Some Key points about why no one wants to join the military

[Ninurta]

My half baked opinion is it's not the "trauma" of combat that is the problem. It's what they come back to.

I've seen what returning to the drudgery of the daily military grind does to vets too. Nobody wants to put up with a REMF telling 'em what to do after they've killed some bad guys.

That, too, has probably been with us since war began and humans were human. The "Wild West" was wild in large part because of all the Civil War vets heading west to escape the drudgery of staid life back on the farm. In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, there was a glut of Americans on the mercenary market that fueled all the little brushfire wars around the world due to returning vets with a single sellable skill set.

I think, personally, it has in part to do with the adrenaline rush of a firefight, and guys missing it. Adrenaline can be as addictive as heroin. There is one solution that solves both of the problems of pogues pushing a guy around and the missing adrenaline.

There were a lot of guys from Desert Storm who found their way to contracts in Bosnia just a few years later. some were active as late as 2008 or 2009. I have a friend who was in Desert Storm who found his way onto a CIA contract in Northern Iraq around that time.

I was approached by Dyncorp in May 2004 for a PSD contract at the shiny new embassy in Baghdad, but by then my passport was dead and I couldn't get all my paperwork in order in time to work it. Besides that, I figured I was getting a little long in the tooth for that kind of work any more anyhow, so I didn't go. Turns out just as well, as all the guys I knew who did go quit the contract about two months in and came home, said it was a shit-show, and the honcho at the embassy wouldn't let them use up-armored SUV's for the security details, and the SUV's just sat there in the compound gathering dust while everyone was out dodging bullets.

That's the main difference between mercenary work and national service soldiering - contractors can just quit and go home if the honchos get too stupid, or they can just say NO to a contract that sounds too hinky and not go to begin with. Soldiers don't have those options.

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