After the draft ended in the mid-1970s, Uncle Sam needed a recruiting method to keep up the tremendous peacetime-- but Cold War-- military. Solution: teach a trade. HS grads enlisted in the armed forces to learn vocations (aviation repair, cook, military police, combat engineer, medic, etc). Young urban (D) and rural (R) underprivileged men joined the forces. I fell into the first category.
Enter the Reagan Era and the buying up of AM radio stations by the rightwing to give us "hate radio." The military then became a training ground for militia members and survivalists. In the same token, gang members would later join the military for training.
After the 9/11 attacks, the demonization of non-white Christians in the US military became validated, making the invasion of two Muslim countries easy without critical thought. Liberals within the military establishment were outnumbered and "Dubya" wanted his wars. The military academies, particularly the USAFA, became Christian proselytization factories over the past several years.
Two decades of fighting the "Mohammedans," Taliban, "sand n*6%*s," "ragheads" etc and all the inherent PTSD baked the extremism into the cake and hence the DoD report.
In 2017, white supremacist James Harris Jackson (28) served in Afghanistan and was charged with killing a homeless 66-year-old black man. (Imagery: The UK Daily Mail)
Other military veterans on DU may have a different perspective.
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