Adm. McRaven Urges Graduates to Find Courage to Change the World

> As for my decision, it was definitely not made possible because other people did not make that same decision, you could easily argue by that exact same rhetorical trick that if everybody would act like me that war would be impossible.

"If wishes and buts were candy and nuts, every day would be Christmas"

Trust me, I wish everyone could just spontaneously choose to be non-violent and permanently and irrevocably forbid themselves from ever engaging in warfare. That would be a much nicer world.

But your decision to do that does nothing for the rest of us.

In fact, you elucidate precisely the reason why we cannot rely on such a large-scale decision: By your logic, you would not want to join to be used as tool by evil people ordering you to do evil things.

So your worldview pre-supposes that there do exist evil people who would abuse military force for aggressive aims, does it not? But if even the democracies of the West are susceptible to this aggressive urge, why should the other governments of the world be immune to it? And if any substantial part of the population of the rest of the world is not immune to this aggressive urge, we are not ready to disband defensive militaries.

So in fact I'd argue the reverse: Until you feel completely comfortable joining any military in the world knowing that you would not be abused, there will remain the need for people to take up arms.

It certainly doesn't have to be everybody (as they joke about elsewhere, you don't have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun your neighbor). But someone has to do it, for exactly the reason you suggest.

> He could (if he were still alive) tell you a thing or two about how much damage one can inflict on an army without being in a uniform.

Yes, we've recently seen how well an American out of uniform could hurt the military... you're only preaching to the choir here. But some of us prefer to keep the invaders away outright instead of being forced to rely on insurgency campaigns after the fact.

> That trust and momentum could have been used for good, instead it was abused and it destroyed the image of the US for a long time and for a large number of people. Epic fail, to use a popular term.

No doubt, but what does that have to do with this? I'm well aware that America is apparently the sole font of all that is wrong with the world (I'll give it a week before the USA is blamed for UKIP and the FN victories), but I'm not talking about the American military here.

> They do get to choose whether to sign up to a volunteer military that's engaged in an existing war.

There's been 2 very short "wars" and then 2 very long counter-insurgency campaigns.

E.g. with Iraq: Even if you just flat-out assume that the U.S. invasion was completely unjustified, a soldier signing up to join could still have a positive role to play in helping the new government, and the Iraqi people, establish the basic trappings of security needed for any modern society to function. After all, the reason that the UN (and all its associated aid agencies) pulled out in 2003 was because of the security failure that led to their special rapporteur being murdered in a bombing.

I mean, we've experimentally verified after the U.S. left that the mere military presence alone wasn't what was causing bombing attacks, as Iraq still has to fight through those even today.

Would it have been better not to be going to Iraq in the first place? Absolutely, but the soldiers joining in 2004 didn't get to decide on the 2003 invasion, only on whether they can help on America's behalf to help the Iraqis with the damage inflicted.