Matt Cavanaugh: The Military’s Purpose is Not to Kill People and Break Things
If you read Matt Cavanaugh’s article at War on The Rocks, I guarantee you that it will be the dumbest thing that you read today. Apparently, he’s upset that former Governor Mike Huckabee said during the debate a few weeks ago that the military’s mission is to kill people and break things. Mister Cavanaugh takes exception to that statement;
The military’s purpose is not to kill people and break things. This idea is factually, historically, professionally, and philosophically wrong — and must itself be remorselessly killed and violently broken. This 11-word platitude has no place in modern society.
[…]
If my purpose is to kill people and break things, how do I explain this to my wife and two young daughters?
He continues to illustrate his point with many of the shit-jobs that the military has had to perform for the world like building the Panama Canal and the Space Race. I remember one of the shit-jobs the military had feeding the Somalians that turned even shittier because the forces of evil were more willing to kill people and break things than the leaders of the US military. In order to do all of those things that Matt wants to do that make him and his daughters feel good about his job, it needs to happen in a safe and secure environment. Because there are forces of evil in the world, the US military has to be prepared to kill people and break things.
When a foreign leader wakes up in the morning and finds a Fleet Marine Force on his shores, I’m sure he’s not expecting them to hand out Halloween candy to his subjects. When a flight of aircraft packed with paratroopers of the 82d Airborne Division appear on his horizon, he knows that he f***ed up beyond reason. It’s not by chance that the first course of study in the Army for the enlisted soldiers is called Basic Combat Training.
Critics will counter with Clausewitz, dismissing my argument as the naïve, “kind-hearted” words of someone that misguidedly believes there is “some ingenious way to disarm or defeat an enemy without too much bloodshed.” But Clausewitz was writing in an era of limited options, when a bloodsucking leech was often the medical profession’s first and only recourse. Today is different.
Unfortunately, it’s clowns like Cavanaugh who don’t want to accept the realities of the world. That nonacceptance of realities is what has given us the rise of ISIS, al Qaeda, the Taliban, the mullahs of Tehran. He’s part of the reason that a day after rejecting the possibility of release of Americans held by Iran, they demanded the release of Iranian prisoners in the West. See, the western world may have changed, but the enemies of freedom haven’t changed. They behead children and burn women alive because there is nothing that they fear from the West – and their thinking predates Clausewitz. Because the Cavanaughs of the world don’t understand the basic nature of war.
It’s the thinking that Cavanaugh follows that dragged out the Civil War until Grant and Sherman followed the advice of Clausewitz and fought total war, instead of the touchy-feely bullshit that McClellan espoused. But, I guess it’s because Grant had limited options. He should have started a meals-on-wheels program to defeat Lee’s armies. Or built schools and mosques for southerners. Maybe raise the minimum wage.
Then Cavanaugh goes completely off the rails with some diatribe aimed at Hollywood, Captain America and steroids. I lost him there. It’s Hollywood that perpetuates Cavanaugh’s view of the world, that solutions can be arrived at quickly and peacefully and that there’s something wrong with killing bad people and breaking their things.
The Germans were still fighting after Hitler had committed suicide and the Allies had dropped everything in the country to ground level rubble. The Japanese were preparing to defend their own country until the US made it less attractive by radiating a couple of large cities and their inhabitants. In 1991, Hussein still clung to his military power and used against his own people even though most of his Army lay in smoking ruins on the battlefields in Kuwait and Iraq. Then twelve years later sent them back out on the field of battle even though it had already been proven that he couldn’t win. the US military kills people and breaks things better than any other – our biggest enemies are the politicians who don’t have the heart to fight wars the way they should be fought because the Cavanaughs of the world can’t explain their jobs to their wives and children.
If you need a way to explain it to your wife and daughter – tell them that you kill people and break things because someone has to do it and most Americans are too cowardly to even admit that they know about it. That you kill people and break things so that people don’t come here and do it to us first – because they certainly want to come here and kill us and break our things. Or, you could just go get a nice job on Wall Street in a suit, because that kind of thinking that you’re doing now, that isn’t really thinking, especially coming from a professional military officer. It’s just a mindless stringing together of words that make no sense and have nothing to do with the realities of the world in which we live.
Thanks to Chief Tango for the link.
