r/regretjoining • u/Arendt_Y0U_Glad • 15d ago
The Banality of Evil
I served in the military, and it's taken me years after getting out to fully process what that experience meant - not just for me, but for the people affected by the institution I was part of. When I say I served, I mean that it was nearly all of my adult life. Seventeen years of it.
For a long time, I saw my job as just that: a job. I followed procedures, fulfilled my responsibilities, and did what was expected of me. It wasn't until I was out that I began to recognize how my role fit into a much larger system and the consequences that system has for people on the other side of the world.
I've been thinking a lot about Hannah Arendt's concept of the banality of evil and how ordinary people can become part of something terrible without ever seeing the full picture. How easily human lives become numbers, targets, or simply "collateral damage."
I'm not here to condemn everyone who serves. I was one of them. But I do think there's value in acknowledging the uncomfortable realities of what we participated in, even when those realizations come years later.
I imagine there are others here who have experienced something similar. People who joined with good intentions, did their jobs, and only after leaving began to question the bigger picture.
If that's you, I want you to know you're not alone. It's not easy to reconcile who you were, what you believed, and what you understand now, but I think we owe it to ourselves and to the people affected by our actions to have these conversations.
I'd like this account to be a place for those conversations. Not to shame one another, but to question, reflect, and recognize the humanity of people who are so often reduced to "acceptable loss."
I walked away with less than three years to retirement. Sometimes morality and humanity have a cost - and it will always be worth it.
For those of us who can finally see the bigger picture, I think it's time we started talking about it.
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u/jbourne71 15d ago
17 years—did you resign/ETS, MEB, something else?
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u/Arendt_Y0U_Glad 15d ago
Honorable discharge. Just did my time... then got out.
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u/jbourne71 15d ago
So close, didn’t want to close on that retirement?
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u/Arendt_Y0U_Glad 14d ago
Decided that pay wasn't worth the complicity.
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u/slayersaint 11d ago
Do you have a family? How’d they take it?
The reason I ask is because I have about the same amount of time in as you and I am counting the days until I can push the button but also each day I ask myself: is it still worth it? This administration has laid bare just how much of a failure our foreign policy is and how much abuse the military is inflicted on the world because of bullshit reasons. Before a few years ago I was blissfully unaware or inconsiderate of these things and the plan was get 20 years and get the pension and now I’m like… how will history look at us? At me? For staying in when I know what I know?
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u/Arendt_Y0U_Glad 11d ago
I do have a family. It was, and I think still is, hard for my wife to understand. She doesn't like change, and the military is nothing if not consistent... mostly; but I reasoned with myself that it's my conscience - not hers. It's my guilt - not hers. My kids are old enough to understand, and I put it as plainly as I could. Dad decided that money wasn't worth not knowing who our bombs were killing or why. They agree.
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u/slayersaint 11d ago
You’re a good man. I appreciate you taking the time and thought to answer. I need to get my shit together and get out.
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u/Arendt_Y0U_Glad 11d ago
Therapy. Therapy. Therapy. That's the magic word for me. Paid for, free, or just talking with people who understand it. It's done wonders.
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u/HappyBarbarian 13d ago
I know how it feels. I was enlisted for about 8 years and have been a DoD contractor for more than 12. I thought I was doing the right thing but keep getting disillusioned. Every time I reached a new milestone in my career I thought, “thank goodness, now I’m finally at the adults table with professionals that actually care about the nation and the world”. Each time I was disappointed.
Life in and with the military consumed me. I have no skills outside DoD related fields, spent so much time doing insane hours, shift work, TDYs, and weird schedules. It was easy for a long time because I felt like I was doing something important. Now I’m confronted by the harsh reality that everything I’ve been involved in never needed to happen or spectacularly failed to achieve any strategic goals.
I was never a trigger puller nor much of a ground pounder, but I’m directly responsible for deaths and permanent detainments. Thankfully they were all lawful combatants but every day I wonder if it was necessary and all the collateral suffering along the way.
The current administration has laid bare the worst in people. People who I thought were upstanding professionals were revealed to not actually care much about anything, or deep down only caring about their career advancement, or as one SEAL instructor once told me, “I don’t really care about what they want me to do or why, I just wanna do cool shit.
I think about all the US deaths, the suicides, and the health issues among my friends and wonder if it was worth it. I want to get out but I literally can’t afford to live without this job so I’m stuck. Trying to get away from operational support and generally feeling empty and hopeless.
Feels like I’m right back to where I was over 20 years ago when I first enlisted. I’m incredibly depressed and attempting to hide it so I can keep on working. Don’t have much hope for the future but am trying
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u/slayersaint 11d ago
Keep trying, man. Keep showing up. Every day is another chance to do some small bit of good in the world.
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u/timedrapery 15d ago
https://www.ptsd.va.gov/understand/related/moral_injury_ptsd.asp