did. As long as my husband abides by his personal moral code, and sticks to following lawful orders only (which he does) then there is no point in being afraid of being charged with war crimes, because he is not guilty of them.
5. Unless he reaches high rank, he will never be able to provide for you and your family properly. Many soldiers’ wives live worse than those on welfare.
This is simply not true. while soldiers are not paid enough compared to the sacrifices they make for this country, my husband (E4 or SPC so not very high on the pay scale) makes the sole income for this family, and provides for us very well. I do not go without anything that I need, and we live very comfortably. We wouldn't qualify for welfare, because we make too much money, therefore we must live at least marginally better than those that do (money wise), simple deduction.
6. You will be transferred over and over. You have to pull up roots on a moments notice and move off somewhere else. You have no say in the matter. If you have children, they will become army brats, children who never learn to socialise with other children since they are never in one place long enough to make lasting friends, children who do poorly in school because of the repeated disruptions. You can’t have a carreer of your own because you are forced over and over to quit without notice. All this moving means you can’t put down roots anywhere or make lasting friends. You are nothing more than the wife of your husband, a decorative adjunct without value in your own right. You won’t even have the support of your family since they may be continent’s away. If you have children, your mother and father will hardly ever get to hang out with their grandchildren; that is quite selfish. You may be forced to transfer your young family to some third world country, ripe with parasites, tropical diseases, poisonous insects and snakes. Even if you don’t transfer, your husband will bring back these parasites, tropical diseases and funguses back to infect you and your children.
Moving a lot is the reality of active duty, it is not an issue with National Guard or reserves soldiers. having said that, if you are active duty, you need to decide where your priorities lie, and if moving a lot and putting your career on hold is too much of a sacrifice, you probably shouldn't marry an active duty soldier. If handled correctly, children of soldier's can do just fine in school even with all the moving. If you put them in the schools on post the school will have had quite a bit of experience with these situations, as well as the other kids, and this will help make the transition as smooth as possible. Many children move away from their parents as they grow up, get jobs, and start their own families, is every last one of these people selfish? And finally, the government doesn't send your soldier or your family to a new place without preparing you for the local diseases. Before a soldier deploys he is given many shots and vaccines to ensure his safety when facing new illnesses that his body has not had to fight off before.
7. You will constantly dread that phone call or knock on the door to let you know your husband has been seriously injured or killed. There will be a knock on the door. There will be a man in crew cut standing there who says, “I am sorry for your loss” in a rather wooden, bored way. You will have to start your life all over from scratch. Or it could be your husband himself in a wheelchair, looking many pounds overweight, speaking in a halting, brain-damaged, distracted voice, like someone with Alzheimers, with an ostomy bag strapped to his stomach. Loss of genitals is a common injury. For the rest of his life, you are obligated to be his nurse rather than his wife. All he will be capable of doing is eating, drinking beer and watching TV.
It's true, this life is not without risks, I try not to give voice to my fears, or let them take over at all, but yes, I am terrified every time there is a knock at my door and I haven't heard from Jake in a while. Yes, I pray everyday that Jake is not harmed and that he will one day (hopefully sooner than later) return to me in one piece. However, this could happen to ANYONE! There are automobile accidents and other tragedies all the time, people lose loved ones unexpectedly quite often, unfortunately. Letting fear of this cripple your life, is no way to live, whether you are a soldier's wife or not. Face the fear, have hope that your husband will be safe. If you won't marry a soldier because he might die, then you probably shouldn't marry anyone, because they could die too. Brain injury and becoming wounded are also risks associated with soldiers, when I married Jake I married everything he could become. In sickness and in health. I pray everyday that none of this happens to Jake, but if it does I will step up to the plate and take care of my husband because I love him, and I always will.
8. Your husband can be killed at any time. It is a sword of Damocles over your head for his entire career. He will leave you to care for your family as a single parent.
I just answered this...
9. It is common for soldiers to suffer from PTSD Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He may panic at any loud sound. He may wake up in the night screaming. He may attack you imagining you are an enemy soldier. He may become paranoid. Make sure you learn what PTSD is before you presume love will automatically give you the resources to deal with it.
Please do educate yourself on PTSD, it is a problem, but there is help. PTSD is not a problem with soldiers only, you can get it from any type of traumatic incident, rape, abuse, kidnap and many other events listed here. If you don't ever want the chance of dealing with a spouse with PTSD then you probably shouldn't marry anyone, because unexpected things happen, and anyone could wind up with PTSD from these things.
10. If you discovered your fiancé had murdered his previous two wives, you might have second thoughts, ditto if you had discovered he had murdered a dozen strangers of random ages and genders just because he was paid to. You are considering marrying a man who is under unbreakable contract to the government to kill strangers and who may have already done it. If he later gets a crisis of conscience and refuses to kill one of his assigned targets, he can he shot on the spot. What kind of person signs such a contract? Not even Mafioso enslave themselves to that extent.
A soldier's contract is with the government, and that contract only covers "Lawful Orders" s/he will not follow orders if they are not lawful. A soldier is not paid to "murder a dozen strangers of random ages and gender" a soldier is paid to carry out the protection of this country and it's government. Yes, sometimes that requires that lives must be taken, but it is not random, and it is not done lightly.
11. Soldiers often do some disreputable things under peer pressure that they avoid talking about. This is includes drinking to excess, whoring, drug-taking, raping, bullying and terrorising, hazing, killing and raping children and torturing. The fundamentalist Taliban had eliminated drug trafficking. Under US military control, Afghanistan has risen to #1 heroin producer in the world, selling over a trillion dollars worth a year. This could not happen if US soldiers were not complicit in the drug trade. Recall that a significant number of US soldiers returned from Vietnam addicted to heroin. The remote control nature of much of modern warfare ensures the primary targets will be children and civilians. A soldier often does not even see his victims. When he kills blindly like this e.g. with napalm, cluster bombs, land mines or white phosphorus, in a third world country like Iraq where most of the people are under 15, inevitably he kills more children than adults, and civilians than soldiers. In addition when American soldiers attack they have a massive advantage in power, armaments and technology. This power corrupts them to toy with the civilian populations, to torment them for amusements like a child tormenting insects. The military likes remote control warfare because it keeps their soldiers safe, and it protects the soldiers from emotionally feeling the impact of their butchery. These soldiers look just like anyone else. You would never guess from the soldiers’ clean-cut faces what mischief they have been up to. Recall the pudgy boyish face of Lt. Calley of the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam. The domestic charms of house and home don’t quite do it for them anymore. These sadistic desires were always in the background. The thrill of violence was part of the appeal for them enlisting — to commit cruel acts without any possibility of legal repercussions. When you marry a soldier, you are marrying someone more prone to abusing you and your children too. His standards of what constitutes acceptable behaviour are warped by war experience.
