@redweasel  
If there was no need for the protection, we would not have them (nobody would pay for it). Ergo, they are there for protection. Simple as that.
 
And you know, some people actually do join believing in all that stuff. Propaganda was a big thing in the world wars especially.

@Cirrus Light
 
p. sure they fight because their C.O. said so. you can claim that someone up the chain of command is using soldiers to protect our rights, but the soldiers themselves are trained to protect or violate our rights, depending on their orders.

@tuypo1  
I recently had the amazing realization that our military (that is, the US military) doesn’t fight to protect the American people.
 
Because even if you get invaded by, say, Joseph Stalin, or Adolf Hitler, they’re not going to kill everyone. Granted, this thing I’m pointing out is less applicable to Hitler since he did methodically kill huge portions of the population - but it is applicable to, say, the Empire of Japan.
 
Fact is, even invaded by Sombra, most of them would probably live.
 
They’d just live in tyranny. Any friends who dare speak out would disappear or be publicly executed, along with any who just don’t do things in the way the local magistrate likes, or who the local magistrate just doesn’t like.
 
But she, herself, would probably be fine, it’s just certainly at least a few of her friends would die, she might starve, but would probably survive.
 
As most Americans would in the event of any invasion.
 
No, the Armed Forces don’t protect all our lives, they protect our rights. Our rights to a fair trial, to speak, to defend ourselves and bear arms, from unreasonable search and seizure, to assemble, to petition the government, and all the other things we have.

BOO!!! MORE WAR, MORE WAR, MORE WAR!!

Enjoy getting slaughtered by tyrants fluttershy

@Cirrus Light
 
Just saying, but the US certainly didn’t consider leaving Cuba, and the relative political instability that the country had, a problem until the Communists took over, fifty years after the end of the last occupation.
 
Not to mention they did occupy Haiti for about 20 years and it still didn’t stop Haiti from turning out the way it did.

@redweasel  

conflict is inevitable. it’s important to fight for your rights, and humans will always squabble over territory and resources.
 
but that’s not war.
 
war is the massive mind control campaign, the insidious propaganda machine designed to take our natural aggressions, and amplify them a thousandfold. war is the organization saying that brainwashing soldiers into obeying without question is for your own good. it’s the media condemning the enemy, and enshrining your assigned warlords as gods, blocking you from befriending them even by controlling what language you speak. it’s the arm’s race, profiting off of insane, murderous bloodbaths, because they don’t have to refund your money when the guns you bought result in untold suffering. it’s the man telling you to sacrifice your friend, and save your country. that’s what war is. it’s an out of control meme complex that funnels more wealth and power into the hands of the super wealthy.
 
war is unity and solidarity, not just fighting. when politicians speak of agreement, togetherness, and magnanimity, they’re conspiring together to oppress dissent, and ultimately destroy us all. that’s war. the more they fight with each other, the safer I feel, because it’s less likely for us to be dragged into a war. in that sense, war is the opposite of conflict. it’s agreeing with each other beyond the point of reason and sanity.
 
war is neither inevitable, nor natural, no more than a fire is natural when you soak the wood in gasoline. people infected with war’s memes try to destroy your hope, by falsly equating war with natural territory battles, but they can’t make truth out of a lie. reduce the wealth gap, create a middle class, help your friends and fuck your employer, and war mongers will go the way of the dinosaur. (they’ll turn into chickens.)

Me: Hey, guys, Let’s check out the comments!!!
 

@hackdart  

And Iraq and Syria aren’t?
 
I’m pretty sure the whole point of the UN protocols set in place is to justify nations acting against nations that behave similarly to how the Axis did in WWII. There’s no disputing that Iraq was, in fact, committing genocide against the Kurds, using chemical weapons no less. Then we have Syria, now doing the same thing to its populace is what prompted the recent missile strikes.
 
You can talk about speculative motivations, realistic as they may be, but nothing changes the reality that the actual heart of the actions isn’t really much different from fighting the Nazis. The Nazis are always seen as the paragon of evil, yet they’re really only second-rate as far as tyrannical dictatorships go. They’re at least paralleled, if not surpassed in evil by most, if not all the nations you listed, and dictators like Mao and Stalin killed far more innocent people than Hitler ever did, and Imperial Japan was even more brutal than Nazi Germany.
 
Nationalism and self-righteousness may have been behind their motivations, but I can’t think of any war that hasn’t been fueled, to some extent, by those same things, including the Allies in that very same war.
 
But I always find it hypocritical when people say “yeah, that was justified, then”, yet when the same thing happens in our lifetime, they say “we should mind our own business!”
 
The extent to which I agree is that the US shouldn’t be half-imperialist. It should either stay out altogether and claim innocence by no association, or get involved as heavily as it was during the post-war occupation of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany, with such a significant presence that we were able to alter their culture to the point where they didn’t go back to another horrible regime.
 