Category: Dumbass Bullshit
I’m sure there will be a lot of Infantrymen that will be surprised to learn that their job isn’t to kill people and break things.
A crap load of 19E/19K as well!!
Whodathunket a Tankers job was anything BUT breaking shit and killing things.
Yeah, 12 Series (Combat Engineer) will call BULLSHIT on that as well. I always thought the simplified Combat Engineer’s creed when the red balloon goes up is “If it moves, shoot it. If it doesn’t move, get some C4 and BLOW IT THE FUCK UP!”
I am a gay former medic and even I know better than this cuck Cavanaugh.
There havent been 19E since the Sheridan was removed from service in the early 90s. But plenty of 19D would agree as well
If we’re really gonna pick knits and call me old, IIRC the M551 Sheridan was also handled under the 19D MOS, 19E designation was for the M48/M60 tanks… and yes, I served as a 19E on both of them.. did I mention I was old?
Any 0351/0352 can tell all y’all tankers that your jobs are to provide us with nice expensive targets.
Well, targets if yer with the other team, that is.
What the hell is combat good for? Not promotion points:
http://www.armytimes.com/story/military/careers/army/enlisted/2015/08/17/changes-ncos-new-requirements-and-promotion-points/31410931/
Seems like the brass agrees with him.
I think the Navy has been more demanding of that kind of thing for a while now. You can’t get ahead now just based on time in rate or where you’ve been stationed. You have to have the reported skills tested and confirmed, and in your file. But that’s probably because it’s ocean-going warfare, not land warfare.
But what do I know?
It definitely shouldn’t be everything, but it absolutely should be something. As late as last February, AR 600-8-19 said:
“To recognize the invaluable experiences gained while serving on combat deployments, Soldiers will receive 2 promotion points for each credible month (30 consecutive days or 60 non-consecutive days during a 12 month period) of combat deployment.”
…as I said in an email to Jonn, I guess “invaluable” = “no value”.
Someone of Irish and/or Scottish heritage help us out here. Isn’t “Cavanaugh” Gaelic for “dumb ass”?
If so, his last name is quite descriptive and apropos.
In the Irish context, it refers to foppish aristocratic men who wrote bawdy poetry to their own mothers. In Scots Gaelic it’s a pejorative for a man who has unnatural relations with his neighbor’s livestock.
So either way, asswipe.
Dadburnit, Claymore, you could post a spew warning, you know!
I had a mouthful of tea. Fortunately, I have long since learned to swallow before I read what some of you post.
So, you didn’t need the spew alert after all.
Ir is simply good manners to post a spew alert.
I could have been Mrs. Calabash instead of me, you know.
Isn’t that a majority of highlanders?
I was certain his name meant “Flaming Metrosexual”!
+100 points to House Claymore.
Claymore, the most marvelous insult I’ve seen in a long time. Like what my old C.O called certain other officers. Gilded popinjays.
Know any basic gaelic primers?
Spew alert next time! You owe me a monitor!
Concise analysis od Mr. Cavanaugh’s article. It is and has always been the rule, that to defeat force/aggression it must be met with equal or greater force. We tell our children sugar coated lies when they are very young because we want to insulate them (at least for a time) to the harsh realities of the world. We, as adults and protectors, can never forget that it can be such and have an obligation on a personal and collective level to deal with it when conditions call for it. Sometimes that stinks but that it the reality of it.
I’m not a veteran, but I can relate. I frequently watch “Harry the Bunny” with my daughter, and I desperately wish that the happy lessons of that favorite show of hers were all she needed to know about the world. But I sleep with a 1911 and two spare mags because I know otherwise.
I must confess that I’m not familiar with “Harry the Bunny” but I would guess that it correlates to the shows I watched with my three. I, myself, am not a vet either but in my 47 years I have learned how dark a place the world can be. I have many family and friends that served but my life went down a different path and I’m OK with that. I do admire the selfless service those who did provided and I will stand with them (proudly) when they need my support. But I would never dishonor them by claiming to be something I am not.
We are in the “Harry the Bunny” stage here at Casa Instinct and I’m with you, I have a 1911 and my wife has a 9mm.
I hope the world is a bright sunny place for my kids, but I know that there’s some very bad things out there. Just a look at some of the crime sites that show where convicted offenders are shows five within a 1 mile radius – three of them are pedophiles.