A lot of people do disreputable things when peer pressured to do so. (Did rape really need to be on the list twice?) The reason that the news makes such a huge deal out of the FEW instances of these war crimes is that they are rare, and it is a big deal, because it doesn't happen often, and it SHOUDN'T happen. Don't hate everyone in a profession just because of some people's unfortunate choices. If that's how we lived our lives, no one would ever trust a catholic priest again. As for the drugs in Afghanistan, that was not because soldiers helped, it was because they were not there to police the drug problem, they were/are there to fight a war. Soldiers do not sign up for the armed forces with the intent to kill innocent people, they sign up because they feel it is their calling. Just because someone wants to be a soldier doesn't mean he will abuse you, abusers come from all walks of life, and all professions.
12. A Canadian soldier returned from the relatively gentle Afghanistan war with PTSD Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He repeatedly abused his infant triplet sons, breaking 19 of their bones. He blamed the attacks on his condition. Do you really want someone with PTSD anywhere near your kids or near you? The New England Journal of Medicine reported that American soldiers returning from Iraq are being sent home to their families without treatment. According to MSNBC one in eight soldiers returning from Iraq are suffering from PTSD. Less than half seek treatment. Some soldiers are able to separate their family life from their life as killers. They may appear completely normal and loving, though obviously it is great stress to do so.
I already answered the PTSD problem in number 9... Having PTSD does not automatically mean you will abuse your children, sure some people have, but there are plenty of people that don't have PTSD that abuse their kids too.
13. Your husband can suffer a brain injury or be made a paraplegic. This is 2 to 8 times as likely as death depending whom you ask.Professor Stiglitz of Columbia University said that as of 2006-01, there were more than 7000 servicemen with brain, spinal, amputation and other serious injuries, and about 20% of those injured have suffered major head or spinal injury. This turns him into a giant infant who has to be feed, bathed and diapers changed. You are morally stuck with caring for him 24/7 for the rest of your life whether you continue to love him or not.
Again, I already answered this in number 7, when you marry someone you marry anything they can become. My mother was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis 15 years ago, she has a lot of problems walking and doing every day things. She needs help with a lot of tasks. My father did not know this was going to happen to her when he married her, but he did marry her, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health. He sticks to his vow everyday. He helps her with things that a healthy person would not need help with, he deals with the cognitive issues that my mother has, and he does so without complaint. My parents marriage is an amazing testament to keeping your vows throughout difficult situations. Neither one of my parents is or ever has been a soldier or service man. Proof that these situations can happen to anyone, not just soldiers.
14. When you rip off the pretty bunting, what the military is about is killing, torturing, maiming and terrorising people. In modern warfare, most of the victims are civilians and most of those are children. On some level, your husband was drawn to this killing. There is a cloak of respectability, even nobility that the government casts over it, but when you get down to it, soldiers do the exact same thing as Mafia hit men — kill just because they were ordered too. Though they give lip service to personal responsibility, they are brainwashed to the point disobeying an order becomes unthinkable. They consider deciding who has the right to live a superior’s total responsibility. At Nuremberg, humanity proclaimed that claiming “I was just following orders.” is not sufficient excuse for murder. Your potential husband, agrees with the Nazis. He thinks he is morally off the hook so long as someone else gave him permission to murder. How else could he make up excuses for killing civilians and children? Do you really want this man passing those sorts of dark genes to your offspring? Instead of spawning more little soldiers, you could just as well spawn more little criminals. What sort of woman are you to entrust your children alone with a child murderer?
Warfare is an entirely separate thing from murder. American/Canadian (I add Canada because this writer is lumping them together, and is writing for a Canadian website) soldiers are not Nazi's at all, they live by different laws, and different codes, they follow different orders. The rest of this is too difficult to respond to objectively because it is just mud slinging, and not an actual argument.
15. You also might wonder about a man that selected an occupation that would keep him away from his wife most of the time, especially when he spends that time in the company of young fit men excluding the company of women. If he is a closeted homosexual or bisexual, getting married primarily to satisfy the demands of his parents and church, you are in for a life of misery. He will never be able to truly love you. He will never be true to you. Gay men used to sign on as sailors in the days of sailing ships, but would have a wife, in name only. Even straight men in prisons and in the military without access to women often resort to homosexual encounters.
You also might wonder if a business man, or pilot who travels a lot is gay. It is generally pretty clear if someone is marrying you to "satisfy the demands of his parents and church" or because he truly loves you. Suggesting that soldiers are more likely to be homosexual than anyone else is just absurd.
16. Soldiers are often exposed to teratogens like DU, herbicides (like Vietnam’s Agent Orange laced with dioxin), chemicals, chemical warfare, biological warfare, not to mention exotic parasites and tropical diseases. This may cause cancer later, or even more likely will cause your children and their children to be genetically deformed. Would you ever forgive yourself if your child was born hideously deformed, or even mildly damaged because of the damage these agents did to your husband’s sperm? Over half the soldiers who served in the Gulf War, died of Gulf War Syndrome or were treated for it. They were in Iraq for only weeks. Your husband will be there years. Not only the returning soldiers suffered from Gulf War syndrome, but also their children and wives. Soldiers brought back loathsome diseases, parasites, toxins and radioactivity. The military, in most cases, refused medical aid.
Again, the government prepares its soldiers as best it can for these situations, through anthrax, small pox, and countless other vaccines that are required before deployment.
17. If you love and cherish your husband, you are encouraging and enabling him to do his job of soldiering. Soldiering is a sickening, revolting job, and it takes the memory of a loving wife for many to continue. You then became complicit is his war crimes. You are morally tarred with his misdeeds. Today, Canada and the USA only fight in illegal aggressive wars. They are not defending their countries as did soldiers in past. You are sacrificing yourself for goals as evil as any Nazi wife did, mostly killing civilians and children and teenagers who posed no threat to Canada, the USA or Britain. Have a look at photos of some of the children hideously tortured and killed by the likes of people just like your husband. The people who committed these atrocities appear just as sweet as your guy. They don’t have green saliva. That is his dirty secret. He gets off on killing, and admit it, so do you or your heart would not be attracted to such a man.
