Son, You're Fucking High.

ISTBO Enquiry Watch returns to your screens today with a thumping great MO award to anyone who was surprised that the army is 'Failing in its duty of care' with regards cadets. Well batter my arse with an instructors batton and send me running four hundred times round the mess hall! You could knock me down with a semi-automatic assault rifle. You mean those nice clean orderly looking chaps in the pretty uniforms are a bunch of violent hectoring bullies? You mean that people who have been trained to flatten maim and kill pick on any recruits with a shred of humanity left in them and bully them until they'll turn a weapon on anything they get a chance to just to vent their rage? Are you seriously trying to make me believe that amongst the people who sign their lives away to shoot and detonate and crush there are a few people who lack the ability to distinguish between legitimate and non-legitimate targets? No! Really, truly, honestly, not joking, actually? What dumb shit joins the army thinking it will be any different? When they say you're risking your life joining the army they're generally not talking about the unarmed civilians and rag-tag militias you'll be blanket bombing as the major threat to your life. They're talking about live fire exercises with a bunch of people only as qualified as you holding all the guns. They're talking about people for whom the police force didn't provide a sufficient level of discipline and action. They're talking about the fact that if you can't make it out of boot alive you have no damn business being on a battlefield... I'm not sure where people get the idea that they might like being in the army without getting the idea they'll be shouted at, pushed to the limit of human endurance and if possible beyond, and preferably unburdened of most of the usual needs, desires and boundaries of people who don't like to kill other people. From a Village People video? Have they not seen Starship Troopers? Full Metal Jacket? Private Benjemin? Did they catch the Elephant Walk sequence in The Jungle Book and think "Marching! That's the life for me!" and just not check out the fine detail? Did they think you get to skip the rough stuff and go straight to the red jacket and furry hat? Do not pass Baghdad, do not collect 200 bits of shrapnel in the arse? Let's be honest: if you wish to join the army for any reason other than to immerse yourself in an atmosphere of barely regulated violence with the constantly attendant risk of out and out homicidal madness you have absolutely no place in it whatsoever. If you want to smite the 'evadoh', fine. If you want to shoot guns and blow stuff up and you're not too bothered about what you shoot and blow up or about the intelligence, morals and judgment of the people choosing the targets, fine. If you like the machismo of uniforms and weapons and running around assault courses (so called because they assault you, not the other way around), fine. If you're thinking about saving the world, go find a radioactive spider and get yourself bitten. There's some question of raising the age at which you are allowed to join the army, because at 16 you're only considered old enough to reproduce and smoke Silk Cut, and not considered responsible enough to drink, drive a mini or get married without your mummy's permission or get a tattoo, so in the light of the fact you might get brutalized by people taught to brutalize people for longer than you have been and put there to make sure you wont turn and run screaming when someone tries to kill you, 16's perhaps not quite old enough. Never mind that you're deciding to put your life on the line even in basic training, never mind that you're agreeing to fight for causes determined by a government you're not considered responsible enough to vote for, never mind that you'll be taught to drive vehicles specifically designed to flatten people and buildings, and given weaponry the polis would shoot you on sight for carrying in the street regardless of your age, and trusted only to point it at the 'right' things, never mind that you're taught a range of combat skills that make even basic weaponry unnecessary- you might get bullied, so you're not quite old enough. 18 being fully old enough to cope with a bit of buggery and the odd head injury. The army is intended for people stupid or hard enough to join the army. It is Evolution In Action. If you join the army and get killed, that's your stupid fault. If you join the army and survive, you've obviously got skills, abilities or a skull thickness that will always be welcome in the gene pool. If you think you're the second sort and you're not, you're the first sort. DO YOU GET ME? (Sir! Yes Sir!) I DO NOT EXPECT TO HAVE TO TELL YOU MAGGOTS HOW HIGH TO JUMP! IN WAR THERE IS NO TIME TO ASK HOW HIGH! Put your hand against that wall, trooper....