given that they lost in Afghanistan, after 2 decades, to one of the military of one of the poorest countries in the world. proves that the US military is nothing but a scam to funnel tax payer money to the pockets of MIL shareholders.

Hell, even our AIT D&C was crispy AF. Every fiber of our being was purely focused on immaculate execution. I do miss that. The intensity of ~~not~~ that natural motivation and not the manufactured stuff that gets you through daily morning formation.

###"SOUND OFF"

😈👏 ooooh, Jodie you done did it now. I hope you like getting your tits blown off because you bout to get your tits blown off.

It is genuinely, such a hilariously piss-poor excuse.

My wife is in the Canadian Forces. She is ridiculously good at her job, and everyone in the CAF is trained to a ridiculously high standard. By the time she exited occupational training she was already qualified on more weapon systems than most US soldiers ever touch in their entire careers. Her unit shoots sub-MOA groupings for fun. They meet and often exceed the physical standards for Ranger school. And this is just reg-force infantry.

And despite all that, she is also so completely capable of keeping a tight march that she actually has to stop herself from automatically falling in perfect step next to me when we're walking down the street. And no, the excuse of "Oh, you can't march to Fortunate Son" doesn't count for shit. My wife can mark perfect time with no music at all. Christ, one time in training her MCpl made her unit all put on their gas masks and mark time while singing Oh Canada, and they didn't get to stop until it was perfect. And no, they did not have a fucking drum or backing music. She's not on a drill team; Canada doesn't have drill teams. This is just something they do because it's part of the basic standard of being a soldier.

The key difference is you can actually march to that music. Fortunate son is slightly too fast for a proper pace which is why the front of the one group was wavy and people were out of step. Also if anyone was actually calling cadence, the people on the left side probably wouldn't have been able to hear it over the music.

I mean the honest truth is the military hates Trump just like the rest of us

It's not hard to march

Unironically yes. You don't get to be the center of the universe without showing up on the periphery to kick someone else's nuts in from time to time.

This clip -- of Tom Friedman saying the attack on Iraq was morally justified because we had to take out "our big stick" and tell Iraqis: "suck on this" -- is one of the most deranged and psychosexually twisted war justifications ever.

no sometimes they start wars to get rich people richer

but for reals its not the soldiers starting wars its the higher ups and the people who make weapons who start wars

You can. And they do.

https://youtu.be/aeFltEjzR2Y?t=1212

Broadly speaking, yeah. We send every member of the US Army through "Basic Training" even though 95% of them will never actually fire a gun or climb over a fence or jog ten miles in the rain for the rest of their careers.

Parade March is a thing we don't bother to drill into units (except specifically tasked "Parade Units" that exist to do little circus acts for the high command's amusement). But we could do it instead of the GI Joe training for the private class janitorial staff if we felt like it.

The bigger picture is that the US Military is a fountain of economic waste, social abuse, and pointless bloodshed in the name of machismo. Trump's parade is just the cherry on a seven layer cake of squandered national wealth.

But it's the thing liberals will fixate on, because we can't ever actually say "The Pentagon sucks ass and makes the world an objectively worse place to live in". It always has to be about this one Great Man Of History doing things wrong in a way his hypothetical liberal alternative would not.

No, you can NOT learn to march like they do in North Korea or China and have any time left in your day to do an actual job or even train to fight. That crap takes time.

This is a false dichotomy, but also, maybe if all the others have been doing it for millennia there is a reason. For instance, having large groups that walk fast while not taking too much space, but also many other things : Marching into battle, study

I came here for this but found people already pointing it out.

DeFeNdInG as seen by everyone else: going to places 5k km away and murdering every living thing there.

VeTeRaNs as seen by everyone else: steroid micro-penis assholes murdering women & children

Not saying you're wrong in general but we didn't invade Kuwait.

Yeah. That's kind of America's whole thing. Making money. Exploiting everything. Americans are the Ferengi.

Defending America = defending capitalism = doing whatever they can to make American, capitalist companies more profitable.

I don't hate capitalism. Don't get me wrong, but I generally don't like capitalists.