A wife must support her husband through all his endeavors. That is as much as I will respond here because the rest is just insults and not actual valid points.
18. If your soldier lover woos you, and holds out the promise of marriage, but never seems to pop the question, consider he may already have a wife back home, and he is just using you for sex.
This is a very specific situation, that could hold true to any relationship, not just soldiers (why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?)
19. Nazi soldiers were popular to start, but as their deeds became more and more widely known, all decent society shunned them. Soldiers who serve in illegal aggressive wars to plunder a small nation’s natural resources, such as the Afghan war or Iraq war, will over time become more and more pariahs, eventually subject to death threats and anonymous attacks, just as Nazis and Nazi collaborators were hounded. They could even face kidnapping and prosecution as international war criminals. The penalty for engaging in aggressive war at Nuremberg was death. Today it would be life imprisonment, an even crueller punishment. Consider how people who participated in the Viet Nam war have over the years become more and more pariahs. The shame of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars will be even greater because of the use of banned weapons and torture, and the craven motive for the war.
The horrible things that happened in WWII with the Nazi's are extremely different than things happening now. again I stress that just because someone is a soldier, doesn't mean that s/he is a war criminal.
20. On 2007-10-15 a young woman told me she had gone to a bar and met a pleasant young man, who turned out be joining the military. The young woman recoiled, and asked “How will you feel when you are ordered to drop a bomb? You will be killing innocent people, perhaps a child. How will you feel about killing a child?” He responded, “It wouldn’t matter so long as it was a foreign child.” This is every soldier’s true answer. He could not kill children, a required side effect of modern warfare, if it weren’t. You don’t want that sort of man anywhere near your children.
That's a really big jump from hearsay to "this is every soldier's true answer." Whats makes you so sure about this? there is no proof that any soldier you ask would agree. Sometimes injuring or killing a child is a necessary evil in war time because of certain situations, this has nothing to do with the race or ethnicity of the child, it has to do with the safety of our troops.
21. Military men can become addicted to combat. They crave the danger, the killing and the intense emotional involvement with other men. Peaceful civilian life just bores them and they abandon their families over and over to get their adrenalin fix with their buddies. Sebastian Junger describes the phenomenon in his New York Times best seller War.
This point was followed by a quote from criminal minds, but I thought it was unnecessary to transfer that over. Soldiers enjoy the sense of honor, dignity, and purpose that combat gives them, and I am sure the adrenalin rush is part of it too, for some. however, this should not be classified as an addiction, and it does not work so simply as they "abandon their families over and over to get their adrenalin fix with their buddies." When a soldier leaves for war, he is abandoning his family, he is supporting it.
22. Military life is all about giving and executing orders. Mentally healthy people don’t enjoy bullying or being bullied. By marrying a soldier you are on some level getting involved in a relationship game of dominance/submission, even S&M. If you are not into it yourself, you are setting yourself up for hell. The fantasy may be titilating, but the reality is for most people either terminally boring or terrifying. The military is all about hierarchy, status and blind obedience the very opposite of the teamwork equality needed for a good marriage.
The fact that my husband must take orders has nothing to do with our approach to our marriage. If you brin too much of the work place attitude into any marriage, you are going to have some problems, a marriage is much more than a business relationship, so leave business out of it.
23. What do you think of the wife of a serial killer, someone who murders dozens of innocent women and children? Someone like Karla Homolka. You feel revulsion. You wonder what sort of perverse motivation attracted her to such a killer. You wonder how she could bear to lie in bed next to such a creep. That is how many people will feel about you if you a marry a soldier, aka a hit man, a serial killer paid by the military to butcher and torture innocent people with illegal horror weapons such as napalm, cluster bombs, white phosphorus and land mines. To create shock & awe, they use weapons that kill as more painfully than any civilian serial killer would devise. Even after you come to your senses and divorce the creep, the shame will stick to you for the rest of your life.
Soldiers are not "serial killers" or "creeps." There is absolutely NO shame in being a soldier's wife, the opposite really, it is something to be extremely proud of!
24. How do you feel about Eva von Braun, Mrs. Adolph Hitler? She did not kill anyone, but she supported her husband in some rather unsavoury acts. Were she still alive, people would spit on her, and try to run her down with their cars. Your potential husband will be a war criminal, like Hitler, just not on such a grand scale, but if his deeds were known, (especially torture, white phosphorous and crimes against children), it would bring equal disapprobation on you. Some people will despise you even more than they despise the Nazi wives for your role is supporting and encouraging your serial killer husband. The Nazi wives had the excuse of being swept away by masterful propaganda. You don’t. You took on your support role with eyes wide open. You can expect the hatred toward you to grow, just as it did the Nazi wives, as the deeds of their husbands became more widely known.
I just answered this....
25. Many soliders become addicted to dangerous drugs. They are easy to get and cheap in third world countries. They many not even realise they are taking heavy drugs. For example in the Vietnam era, Viet Cong would secretly salt American soldiers’ beer with opium. Further, soldiers lied to themselves that opium in this form was harmless. They may take drugs to deal with the pressure of combat. Drugs are known under local names, and soldiers kid themselves they must be harmless. Timothy McVeigh became addicted to methamphetamines while on duty in Desert Storm in Iraq. This made him psychotic. Life in a combat zone has few pleasures and many sorrows so soldiers commonly turn to drugs for relief just to cope.
All sorts of people, expected and unexpected, turn to drugs, as a wife work hard to be there for your husband, and support him in all areas of his life, no matter his profession, and hopefully that won't be you. Soldiers are not the only people at risk for drug abuse.
26. Eventually the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will be over, and people from those countries will come as tourists or immigrants to the USA. It is not rocket science to find out who “served“ in Afghanistan and Iraq and even the atrocities they were involved in. Your husband’s victims may decide the only way they can have closure is to kill him, you and your entire family. This is trivially easy to accomplish in peacetime thanks to the NRA. Pray they do it in a way less painful and lingering your husband used.
I have never heard of this happening with any vietnamese or Japanese people, why would it happen now? as long as our soldiers are following lawful orders, this shouldn't be an issue.
27. Since Kofi Annan and Boutros Boutros-Ghali of the U.N. have declared the Iraq invasion and occupation illegal, your husband will technically be an international war criminal. This means he may at any time be arrested if you leave the country to travel in a country that subscribes to the International Court in The Hague. The USA may not forever be powerful enough to protect him from prosecution, even on home soil. It is a hanging offence, though more likely it will e commuted to life imprisonment. Recall that some Nazis faced prosecution even into their 90s. That possibility will hang over you the rest of your life.
