Reuben...fired on a vehicle accelerating into an Iraqi checkpoint. As the vehicle approached the checkpoint, he shot into and stopped the advancing automobile. Approaching it to investigate, the unit saw he had killed the driver. But he had also “splattered his head all over the driver’s child. Six years old. He was sitting in the passenger seat. The fifty caliber does a number on the human body. The man’s head was just gone. It was everywhere.”

Reuben has ruminated over that moment for many years, trying to reconcile how he had followed the standard protocol but with horrific results – and trying to convince himself, as he told us, that he is not a monster.

Most civilians will never carry the burden of mortality that Reuben bears.

No, yeah, you are a fucking monster. I don't give a fuck. The second you realized going into someone elses country and firing into people's fucking civilian homes wasnt gonna be "like Call of Duty" (actual quote -- again, fuck off) any self respecting person who gives a shit about the loss of human life would have left, dishonorably charged or not. Oh, sorry, your EGO is more important.

Boo fucking hoo. I'm sure you wish it was you getting your head blown off with a fucking 50 cal, right? Fuck you. Go have your fucking pity party alone in the corner, or see if you can get the warmongering, racist, profit extracting fucking ghouls you murdered for to give a shit.

in communist china the social safety net is gated behind military service designed to turn all citizens into brainwashed killing machines

If you killed and achieved nothing good, you're just any other murderer. The people who killed over there caused and justified future attacks in the west, on top of giving them tens of thousands of high-end guns to do it with. Two decades of training in bomb-making, endless footage of Americans being hungry hogs in response to the suffering of the entire Afghan people including those who believed in the US project. Like any Vietnam, Korea, or Latin America vet what legacy can you say you've earned except rightful shame? Social damnation after wasting so much money at the expense of the people at home to murder hundreds of thousands of people you don't know for corporate profits? Losing to people who didn't have satellites or the wOrLd'S mOsT pOwErFuL MiLiTaRy? If you did any of that here you'd get an answer to "Did I kill?" in the form of the death penalty. True crime youtubers would study you like a bug.

Describing an incident in which three men attacked his unit, one veteran, Beau, recalled the moral clarity he felt while shooting at a visible combatant.

“I know that they’re bad because they’re shooting at me,” he said.

When the brainworms have totally consumed your brain

"Did you kill anyone?" is a great way to piss off a reactionary veteran and I highly recommend it.

But what about the free college?

when were you when yankee loser kill?

i was sat at Afghanistan eating defense spending when Joe Biden ring

‘Jack is kill’

‘no’

Gee I wonder why most of us will never carry the guilt of splattering a mans head all over his 6 year old child. It’s because we knew that’s what war is and have been against this for 20 GODDAMN FUCKING YEARS YOU IDIOTS. I don’t give a fuck about these crocodile tears

Other soldiers and vets essentially look down on you in some ways if you didn’t kill. Thankfully I never was in combat so I didn’t have to be put in that situation, even though I had a combat job. It’s so fucked.