Go hug a tree, shitbag.
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
George Orwell
“Now there’s another thing I want you to remember. I don’t want to get any messages saying that “we are holding our position.” We’re not holding anything. Let the Hun do that. We are advancing constantly and we’re not interested in holding onto anything except the enemy. We’re going to hold onto him by the nose and we’re going to kick him in the ass. We’re going to kick the hell out of him all the time and we’re going to go through him like crap through a goose!”
George C. Scott as General Patton
Remember it is not your job to die for you country. It’s your job to make some other bastard die for his.
Paraphrased also from above source.
God Almighty! That opening scene is fucking AWESOME!
WWII: Kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out. Try not to hit civilians, but if they’re in the way (as in the strategic bombing campaign), too fuckin’ bad.
Result: Nasty war, but near-total victory. Germany and Japan are now are allies.
Vietnam: Hearts and minds. Leaders more concerned about public opinion than winning.
Result: Enough of you TAH folks saw it firsthand that I don’t need to spell it out…
And currently we fight all way to world peace. Or just declare the war over and get a book deal.
Declare the war over because someone wanted to fulfill a campaign promise. Then deny that’s exactly what he said and did, right Buh-rock?
I read his article. I kinda understand what he is trying to say…but at the end of the day killing people and breaking things is exactly what we do. Sure we do more that but why do we exist? To kill people and break things. Everything else is auxiliary to our primary mission.
And I can’t say as I ever had any problem explaining that to my kids. They got it.
What does he tell his wife and kids?
That he feels his country is not worth fighting for, he’s a pussy, and not a “Soldier” but a “strategist”.
That would probably sum it up…
Concise and to the point. Agreed, hope he manages to was some of the sand out of his manginia one day and realize the world is not rainbows and unicorns.
If my purpose is to kill people and break things, how do I explain this to my wife and two young daughters?
68W58 getting up from breakfast table, “Well, I’m off to kill people and break things.”
Wife, “OK Honey, have a good day.”
I usually say something like “Off to fight ISIS one PowerPoint slide at a time. Keeping Merica safe with Excel.”
He tells his wife and kids that if there was some bad man trying to hurt them he wouldn’t do anything because he is afraid of being called a bad name.
I don’t know what planet Cavanaugh is inhabiting, but apparently he doesn’t understand that even the Smurfs had their enemies and had to deal with them. Kids understand that.
You cannot shield your kids from reality, no matter how much you may want to. There are good guys and bad guys and unless you are willing to stop the bad guys, they will take your stuff and kill you if they feel like it.
Kids get that. If they didn’t understand that basic principle, they wouldn’t hide in a closet and call 911 during a break-in, would they now? Kids have a very realistic view of the world that adults tend to lose in the process of wanting to be thought of as ‘nice’ and ‘easy to get along with’ and – oh, yes, that awful word: GULLIBLE.
If that were not the case, why would you teach your kids about stranger danger and where to look before they cross the street?
Cavanaugh needs to find himself a new job, some place where he can wrap himself in cotton padding and not have to go outside unless it’s a perfectly calm, sunny day. And no bugs. Bugs will bite you and give you diseases. And no birds, because birds might give you bird flu. And don’t touch anything in the grocery store unless you wipe it with those alcohol wipes first, because WHOOPING COUGH!
I think Mr. Cavanaugh needs to get some professional help with his paranoia.
I recall a conversation in a novel which went something like: someone objected to telling stories about monsters to children. what was the point? “To show them monsters can be killed.”
Glad you mentioned that. In the movie ‘Aliens’, Newt tells Ripley that her parents said there were no monsters.
‘Why do people say that to kids?’ she asks.
‘Because most of the time, it’s true,’ said Ripley.
And yet… they are everywhere. Adults do not wish to see them or acknowledge their existence.
“This might seem like silly semantics to some, but to professionals carrying either cross or carbine, words matter.” So sayeth Cavendish/Clavicle/Whatever. Yes, it is silly semantics that he’s having much stupid with. (Yes, I am using stupid as a noun. I think it fits here.) Neither Huckabee nor anyone else ever said that the military’s role to kill people and break things is the ultimate goal of warring. And the fact that there are many military jobs that merely support killing people and breaking things is irrelevant to Moerk’s daddy. All military personnel, whatever their job, are taught to kill people and break things in BCT. Some go on and learn the finer points of those crafts and others do other things in support of them. This guy Calavicle/Calabash/Whatever evidently saw a hole that was created by Bateman’s retirement and decided to fill it with his head. He can stand a lesson in distinguishing between objectives and goals, not to mention logic. I could bury his little writing but I like a challenge and that shitty article of his just isn’t worth any more of my time.