This has already been answered... I am not concerned in the slightest that my husband will be charged with any war crimes.
28. Many returning from Iraq become mental basket cases unable to deal with the horrors of war and the guilt at what they have done. They beat up their children and wives and are emotionally distant. Friends and family reject them. They can’t hold down a job. They become homeless. Look at the way American treats the homeless vets of the Vietnam and Iraq wars begging on the streets. Watch some documentaries about the shell shocked vets. One grabbed a clerk by the throat when she did not hand over the change with sufficient respect. Others wake up screaming in the night decades later reliving trauma. Most have marital breakdown. The sound of packing bubbles popping sends a vet to the floor in cover. Another found he could not handle his job clearing up road kill since he could not shake his fear there were bombs hidden underneath the carcasses. You will become, at least to some extent, a nutcase. 28% of Canadian soldiers returning from Afghanistan are classified as having serious mental problems such as suicidal tendencies, post-traumatic stress disorder or depression. The Veteran’s Association estimates 37% of American soldiers returning from Iraq are classified as having serious mental problems. Even the Bush administration admits 15% of soldiers returning from Iraq suffer from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). On 2007-11-11 CBC Newsworld Sunday Night aired a documentary called PTSD: The War at Home about Iraq vets suffering from PTSD who snap and kill their families and neighbours. According to the documentary, to get treatment for PTSD, there in a terrible catch 22, men must sign up for another potential tour of duty in Iraq. They can’t face that so they go untreated. According to CBC Newsworld documentary, aired 2007-11-13 16% of Canadian soldiers returning from Afghanistan have a dangerous drinking problem, e.g. drunk driving.
I answered this in question 9. You don't have to use government programs for treatment for PTSD, so IF (say if because I have NEVER heard of this, and find it very unlikely) going through a government program would force you to volunteer for another tour which you aren't ready for, seek treatment outside of the army, tricare will likely pay for it too.
My husband and his comrades in arms are not Nazi's and do not do things the same way Nazi's did. As long as my husband abides by his personal moral code, and sticks to following lawful orders only (which he does) then there is no point in being afraid of being charged with war crimes, because he is not guilty of them.
5. Unless he reaches high rank, he will never be able to provide for you and your family properly. Many soldiers’ wives live worse than those on welfare.
This is simply not true. while soldiers are not paid enough compared to the sacrifices they make for this country, my husband (E4 or SPC so not very high on the pay scale) makes the sole income for this family, and provides for us very well. I do not go without anything that I need, and we live very comfortably. We wouldn't qualify for welfare, because we make too much money, therefore we must live at least marginally better than those that do (money wise), simple deduction.
6. You will be transferred over and over. You have to pull up roots on a moments notice and move off somewhere else. You have no say in the matter. If you have children, they will become army brats, children who never learn to socialise with other children since they are never in one place long enough to make lasting friends, children who do poorly in school because of the repeated disruptions. You can’t have a carreer of your own because you are forced over and over to quit without notice. All this moving means you can’t put down roots anywhere or make lasting friends. You are nothing more than the wife of your husband, a decorative adjunct without value in your own right. You won’t even have the support of your family since they may be continent’s away. If you have children, your mother and father will hardly ever get to hang out with their grandchildren; that is quite selfish. You may be forced to transfer your young family to some third world country, ripe with parasites, tropical diseases, poisonous insects and snakes. Even if you don’t transfer, your husband will bring back these parasites, tropical diseases and funguses back to infect you and your children.
Moving a lot is the reality of active duty, it is not an issue with National Guard or reserves soldiers. having said that, if you are active duty, you need to decide where your priorities lie, and if moving a lot and putting your career on hold is too much of a sacrifice, you probably shouldn't marry an active duty soldier. If handled correctly, children of soldier's can do just fine in school even with all the moving. If you put them in the schools on post the school will have had quite a bit of experience with these situations, as well as the other kids, and this will help make the transition as smooth as possible. Many children move away from their parents as they grow up, get jobs, and start their own families, is every last one of these people selfish? And finally, the government doesn't send your soldier or your family to a new place without preparing you for the local diseases. Before a soldier deploys he is given many shots and vaccines to ensure his safety when facing new illnesses that his body has not had to fight off before.
7. You will constantly dread that phone call or knock on the door to let you know your husband has been seriously injured or killed. There will be a knock on the door. There will be a man in crew cut standing there who says, “I am sorry for your loss” in a rather wooden, bored way. You will have to start your life all over from scratch. Or it could be your husband himself in a wheelchair, looking many pounds overweight, speaking in a halting, brain-damaged, distracted voice, like someone with Alzheimers, with an ostomy bag strapped to his stomach. Loss of genitals is a common injury. For the rest of his life, you are obligated to be his nurse rather than his wife. All he will be capable of doing is eating, drinking beer and watching TV.
It's true, this life is not without risks, I try not to give voice to my fears, or let them take over at all, but yes, I am terrified every time there is a knock at my door and I haven't heard from Jake in a while. Yes, I pray everyday that Jake is not harmed and that he will one day (hopefully sooner than later) return to me in one piece. However, this could happen to ANYONE! There are automobile accidents and other tragedies all the time, people lose loved ones unexpectedly quite often, unfortunately. Letting fear of this cripple your life, is no way to live, whether you are a soldier's wife or not. Face the fear, have hope that your husband will be safe. If you won't marry a soldier because he might die, then you probably shouldn't marry anyone, because they could die too. Brain injury and becoming wounded are also risks associated with soldiers, when I married Jake I married everything he could become. In sickness and in health. I pray everyday that none of this happens to Jake, but if it does I will step up to the plate and take care of my husband because I love him, and I always will.
8. Your husband can be killed at any time. It is a sword of Damocles over your head for his entire career. He will leave you to care for your family as a single parent.
I just answered this...
9. It is common for soldiers to suffer from PTSD Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He may panic at any loud sound. He may wake up in the night screaming. He may attack you imagining you are an enemy soldier. He may become paranoid. Make sure you learn what PTSD is before you presume love will automatically give you the resources to deal with it.
Please do educate yourself on PTSD, it is a problem, but there is help. PTSD is not a problem with soldiers only, you can get it from any type of traumatic incident, rape, abuse, kidnap and many other events listed here. If you don't ever want the chance of dealing with a spouse with PTSD then you probably shouldn't marry anyone, because unexpected things happen, and anyone could wind up with PTSD from these things.
