Interesting. How do you feel about the U.S. drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan that blatantly violate international law? or the use of torture or extraordinary rendition?
I'm not seeing how the use of drone attacks (and manned attacks) in Afghanstan and Pakistan 'blatantly violate' international law. We are hunting terrorist cells that have openly declared their intentions to take both our freedoms and our lives from us and who on more than one occassion have made good on those threats. We are also doing our best to avoid targeting the innocent, and while sadly we are not always successful I take the position that when civilians are killed in a conflict like this ultimately is was the terrorists that killed them: first by creating the conflict and the by hiding amoung them.
I'm also not sure what body of law you're quoting when you're discussing 'international law'. If you mean a treaty that we agreed to, fine. If you mean a law or resolution passed by some other group of nations without our consent I would argue that they are not the bosses of us.
Torture and extraordinary rendition were used primarily by one administration and mainly with the support of the intelligence community, not the military. It should never have started, it happened mainly over the objections of the military, and now it's stopping.
Is it possible to work in the US military as a physician and be involved only in humanitarian action and treating soldiers? The personal impact you make on people's lives when you're treating the disadvantaged/oppressed also results in the inadvertent redistribution of wealth through medical services. I am making the assumption that US military physicians also treat civilians. I am trying to find the reasoning how personal actions can over-power the inhumane nature of military aggression. I'll add that I am not looking to upset any one. I'd like to understand better how people decide that joining the military will actually bring about some positive change in the world.
There is a significant humanitarian mission in the military, but there is no way to join expecting to do only what you describe as humanitarian activities.
As for why I think that the military can bring about positive change, I just look to history. The use of military force by the United States has largely been a vehicle for brining about positive change in the world, and I'm not just talking about World War II. Anyone who has recently visited Panama, Haiti, Kosovo, or Kuwait will tell you that our military has, even in recent years, done an excellent job of defending the weak from oppression and genocide and defending democracy from would be dictators. All of those countries I mentioned are peaceful democracies living under governments installed by American armed forces in the (elder) Bush or Clinton administrations. I would consider that 'positive change'.
Most Americans also consider it vitally important to defend our own lives and freedoms, not just for our own sake but also because the United States has been such a driving force in creating a free world. That's why you hear relatively few objections to the war against Al Queda in Afghanistan, our military's support of the government in Yemin, our current battles it Somolian pirates, or our even help hunting the Drug lords in Mexico. We have, over the course of history, successfully prevented the expansion of the Soviet Union, checked Japanese imprialism, and annihilated Nazism. While defense isn't exactlly change per se, I would definitely consider it positive.
I think the main objection here is the objection to one war that we have in the middle east. It's a war that was ill advised, terribly run, and sold to the public as war for our defense when that nation was neither planning to attack us nor developing the means to. There were still a few positives that came out of the conflict: the Kurds were freed from violent racial oppression and a democratic government has replaced a dictatorship. However I think that most people realize that we have, in that case, cause significantly more misery than we've cured not even counting the extrodinary cost to ourselves. But I think if you look back over the military history of the United States you'll realize that the Iraqs and Vietnams are the exceptions, not the rule.
