i had planned on joining the military until my freshman year; then i realized i didn't want to sign my privacy away.
@emachine...you're very young, not quite 16; you've plenty of time to consider such things and you'll probably have decided both for and against joining the military fifty times before the time actually comes. So too, such a decision often goes hand in hand with your choice of a major in college, which career you want to pursue (which will probably change a couple of times initially as well); you've got plenty of time. @auslander...we have some british friends here and it's more likely than not that the parents or grandparents of those british friends were absolutely furious with us Americans for not coming to their aid sooner while so much of Europe was in flames; angry that we waited so long to jump in. Our's was once a philosophy of nonintervention unless we were in imminent and absolute danger ... many considered our's a position of extreme isolationism. We've since gone in the opposite direction. For the sake of yourself and others, do not put yourself and your conscience in the position of being forced to spill real blood over nebulous idiological abstractions unless your heart and mind deem them worthy of the sacrifice. Don't let someone make that decision for you.
there hasn't been a cause i thought was worth fighting for in a long time. i just wanted to blow stuff up. now i have better, though slightly less legal, ways to do that.