10. If you discovered your fiancé had murdered his previous two wives, you might have second thoughts, ditto if you had discovered he had murdered a dozen strangers of random ages and genders just because he was paid to. You are considering marrying a man who is under unbreakable contract to the government to kill strangers and who may have already done it. If he later gets a crisis of conscience and refuses to kill one of his assigned targets, he can he shot on the spot. What kind of person signs such a contract? Not even Mafioso enslave themselves to that extent.
A soldier's contract is with the government, and that contract only covers "Lawful Orders" s/he will not follow orders if they are not lawful. A soldier is not paid to "murder a dozen strangers of random ages and gender" a soldier is paid to carry out the protection of this country and it's government. Yes, sometimes that requires that lives must be taken, but it is not random, and it is not done lightly.
11. Soldiers often do some disreputable things under peer pressure that they avoid talking about. This is includes drinking to excess, whoring, drug-taking, raping, bullying and terrorising, hazing, killing and raping children and torturing. The fundamentalist Taliban had eliminated drug trafficking. Under US military control, Afghanistan has risen to #1 heroin producer in the world, selling over a trillion dollars worth a year. This could not happen if US soldiers were not complicit in the drug trade. Recall that a significant number of US soldiers returned from Vietnam addicted to heroin. The remote control nature of much of modern warfare ensures the primary targets will be children and civilians. A soldier often does not even see his victims. When he kills blindly like this e.g. with napalm, cluster bombs, land mines or white phosphorus, in a third world country like Iraq where most of the people are under 15, inevitably he kills more children than adults, and civilians than soldiers. In addition when American soldiers attack they have a massive advantage in power, armaments and technology. This power corrupts them to toy with the civilian populations, to torment them for amusements like a child tormenting insects. The military likes remote control warfare because it keeps their soldiers safe, and it protects the soldiers from emotionally feeling the impact of their butchery. These soldiers look just like anyone else. You would never guess from the soldiers’ clean-cut faces what mischief they have been up to. Recall the pudgy boyish face of Lt. Calley of the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam. The domestic charms of house and home don’t quite do it for them anymore. These sadistic desires were always in the background. The thrill of violence was part of the appeal for them enlisting — to commit cruel acts without any possibility of legal repercussions. When you marry a soldier, you are marrying someone more prone to abusing you and your children too. His standards of what constitutes acceptable behaviour are warped by war experience.
A lot of people do disreputable things when peer pressured to do so. (Did rape really need to be on the list twice?) The reason that the news makes such a huge deal out of the FEW instances of these war crimes is that they are rare, and it is a big deal, because it doesn't happen often, and it SHOUDN'T happen. Don't hate everyone in a profession just because of some people's unfortunate choices. If that's how we lived our lives, no one would ever trust a catholic priest again. As for the drugs in Afghanistan, that was not because soldiers helped, it was because they were not there to police the drug problem, they were/are there to fight a war. Soldiers do not sign up for the armed forces with the intent to kill innocent people, they sign up because they feel it is their calling. Just because someone wants to be a soldier doesn't mean he will abuse you, abusers come from all walks of life, and all professions.
12. A Canadian soldier returned from the relatively gentle Afghanistan war with PTSD Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He repeatedly abused his infant triplet sons, breaking 19 of their bones. He blamed the attacks on his condition. Do you really want someone with PTSD anywhere near your kids or near you? The New England Journal of Medicine reported that American soldiers returning from Iraq are being sent home to their families without treatment. According to MSNBC one in eight soldiers returning from Iraq are suffering from PTSD. Less than half seek treatment. Some soldiers are able to separate their family life from their life as killers. They may appear completely normal and loving, though obviously it is great stress to do so.
I already answered the PTSD problem in number 9... Having PTSD does not automatically mean you will abuse your children, sure some people have, but there are plenty of people that don't have PTSD that abuse their kids too.
13. Your husband can suffer a brain injury or be made a paraplegic. This is 2 to 8 times as likely as death depending whom you ask.Professor Stiglitz of Columbia University said that as of 2006-01, there were more than 7000 servicemen with brain, spinal, amputation and other serious injuries, and about 20% of those injured have suffered major head or spinal injury. This turns him into a giant infant who has to be feed, bathed and diapers changed. You are morally stuck with caring for him 24/7 for the rest of your life whether you continue to love him or not.
Again, I already answered this in number 7, when you marry someone you marry anything they can become. My mother was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis 15 years ago, she has a lot of problems walking and doing every day things. She needs help with a lot of tasks. My father did not know this was going to happen to her when he married her, but he did marry her, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health. He sticks to his vow everyday. He helps her with things that a healthy person would not need help with, he deals with the cognitive issues that my mother has, and he does so without complaint. My parents marriage is an amazing testament to keeping your vows throughout difficult situations. Neither one of my parents is or ever has been a soldier or service man. Proof that these situations can happen to anyone, not just soldiers.
14. When you rip off the pretty bunting, what the military is about is killing, torturing, maiming and terrorising people. In modern warfare, most of the victims are civilians and most of those are children. On some level, your husband was drawn to this killing. There is a cloak of respectability, even nobility that the government casts over it, but when you get down to it, soldiers do the exact same thing as Mafia hit men — kill just because they were ordered too. Though they give lip service to personal responsibility, they are brainwashed to the point disobeying an order becomes unthinkable. They consider deciding who has the right to live a superior’s total responsibility. At Nuremberg, humanity proclaimed that claiming “I was just following orders.” is not sufficient excuse for murder. Your potential husband, agrees with the Nazis. He thinks he is morally off the hook so long as someone else gave him permission to murder. How else could he make up excuses for killing civilians and children? Do you really want this man passing those sorts of dark genes to your offspring? Instead of spawning more little soldiers, you could just as well spawn more little criminals. What sort of woman are you to entrust your children alone with a child murderer?
Warfare is an entirely separate thing from murder. American/Canadian (I add Canada because this writer is lumping them together, and is writing for a Canadian website) soldiers are not Nazi's at all, they live by different laws, and different codes, they follow different orders. The rest of this is too difficult to respond to objectively because it is just mud slinging, and not an actual argument.