But much the reason the Middle-East remains unstable is people who say “no more war!” and have our soldiers pull out before we can ever make such a cultural change.
 
We just need to stick around with enough presence long enough to take control of their education, and build their economy enough that they can get more interested in Candy Crush than becoming violent extremists.
 
But ironically, by crying out “no more war!” while horrors happen and prompt people to war, thus the compromise ends up being this nasty half-involvement, the wars are prolonged and there’s no end to the violence in sight as long as we keep pulling out instead of sticking around long enough to quash terror and influence culture.
 
Places we stayed: Germany, Japan, South Korea.  
Places we left: Cuba, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya.
 
Which pattern seems to have a greater effect for making a place stable and peaceful?
 
I’m sorry, but pulling out will only cause rise to horrible Hitler-clones and ISIS-like bands of terror taking control. That is an extremely clear lesson history has proven, without a doubt. Obama left Iraq listening to these kinds of “no more war!” people, and immediately after ISIS happened. But when we stayed, we got some of the greatest, modernized, peaceful and prosperous places on Earth.
 
I hate violence, and that’s why I think we need to go and stay.
 
Honestly, though, I wonder sometimes if these people in power don’t knowingly pull out in order to keep the area unstable, so they can keep doing this, though I like to hope that it’s just the dirty dissaray that’s a natural result of having too many chefs cooking the stew (ie, different administrations taking different approaches so they never stick to one consistent plan).

@Background Pony #0291  
The more they keep pushing the anti war narrative. The more wars seem to happen.

@Cirrus Light  
The second half of my comment opens with a concession that, yes, there are instances in which war can be justified. I also then immediately specify that I’m explicitly speaking in regard to the recent militaristic campaigns of the United States - Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, etc - which definitively serve imperialistic interests (while additionally being rife with war crime).
 
Yes, a humanitarian angle is forwarded as part of the attempt to manufacture the populace’s consent, but there are more effective ways to confront the heart of those struggles than military engagement. That’s well known, but fixing the problem is not the goal. The point of these endeavors is to sustain the power of the powerful and the wealth of the rich.
 
Now, if you specifically want to to address the Holocaust and World War II, I think that the conditions are different. The German government was facilitating an unprecedentedly systematic execution of innocent life. But the justification of one intervention doesn’t unconditionally extend to every other. Yes, I condemn Nazi Germany for the genocide that it carried out upon the people of the world. But I also recognize that it was fueled by nationalism and self-righteousness, and I’m willing to criticize the US and every other nation guilty of abusing those same motivations.

NO! MORE WAR!
 
It’s worth looking up the history of anti-war movements. In the 20s they went from post-WWI pacifism, to “invade germany and kill Hitler with the army we told you not to have!”, to “Stalin and Hitler signed a pact, give peace a chance!”, to “they broke the pact, pacifists demand war!”.
 
Everyone reads 1984 and laughs at the “we’ve always been at war with Eurasia/Eastasia stuff, but most people don’t realize what Orwell was basing it off. It’s like a memo went around, and all the principles would instantly change to suit what the party wanted to push.

Watch out ISIS. She is serious.

@hackdart  
Even if they stop the Holocaust for their own wealth, isn’t it better than letting it go on? And is it really so hard to believe that perhaps they’re people just like us who are mortified by what they see and wish to end it - perhaps even celebrating/flaunting their power in their ability to do so?

Okay, here’s the plan! We can quell down the women workers rotest by opening up some male strip bars and use the services as payment!

But as long as there are people… there will always be war.

Oh, it’s cool to see this got some attention. However it seems that some are unfamiliar with the principles of the anti-war movement.
 
Firstly, I want to note that this piece wasn’t intended to be an “in-universe” pic; I think the viability of the “crystal war” is too ridiculous for me to actually take seriously (I don’t even want to go down that road). Instead, this piece was inspired by current events, specifically by the bloodthirst being shown by the alleged “resistance” at the prospect of inciting another crusade in US imperialism.
 
But to clarify the overall sentiment, although anti-war protesters oppose the initiation and continuation of imperialist conquest, they still believe that there are things worth fighting for. But recent global conflicts haven’t been pursued for just ends; the war machine is near-incomprehensibly lucrative for the incredibly privileged few that wield the power to abuse it. It is not a product of humanitarian interest. It is a perverse enterprise that brutally exploits the hearts and minds of an inherently pacifist populace to to chiefly further private greed at the grievous expense of human life.
 
If the rich want war so bad, they can get eaten in the class war.

@Cabrony  
What’s funny is that logic says everyone should’ve just bowed and let the Nazis take over the world…
 
Godwin’s law, here we come.

Living things fight each other all the time.

@ThisGuyHasNoName  
War is eternal. It is only mankind that is finite.

@Background Pony #D79E
 
War… has changed.

By using the Sage of The Six Paths mode Fluttershy was able to end all wars!