It is too late to ban guns in America. If this was attempted now, only the good guys would surrender their fire arms. Instead, what is required is more stringent mental health and background checks.

Whether or not the army has had its uses (even a broken clock is right twice a day) is irrelevant to the topic which concerns the individual soldiers morality.

The military exists in the first place for many reasons. On a deeper level I believe it exists as an external symbol of mans fear of his own death. We hate the thought of simply dying and long to be known for something courageous that will live on forever. So the military exists in order to give leaders a shot at immortality, and the soldier joins partly from the misguided notion of wanting to appear brave. From this base, we can see the military also exists as a way to both gain and preserve power and to show dominance over others.

Whether "some" soldiers have good motives does not detract from my belief that "most" soldiers are evil cunts or poor stupid saps. After all, even Nazis loved their pets. It is interesting that you have to go back to the world wars to find an even remotely justifiable war. It is as if you acknowledge the unnecessary horror of all the wars since.

"Us" is not always the same. At the moment "us" seems to incorporate Saudi Arabia and "them" seems focused around Iran. Trump is itching to get troops to support one of the worst human rights abusers in the world. The military are already on their way like the good little ignorant sheep dogs that they are.

A soldier has to lack intelligence to want to fight and kill people he personally has no grudge against because a rich man told him to. He then has to be convinced that he is doing it for "muh freedoms" even though the typical theatre of war in some middle eastern desert was never a threat to "muh freedoms". His only role is to follow orders which was also the defence at Nuremberg. Soldiers in all wars are known to commit gross atrocities on civilians and it is naive to think our soldiers are not like that because we are the "good guys".

Therefore in summary, a soldier is at the very least stupid and is supported by people of similar intelligence who support an us vs them world view (even though "us vs them" changes constantly). I believe many soldiers are sadistic too but thats just anecdotal. To say that soldiers are "societies finest" is a joke.

I do not think a rational person can maintain a belief in God. There is no evidence of a God other than individual anecdotal experiences and the nature of the world indicates that if God did exist, he is either evil or powerless.