It didn't seem sarcastic to me; he did join a violent organization, after all.
I found the article to be pretty good aside from that comment, which was a little too on the nose to be funny for me...
But we're arguing semantics here. I wrote my response because the way in which joubert dismissed the possibility of the author's comment being sarcasm strongly implied that he regarded the military as an inherently violent organisation to which only violence-loving terrorist-killing wannabes would aspire. I resent that.
We agree so far. I don't think it's just semantics, but my "politics" probably differ radically from most of the crew here (and I don't expect to change anyone's mind), so I'll leave it at that.
I get that his list of reasons was largely sarcastic. But that suggests he's (at least somewhat) cynical about the military. Given that, I don't understand why he'd join up. Especially when he implies that he had/has specific knowledge that he'd likely be sent to Iraq and told to kill people. I just don't find it funny. Maybe I missed the point.
He is cynical about the opinions many civilians have about the military.
If you don't know that everyone in the military is cynical about the military, you know very little about military folks.
Projecting seems to be especially common among the "intellectual" class.
Iraq is just an issue of economic control. Either Iraqi's can control Iraqi oil, or we can. In fact it has nothing at all to do with terrorism, that is just for the weak minded to buy into. What it has to do with his privatizing oil. American companies do not benefit from publicly owned oil in Iraq, but if multinational or American-owned corporations own Iraqi oil, then the American people benefit. Think about it: would you rather have the Iraqis own the Iraq oil, or would you rather have the benefit of American companies owning it instead? Personally, I have a slight moral gripe about taking away people's natural resources and giving it to multinational corporations, but hey, that's just politics. War is politics by other means. Always been that way, always will be that way.
Japan was right (from their point of view) to do Pearl Harbor, because it eliminated the threat caused by the American navy, and solidified their economic control of the Pacific rim. Similarly, the US was right (from our point of view) to do the Iraq war, because it got oil out of the hands of the indigenous peoples of that region and into our hands, benefiting us, not them, and eliminating the threat caused by Hussein at the same time. Please note I say "right" not as in morally right, but just right from the point of view of economic dominance.
Violence is incidental. It is just a necessary part of war. The real point is economic control. True with Japan. True with the United States. Is that "moral" or "just". I don't know. I would like to think not. But apparently the 50 million people who voted for President Bush would disagree with me.
I found absolutely nothing strange about that bullet point. Although, he joined the Marines, which means as a member of the Army I have to hate him.
Yes, it's really quite funny. If you're an American & you can't see the humor, try visualizing China invading Iraq instead.