15. You also might wonder about a man that selected an occupation that would keep him away from his wife most of the time, especially when he spends that time in the company of young fit men excluding the company of women. If he is a closeted homosexual or bisexual, getting married primarily to satisfy the demands of his parents and church, you are in for a life of misery. He will never be able to truly love you. He will never be true to you. Gay men used to sign on as sailors in the days of sailing ships, but would have a wife, in name only. Even straight men in prisons and in the military without access to women often resort to homosexual encounters.
You also might wonder if a business man, or pilot who travels a lot is gay. It is generally pretty clear if someone is marrying you to "satisfy the demands of his parents and church" or because he truly loves you. Suggesting that soldiers are more likely to be homosexual than anyone else is just absurd.
16. Soldiers are often exposed to teratogens like DU, herbicides (like Vietnam’s Agent Orange laced with dioxin), chemicals, chemical warfare, biological warfare, not to mention exotic parasites and tropical diseases. This may cause cancer later, or even more likely will cause your children and their children to be genetically deformed. Would you ever forgive yourself if your child was born hideously deformed, or even mildly damaged because of the damage these agents did to your husband’s sperm? Over half the soldiers who served in the Gulf War, died of Gulf War Syndrome or were treated for it. They were in Iraq for only weeks. Your husband will be there years. Not only the returning soldiers suffered from Gulf War syndrome, but also their children and wives. Soldiers brought back loathsome diseases, parasites, toxins and radioactivity. The military, in most cases, refused medical aid.
Again, the government prepares its soldiers as best it can for these situations, through anthrax, small pox, and countless other vaccines that are required before deployment.
17. If you love and cherish your husband, you are encouraging and enabling him to do his job of soldiering. Soldiering is a sickening, revolting job, and it takes the memory of a loving wife for many to continue. You then became complicit is his war crimes. You are morally tarred with his misdeeds. Today, Canada and the USA only fight in illegal aggressive wars. They are not defending their countries as did soldiers in past. You are sacrificing yourself for goals as evil as any Nazi wife did, mostly killing civilians and children and teenagers who posed no threat to Canada, the USA or Britain. Have a look at photos of some of the children hideously tortured and killed by the likes of people just like your husband. The people who committed these atrocities appear just as sweet as your guy. They don’t have green saliva. That is his dirty secret. He gets off on killing, and admit it, so do you or your heart would not be attracted to such a man.
A wife must support her husband through all his endeavors. That is as much as I will respond here because the rest is just insults and not actual valid points.
18. If your soldier lover woos you, and holds out the promise of marriage, but never seems to pop the question, consider he may already have a wife back home, and he is just using you for sex.
This is a very specific situation, that could hold true to any relationship, not just soldiers (why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?)
19. Nazi soldiers were popular to start, but as their deeds became more and more widely known, all decent society shunned them. Soldiers who serve in illegal aggressive wars to plunder a small nation’s natural resources, such as the Afghan war or Iraq war, will over time become more and more pariahs, eventually subject to death threats and anonymous attacks, just as Nazis and Nazi collaborators were hounded. They could even face kidnapping and prosecution as international war criminals. The penalty for engaging in aggressive war at Nuremberg was death. Today it would be life imprisonment, an even crueller punishment. Consider how people who participated in the Viet Nam war have over the years become more and more pariahs. The shame of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars will be even greater because of the use of banned weapons and torture, and the craven motive for the war.
The horrible things that happened in WWII with the Nazi's are extremely different than things happening now. again I stress that just because someone is a soldier, doesn't mean that s/he is a war criminal.
20. On 2007-10-15 a young woman told me she had gone to a bar and met a pleasant young man, who turned out be joining the military. The young woman recoiled, and asked “How will you feel when you are ordered to drop a bomb? You will be killing innocent people, perhaps a child. How will you feel about killing a child?” He responded, “It wouldn’t matter so long as it was a foreign child.” This is every soldier’s true answer. He could not kill children, a required side effect of modern warfare, if it weren’t. You don’t want that sort of man anywhere near your children.
That's a really big jump from hearsay to "this is every soldier's true answer." Whats makes you so sure about this? there is no proof that any soldier you ask would agree. Sometimes injuring or killing a child is a necessary evil in war time because of certain situations, this has nothing to do with the race or ethnicity of the child, it has to do with the safety of our troops.
21. Military men can become addicted to combat. They crave the danger, the killing and the intense emotional involvement with other men. Peaceful civilian life just bores them and they abandon their families over and over to get their adrenalin fix with their buddies. Sebastian Junger describes the phenomenon in his New York Times best seller War.
This point was followed by a quote from criminal minds, but I thought it was unnecessary to transfer that over. Soldiers enjoy the sense of honor, dignity, and purpose that combat gives them, and I am sure the adrenalin rush is part of it too, for some. however, this should not be classified as an addiction, and it does not work so simply as they "abandon their families over and over to get their adrenalin fix with their buddies." When a soldier leaves for war, he is abandoning his family, he is supporting it.
22. Military life is all about giving and executing orders. Mentally healthy people don’t enjoy bullying or being bullied. By marrying a soldier you are on some level getting involved in a relationship game of dominance/submission, even S&M. If you are not into it yourself, you are setting yourself up for hell. The fantasy may be titilating, but the reality is for most people either terminally boring or terrifying. The military is all about hierarchy, status and blind obedience the very opposite of the teamwork equality needed for a good marriage.
The fact that my husband must take orders has nothing to do with our approach to our marriage. If you brin too much of the work place attitude into any marriage, you are going to have some problems, a marriage is much more than a business relationship, so leave business out of it.
23. What do you think of the wife of a serial killer, someone who murders dozens of innocent women and children? Someone like Karla Homolka. You feel revulsion. You wonder what sort of perverse motivation attracted her to such a killer. You wonder how she could bear to lie in bed next to such a creep. That is how many people will feel about you if you a marry a soldier, aka a hit man, a serial killer paid by the military to butcher and torture innocent people with illegal horror weapons such as napalm, cluster bombs, white phosphorus and land mines. To create shock & awe, they use weapons that kill as more painfully than any civilian serial killer would devise. Even after you come to your senses and divorce the creep, the shame will stick to you for the rest of your life.
Soldiers are not "serial killers" or "creeps." There is absolutely NO shame in being a soldier's wife, the opposite really, it is something to be extremely proud of!
