Jobs used as bargaining chip

[DanaC]

No. I just think that if you have a standing army, part of the social contract made with those soldiers is that they will be looked after later when they return to civilian life. It was one of the very earliest forms of citizenship based state responsibility and it remains important.

Soldiers do not choose the wars they fight or the enemies they face. We, the civilian world make that decision for them. Whether they are killing innocent civilians or armed enemies raises moral questions for us, in the civilian and political spheres to deal with. Soldiers just go where they are sent.

Unless you wish to dismantle the army entirely, that social contract should stand, regardless of the moral underpinnings of any individual war.

It's got fuck all to do with wanting to have anything both ways. If anything the view that soldiers should be somehow debarred from assistance because they killed innocets or because they fought an unjust war is wanting to have things both ways. Either we have armies of soldiers trained and conditioned to follow orders in the field of battle or we dont. Can;t have them and then expect them to have individual responsibility for the nature of the wars we send them to fight.