Calabash?
It’s at 32 seconds. Enjoy!
Oh, I’ve always known about Mrs. Calabash. I sometimes say that myself. I wondered where you got it, or if I was the only person who remembered Durante.
I had no doubt whatsoever. “Good night, Mrs. Calabash–wherever you are.” One of the greatest lines ever uttered.
I’ve always said there are two jobs in the military regardless of component or branch.
1. Kill people and break things
2. Help kill people and break things
Figure out where you fit in the picture and do the best at what you do.
Sadly some of the incumbent military healthcare personnel participated in that also. When one military doctor killed himself with a self medication error, I couldn’t help but think it was a good thing it happened to him instead of multiple patients.
please don’t be Civil Affairs, please don’t be Civil Affairs, please don’t be Civil Affairs HA! Field Artillery!
How does an Artillery officer ever get the idea that his job is not to break things? That’s pretty much all they do! I guess if he was an MI officer detailed to FA for his LT years, he didn’t pay much attention during his combat arms time.
I had a couple of buddies like that, branching Signal or MI, but branch detailing to a combat arms so they could hang the blue cord up in their truck windshield, and talk about their combat arms days, while spending most of it in TRADOC failing Ranger School over and over.
hell I was MI, but it was pretty well understood that our job was supporting the guys who broke shit and killed things. And that the way you keep the peace was by being the folks who did the best job at it so no one else would even think of messing with our side. (And from our internal view – if our guys who broke shit KNEW exactly where the other guy’s shit was and what they were going to do with it – our guys could break THEIR shit better.)
A British field marshal famously said of military intelligence,
“They spend half their careers looking up their arses and wondering why it’s dark.”
Probably the most famous oxymoron on the planet. Right up there with there with “Congressional integrity” or my favorite “cherry tart”
“We Build, We Fight” We build our stuff and break yours. We build so Marines and SF have a jumpng off point to destroy you and yours.
Hollywood creep, Mr little c is confusing what is reality and what is BS. This creep is dangerous and full of falsehoods. It has to portray American Servicemembers doing both, because if we just killed and broke things, We would be an Imperial Force used for oppression. Call it Carbon Offsets. We feed a dozen people we can kill another dozen somewhere else.
@ CB Senior:
It’s not, primarily, Hollywood that’s been creeping this crap.
This comes from the same source that now demands that our news media exists to serve the needs and will of our enemy during a war.
This is progressivism. The Hollywoodites only preach what they’ve been taught.
This shit started in our colleges and universities in the early ’30s and has been spreading its gangrenous rot ever since.
I think you guys are all getting worked up over the semantics. I just read Cavanaugh’s article and didn’t find much to disagree with.
The purpose of the military is not (and never has been) to “kill people and break things.” That’s a silly radio-talk-show platitude.
The Purpose of the US military is to execute the foreign policy of the United States.
Sometimes that foreign policy is executed by killing people and breaking things (WWII.) Sometimes that foreign policy is executed by standing between two groups of people that want to kill each other and taking random sniper fire (Beirut.) Sometimes that foreign policy is executed by propping up a corrupt, venal allied government in a futile effort to stem the communist tide (Vietnam) but every time, the purpose is to do what the NCA decides the military should do.
Certainly “killing people and breaking things” is one of the things the military has to be able to do (and Cavanaugh acknowledges this) but so much of what we do in the military is more than that, and I think that’s the point Cavanaugh was trying to make.
I don’t know this Cavanaugh, don’t know his politics or his other writings – if he is a lefty like Batemen then I guess I can understand the vitriol. But the article itself is on point.
His point is himself, like Bateman’s points always were. He pays lip service to the “silly semantics” issue and then engages in exactly that: silly semantics. He also doesn’t appreciate that there is a difference between procedures/policy and objectives/goals. By the way, why did he mention Huckabee at all, let alone spotlight his merely repeating a common, if not trite, expression? If, as you say, the point Calabash/Clavicle/Whatever was trying to make is that the military does more than kill people and break things, then all we can say to that is, “No shit, Sherlock. And the sun is hot.”