24. How do you feel about Eva von Braun, Mrs. Adolph Hitler? She did not kill anyone, but she supported her husband in some rather unsavoury acts. Were she still alive, people would spit on her, and try to run her down with their cars. Your potential husband will be a war criminal, like Hitler, just not on such a grand scale, but if his deeds were known, (especially torture, white phosphorous and crimes against children), it would bring equal disapprobation on you. Some people will despise you even more than they despise the Nazi wives for your role is supporting and encouraging your serial killer husband. The Nazi wives had the excuse of being swept away by masterful propaganda. You don’t. You took on your support role with eyes wide open. You can expect the hatred toward you to grow, just as it did the Nazi wives, as the deeds of their husbands became more widely known.
I just answered this....
25. Many soliders become addicted to dangerous drugs. They are easy to get and cheap in third world countries. They many not even realise they are taking heavy drugs. For example in the Vietnam era, Viet Cong would secretly salt American soldiers’ beer with opium. Further, soldiers lied to themselves that opium in this form was harmless. They may take drugs to deal with the pressure of combat. Drugs are known under local names, and soldiers kid themselves they must be harmless. Timothy McVeigh became addicted to methamphetamines while on duty in Desert Storm in Iraq. This made him psychotic. Life in a combat zone has few pleasures and many sorrows so soldiers commonly turn to drugs for relief just to cope.
All sorts of people, expected and unexpected, turn to drugs, as a wife work hard to be there for your husband, and support him in all areas of his life, no matter his profession, and hopefully that won't be you. Soldiers are not the only people at risk for drug abuse.
26. Eventually the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will be over, and people from those countries will come as tourists or immigrants to the USA. It is not rocket science to find out who “served“ in Afghanistan and Iraq and even the atrocities they were involved in. Your husband’s victims may decide the only way they can have closure is to kill him, you and your entire family. This is trivially easy to accomplish in peacetime thanks to the NRA. Pray they do it in a way less painful and lingering your husband used.
I have never heard of this happening with any vietnamese or Japanese people, why would it happen now? as long as our soldiers are following lawful orders, this shouldn't be an issue.
27. Since Kofi Annan and Boutros Boutros-Ghali of the U.N. have declared the Iraq invasion and occupation illegal, your husband will technically be an international war criminal. This means he may at any time be arrested if you leave the country to travel in a country that subscribes to the International Court in The Hague. The USA may not forever be powerful enough to protect him from prosecution, even on home soil. It is a hanging offence, though more likely it will e commuted to life imprisonment. Recall that some Nazis faced prosecution even into their 90s. That possibility will hang over you the rest of your life.
This has already been answered... I am not concerned in the slightest that my husband will be charged with any war crimes.
28. Many returning from Iraq become mental basket cases unable to deal with the horrors of war and the guilt at what they have done. They beat up their children and wives and are emotionally distant. Friends and family reject them. They can’t hold down a job. They become homeless. Look at the way American treats the homeless vets of the Vietnam and Iraq wars begging on the streets. Watch some documentaries about the shell shocked vets. One grabbed a clerk by the throat when she did not hand over the change with sufficient respect. Others wake up screaming in the night decades later reliving trauma. Most have marital breakdown. The sound of packing bubbles popping sends a vet to the floor in cover. Another found he could not handle his job clearing up road kill since he could not shake his fear there were bombs hidden underneath the carcasses. You will become, at least to some extent, a nutcase. 28% of Canadian soldiers returning from Afghanistan are classified as having serious mental problems such as suicidal tendencies, post-traumatic stress disorder or depression. The Veteran’s Association estimates 37% of American soldiers returning from Iraq are classified as having serious mental problems. Even the Bush administration admits 15% of soldiers returning from Iraq suffer from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). On 2007-11-11 CBC Newsworld Sunday Night aired a documentary called PTSD: The War at Home about Iraq vets suffering from PTSD who snap and kill their families and neighbours. According to the documentary, to get treatment for PTSD, there in a terrible catch 22, men must sign up for another potential tour of duty in Iraq. They can’t face that so they go untreated. According to CBC Newsworld documentary, aired 2007-11-13 16% of Canadian soldiers returning from Afghanistan have a dangerous drinking problem, e.g. drunk driving.
I answered this in question 9. You don't have to use government programs for treatment for PTSD, so IF (say if because I have NEVER heard of this, and find it very unlikely) going through a government program would force you to volunteer for another tour which you aren't ready for, seek treatment outside of the army, tricare will likely pay for it too.
29. Watch a video of the tail end of the trial of Jeff Dahmer. He was a serial killer who killed a number of American teenagers. The mothers of the victims screamed and hurled obscenities at him. The families of your husband’s victims will feel this way about him and you also for egging him on, though they may never get the opportunity to confront you both. Strangers unrelated to the victims will also hate you and hold you in contempt for what you have done. There is no way you will ever convince any of these people to forgive you. You will be cursed in the strongest imaginable ways. People will pray daily for generations for you to be tortured in hell. Murdering, especially kids, is simply not acceptable. You are a monster if you try to claim otherwise.
It is very common for such women to be in deep denial. They claim their partners don’t kill people, don’t kill civilians or don’t kill children. When confronted with the statistics, they either deny the statistics or say only other soldiers kill, not their man. They are also in complete denial about their role in supporting their husband in his career killing people. They refuse to notice they buy their groceries with money earned killing people. They are living off the avails of murder. They are totaly convinced their husband is a hero, and are baffled why anyone would have anything remotely negative to say about them. They just can’t hear it when you explain why the husband is a war criminal, a murderer or a paid thug. It is not that they disagree, they just can’t hear. They keep asking over and over “Why are you so angry with me?” That is the strength of their denial conditioning.
Clearly I'm just in denial about the fact that my husband is a serial killer. (sorry guys sarcasm's all I got on this one, I've already entertained it by answering it too many times).
30. There are many additional reasons not to marry a soldier, which are reasons why your husband should not enlist. Many of those penalties, you will feel too.
if you go and look at the Don't Enlist Article, you will see that these are all just the same repeated arguments, I will spare you from refuting them all again.
31. Perhaps your soldier boy has snowed you that he is a brave fighter for freedom, nobly protecting his country from the bad guys. This was true in WW II, but it certainly is not true today. First, neither Iraq nor Afghanistan attacked the USA, Britain or Canada. The Afghans and Iraqis have not killed a single civilian (unless you count mercenaries in Iraq) in a war that has waged longer than WW II. Bush claims that Saudis, not Iraqis or Afghans were behind 9/11. The USA attacked unprovoked. Even the WMDs turned out to be a lie. Aggressive war is illegal under international law. Under the Nuremberg principles, to aid or abet such a war is a capital offence.
