Except that the military is a pot that encourages bad eggs to play out certain sides of their personality, like lack of empathy and submitting to orders without questioning.
I wouldn't say it encourages it. It facilitates obedience. In certain militaries, if you believe the order is simply going to compromise the lives of innocents, you can disobey it. The German military does this, and it's becoming more widespread.
Yes, what about them?
Are they also all blood-ravenous psycho-killers?
does the military encourage questioning orders?
It depends how high up the chain you are. The grunts aren't supposed to ask questions because they aren't officers who are trained to make the best possible decision. If an order comes from above and someone mid-way down the chain of command thinks it's immoral, they can of course question it.
Does it encourage following your own moral guide rather than policy and rules of engagement?
Yes, that's why people like this have faced life imprisonment. He killed a wounded Taliban fighter that had previously been hit by an attack helicopter. He went against the rules of engagement, they imprisoned him.
Does it seek to protect human life above all else?
It depends. Sometimes protecting human life requires taking human life, unfortunately. Couldn't have won WW2 without killing some Nazis. That's a problem that's above the military. That's a Human problem. But war and combat aren't as simple as saying to protect human life above all else. That's the core goal, of course, but war is complex.
The army does good precisely because it's inefficient and badly organised.
I feel like you think that anyone involved with the military is inherently some psychopathic robot designed to only kill and keep its mouth shut. It does good because it's still a Human institution run by Humans who, by the way, aren't all inherently evil. I feel like this is the core problem we're having here. I get the sense that you feel people in the military have some default lust for blood and death. Fortunately that's not true.
They're a tool (like CBRN weapons), not a school of life or a heroic calling. If you had even once felt a dictator turn the army against his own people you would know this.
Yes they are a tool. I'm not elevating anyone. But in that sense, everything is a tool. If you're defining a tool as something the state directs and uses for its own purposes, then we're all "tools". But individuals are a bit more complex than that. And if the British government suddenly decided to turn the military against its own people, I highly doubt the military would follow. Highly. Maybe some members would, but I'm sure most members would refuse to turn against their own people unless there were some extreme circumstances. The dictators turning their armies on their own people have armies comprised solely of bad eggs. They build them in such a way. Also, many of these dictators draft their members and then say that if they refuse orders, they get the bullet. Completely different circumstances to a modern first world army.
Frankly, I don't care about the professional/draft distinction.
"Frankly, I don't care about one of the greatest aspects of this entire debate"
while the other consists of those who let the State use them as weapons.
Probably because most of the time there's a draft, the country's security is at stake. I wouldn't care about letting the Government use me as a weapon if it was in the fight to prevent Nazi Germany from running our country.
Active resistance against tyranny also means dodging the draft, sabotaging military efforts and counter-propagandising.
Ah yes, those resistances against Tyranny that will get you put in jail or killed (bar the last one, which just makes you look idiotic). Because it's Tyrannical to draft people in the event of a threat to National safety. So if the Nazis had managed to initiate Operation Sea Lion and invade Britain, you would sabotage the British for drafting people? Or just dodge the draft and help support the death of even more innocent people who didn't even want war, but unfortunately ended up being born within close proximity to an Imperialist Nazi regime?
It's not like we're going to overthrow the monarchy, might as well try and pray for the right king rather than just pinning the entire monarchy as bad because a few kings and queens were bat shit insane.
Apart from the fact that Monarchies aren't Universally Human like war and conflict are, and they came into being and then went out of being within an incredibly short period of time. Feudal monarchies were pretty much a learning experience leading to a proper democratic government. They were shitty but back then we didn't have the tech or luxuries to organise a country in any better way, and we got rid of them fast.
Unlike Human conflict, which has been around as long as we have. Comparing getting rid of a Monarchy to getting rid of a Military is a stretch. One is a Government system that existed in certain regions for a sort period of time, the other is something that essentially every Human community has had in one form or another throughout the duration of civilisation. Whether it be selecting certain men to be the warriors/protectors, or having a fully formed standing army with a command structure.
And how many people on this sub support Communism? How many bat shit insane leaders has Communism had, that have resulted in the death of tens of millions of innocents? And yet people will use the analogy you just made against it. I'm not trying to dig on it, but people will still say "oh well the ideology is good despite the crazy leaders its had". Yes I believe it probably could be executed well if we learn from our mistakes. I'm not personally a supporter but it shows how we learn from our mistakes to make essential things like Governments and military systems work.
There's a fundamental disagreement here. Neither of us are going to change our minds, best to leave it at that. I just want you to entertain the thought that not ever person in the military is a psychopathic killer. That maybe it's in our best interests to actually have one because unfortunately, not everyone wants to get along due to fundamental disagreements that we need to overcome as a society.