In order to succeed in doing all of that “non killing people and breaking things” stuff, we have to have the other side know that we WILL kill people and break things to accomplish the mission.
And you forget, Martinjumpr, that diplomacy works best when it follows warfare.
You can ask Neville Chamberlain how peace in our time worked out for him.
Actually I would say that “diplomacy” works best where there is a credible threat of force backing it up.
Vis my very first “real world” deployment to Haiti in 1994. I remember sitting at a picnic table loading magazines on the Leeward side of Gitmo, looking down at the runway as the C-130s with the Rangers sat on the tarmac with engines roaring, just waiting for the word “GO!” At the same time the sky was filled with C-141’s filled with 82nd Airborne troops flying from Pope AFB. It was that credible threat to “kill people and break things” that finally made Cedras decide to “retire” to Central America.
Nevertheless, to say (or to imply) that killing people and breaking things is the primary purpose of the US military is to ignore 260+ years of American military history (going back even before the Revolution.)
Those Rangers and 82nd troops weren’t going to play grab-ass. They were going to break shit and kill things. That they were used in a political test of wills is irrelevent to the purpose of those troops. Unleashed, they were going to do what they were trained to do; break shit and kill things.
Clausewitz said that war is a continuation of policy by other means. What he meant by that, an idea echoed by Hitler years later, is that it’s what happens when diplomacy fails. Clausewitz’s concept of total war was also not exactly new; it’s said that when Roman legions defeated Carthage, they not only razed the city, but also sowed the ground it stood on with salt so that nothing would ever grow there again.
Point being, at least it seems to me, that you’re on the edge of a very slippery slope when you start letting diplomats determine the actions of the military. You begin to blur the border between when the fat is in the fire, and when it’s not.
Although it might give Cavanaugh a warm feeling to believe that the mission is to, say, support humanitarian aid, it’s similar to thinking that because the Army runs supply convoys that it’s in the trucking business.
It’s been the primary task of armies throughout history to kill the enemy and break his stuff. Nothing has changed. To say otherwise is putting lipstick on the pig.
I’m thinking Mr. Sensitive should find himself another line of work if the killing and breaking stuff is too much for him to handle.
Yes, the military does more than that, but we also do THAT RIGHT THERE!! My rating was AQ – aviation fire control technician. We worked on weapons systems – those weapons were designed to break things.
I was never taught in A school how to build a school house, drill a well or hand out food to people. Did I do that too? Yes, but in the end my JOB was to work on stuff designed to get bombs on target.
I was taught in “A” School how to process film, make prints, run a still camera and a movie camera, and make aerial maps. But if I went out with a strike team then or now, I’d be expected to ditch the camera and pick up a gun and start shooting.
Ditto as a HM. Use to make the guys learn how to use the same stuff that the Marines use when I was with the FMF (M16, M9, SAW, 240G and grenades) and be able to use a radio to call in MEDEVAC and arty (gave them “cheat sheets” to do that). Told them that if the shit hit the fan the “old Man” would want everyone throwin’ rounds downrange.
Plus, they needed to “look” like Marines, not Corpsmen when on patrol… bad guys look for O’s, radio humpers and docs…
CRACKPOT!!!!!!
“But Clausewitz was writing in an era of limited options, when a bloodsucking leech was often the medical profession’s first and only recourse. Today is different.”
Well Major ShitforBrains, war hasn’t changed since the first caveman threw a rock at another caveman. War is war. The principles and ojectives are the same that they’ve always been. Tell your wife and kids that you fight the bad guys to protect the good guys and leave it at that. I suggest you remove your head from your fourth point of contact, sir.
In another time, it would be suggested that he see the chaplain, to get “his ticket punched”, as it were. Such a tortured young individual! Somehow, I doubt he’s gonna resign his commission and go into the monastery. Our Lady of the Sparkle Ponies. I think they make fruit cakes, which somehow seems appropriate.
He seems like the metrosexual/transgender type, maybe he’ll try to join a Convent to get in touch with his feminine side?