The war in Iraq was not about Saddam. Saddam was captured on 2003-12-13. The war did not pause for even a second. It could not have been primarily about Saddam. Further Saddam offered to surrender peacefully just before the invasion. Bush did not want Saddam. He wanted Iraq’s oil. Bush promised liberation, but instead bombed the residential sections of Baghdad in a Nazi-like show of Shock & Awe brutality on the opening day of the war. Decadent American cheered the spectacle live on CNN from their couches, much like Romans of old viewing a cruelty extranvaganza in the Coluseum.
Bush has no interest in even worse dictators that Saddam such as Robert Mugabe and the generals who run Sudan. Those dictators don’t have the #2 oil reserves on the planet. Further, the USA installed a puppet dictator, an ex-Unocal man, Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan whose Ministry of Vice enforces the same repressive shari’ia Islamic religious law as the Taliban. Clearly the Afghanistan war is not about freedom either.
The notion the USA would spend $2 trillion for the freedom of Muslims is absurd, especially when Americans have a strong racist hatred of Muslims. On a per capita basis, USA is the stingiest of all the developed nations when it comes to foreign aid. Americans are not spending these stupendous sums on the wars out of the goodness of their hearts. It would be completely out of character. They are spending them to get control of trillions of dollars worth of oil. Your soldier boy is well aware of this, but he still likes to pretend he is seeking revenge for 9/11, or protecting the fatherland. He is just looking for an excuse to rape, maim, torture and kill. He is a sadistic serial killer. That is what truly motivates him. Listen in when he is drunk talking to his buddies about the real reasons he likes being a soldier. No matter how smooth-talking, handsome, fit and charming he is, you don’t want to get involved with a psychopath.
I am going to stay out of the political reasons for this war, that is not necessary in the defense of my husband's career choice.
32. Some soldiers are really really stupid. They are Nazis at heart, who just go along with killing without making any effort at all to see if it is justified. They honestly think that Iraq and Afghanistan attacked the USA on 9/11 (even Bush claimed it was executed by Saudis and funded by Pakistan, setting aside all evidence for inside collusion) and they are killing peasants and children who have no weapons in order to protect their loved ones back home in the USA. These are the sort of people who appear on Jay Leno’s Jay Walking segment who are so out of touch with world events they don’t even know the name of their president. They don’t make any effort to see if the murders they are about to commit are justified because they fantasise they will enjoy killing. They don’t want the facts to interfere with their fun. Someone that stupid, that cruel and that selfish will never make an adequate bread winner.
This is just offensive and not factual in any manner, and therefore can't even be responded to like an argument.
33. The problem with marrying a soldier is that his is already married to the military. You will always play second fiddle. He will always do what they want, not what you want. The military will decide what country you live in, whom you socialise with, when your husband will leave you and for how long. They will decide whom your husband will kill next, and what risks he will take. They will even decide what sort of haircut he has and how he wears his facial hair. They will decide where your kids go to school. They will decide your income. You are marrying a Momma’s boy who likes being told what to do, and by someone who is not you.
This is true, his promise to the country comes before his promise to you, and speaking out of experience, sometimes that sucks! But it is always something to be proud of. Before marrying anyone, you should know where you are in their life, and if being second to the army is not something you are willing to do, then by all means don't marry a soldier. The fact that you MUST come second doesn't mean he wants you to, or that he loves you any less than a husband that can put his wife first in ALL things. If you communicate well, and talk about your needs with each other, this will not be a big part of your marriage, or a big deal at all.
34. However, if you are foreign born, and just want to get a meal ticket to the US-economy gravy train, marrying a soldier might make sense. He will be away most of the time, so you won’t have to have much sex with him. There is a good chance he will get his head blown off by an IED or turned into a mental vegetable. You can then marry someone else, without all his drawbacks, while you are still young.
This is just sarcasm, not an even remotely legitimate argument, and is offensive in that it makes light of the fact that my husband and his comrades in arms put their lives on the line every day for this country.
35. Since time immemorial, man have escaped their duty to look after their children by running away to war.
I already covered this in number 2.
36. Some of these points you will see clearly apply to the guy you are thinking of marrying. Some of these points clearly do not apply. Some disadvantages you may be unwilling to accept, but could well prove to apply later. All I ask is that you think deeply before leaping into a marriage that could ruin your life. Ask other women who have married men similar to the one you are planning to marry about the advantages and disadvantages
I too agree that you should deeply consider any marriage, whether with a soldier or not. When you are considering marriage you need to think seriously about what life will be like with this person and what sort of things you want out of life. Marriage is not to be taken lightly.
37. Women who are sexually attracted to men who kill children should not be permitted near children either, not even their own.
this is just plain offensive...
This was not actually 37 points but more like 5-10 points repeated and reworded, and most of these points are not even reasonable arguments for not marrying a soldier, but could be taken as reasons for not marrying anyone. The rest of the arguments are just personal or political attacks on soldiers and their wives, and should be taken with a grain of salt. When marrying someone you need to look at the person beyond the guise of their profession. I did not marry a soldier, I married Jacob Grimm who happens to be a soldier. It is his heart and his passions that I adore. Yes I am proud of him for being a soldier, but it is not the only reason I married him, and I will continue to love him long into retirement. This article was offensive, short sided, and unnecessary. I hope that it does not legitimately effect people's opinions on soldiers and their spouses.
The article (black words) was obviously written be a very "special" person. A very well written response. I can't even believe some people are truly "special" enough to write something like that!!! GAH!! I would've had a very hard time being as eloquent as you in response. WELL DONE/SAID. *pats you on the back*
ReplyDeleteClearly, you did marry him for his sexiness, though. We all know that. !!! :D
LOve your response Claire<3 very well written.And dont we all marry soldiers for their sexiness and money? oh and insurance bc it is totally like the best(eye roll)....I hope this person never marries at all.
ReplyDeleteI can't even read this all in one sitting because of how upsetting the original article is. If only those who read it would realize how unfounded and flat out wrong many of her statements are, I wouldn't be concerned. But because you can so easily publish ANYTHING on the internet, it has weight. So thanks for responding to this and getting some truth out there. I was wondering, did she cite any references to these "facts" and statements? It's so annoying for someone to state something as fact when it's their personal opinion.
ReplyDeleteOh and your response was heartfelt but not overly emotional. Very commendable. I, however, am just going to be emotional....ahhhhhhhh!
Thanks for the compliments guys. I tried really hard to stay as removed as possible and not get overly emotional, I'm glad it showed!!!
ReplyDelete