We all seem to be losing track of the origin and purpose of Huckabee’s phrase. It came about years ago as a concise response to those want to use the military for social experimentation. Mike Huckabee is a very intelligent man and anyone who thinks he doesn’t realize the inadequacy of that statement when describing the purpose and mission of the U.S. military is several steps behind the Governor.
In fact, I would wager that Governor Huckabee, speaking extemporaneously, could probably go on greater length than any one has here today about the various missions and purposes of our military if he were called on to do so.
What I see here is that everyone, even Cavanaugh, makes some good points that are mostly true. This entire discussion came about because Cavanaugh, searching for a topic to write about, jumped on a simplistic statement made by a politician in a debate for easy political points.
Where Cavanaugh went off in the weeds was in calling for an end to the use of a very useful phrase when discussing the roles of the military with some liberal jackass. Banning the use of words and expressions is an all too common tactic of those on the left. Whether Cavanaugh is the rare liberal military pundit is something I do not know, but banning the phrase is certainly a liberal tactic.
Don’t let Cavanaugh lead you off into the weeds of political semantics.
Something tells me his mangina starts hurting when a GI Joe cartoon comes on.
Dude joined for the GI Bill and wanted a “9 to 5″… got pissy when he had go do that deployment thingy
As an infantryman, I have always made sure my wife understood that my job is to kill people, and that I am not ashamed of that, so neither should she. When people ask her what I do, she tells them. Suprisingly, even other military spouses are taken aback with that description. I guess reality is not palatable to some people.
In regards to my children, I just tell them that I get the bad guys. I think deep down they understand what that means (they are 5 & 9), and I feel that description explains my job well enough.
He seems like the ticket-punching PC politician variety of Officer that only cares about himself and his career. I bet he’d even forbid movies like “Patton” and “The Big Red One” from being played on the day room TV in his unit’s barracks in an attempt to keep sugar-coated unicorn-lusting Political Correctness shoved down his Subordinates’ throats!
OH, gee, he’d really disapprove of my choices, wouldn’t he?
Full Metal Jacket
Alien
Aliens
Spartacus
El Cid
LOTR-TFOTR,LOTR-TTT,LOTR-ROTK
The Longest Day
Wackiest Ship in the Army
Victory At Sea
Tora! Tora! Tora!
The Big Red One
All the TV footage ever shot in Vietnam in ‘Vietnam – The Television War’
Hamburger Hill
Pork Chop Hill
Richard III (Ian McKellen)
Henry V (Kenneth Branagh)
Tour of Duty (2 seasons)
China Beach
Troy
Star Wars
I could go on and on…. But let’s just say that Mr. Cavanaugh is a putz.
Yeah, he’s that as well as a “testosterone-allergic Mama’s Boy” and a fercockt faygala of a macher!
Yeah, well, he won’t like my stories, either, API.
You guys are all so far off. Dont you know we need to win their hearts and minds? Once we make everyone like us, we can all gather around a camp fire singing kum by ya, hold hands, and put little flowers in our hair. You barbarians just want to kill people, why? Just because their religion tells them to cut off your heads, throw gays from roof tops, and stone women that have sex? Why can’t we find a middle ground and compromise? Don’t you know our leadership is more enlightened and can bring us world peace by giving in, I mean compromising with the people yu call our enemies?
And Smitty, when the Snakes attack our outer systems and remote colonies, do we let them just run roughshod over us and exterminate us?
I don’t think so.
There will always be slackers like Cavanaugh around who want a paycheck without earning it. He should find another job.
Hey Smitty, you forgot to sign off with /sarc!!
Figured it was obvious
Stoned women who want to have sex? Where?
Calabash is working on his Ph.D from the UK. He is a married to a ballerina. He is refined. And he reminds me more and more of Bateman. Of course, Batement was a LTC. Clavicle is a major.
Which further solidifies my opinion of him as the type that hangs out with the “Artsie-fartsie pinkie-in-the-air” crowd.
The part of being in the military is to kill people and break things, and to build things and keep good people alive too. We whom have served are more than glorified sanitation workers going to the sewers of the world cleaning up the sewage of enemy; we are people who serve and defend.
“…I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it.
I would rather that you just said “thank you” and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand the post. Either way, I don’t give a DAMN what you think…”
Apropos John’s suggestion in the last paragraph, he could just say:
The military’s purpose isn’t to kill people and break things?!???
My recruiter has some ‘splainin to do