I’m going to defend noodle_poodle a bit here. I think he is coming from a pure pacifist point of view, and I can respect him for that. I, on the other hand, think there are rare times when war is justified. That said, I still agree with him that anyone joining the military ought to think about the larger ramifications. It is not just a job, it is a job that involves killing. Even if you do not drop the bomb or pull the trigger, you enable the killing by doing your job. There’s no way to be in the military and be truly insulated from the killing. I firmly believe that neither of the wars we are in now were the right thing to do from a strategic view point, and one of them was definitely wrong morally, probably the other. You have to decide before you join the military if you are willing to accept being a part of whatever war our political leadership decides to involve you in. You won’t get a choice about whether it is a just war once you join. And finally, as MissAusten noted, war changes people. It causes serious psychological trauma. Post traumatic stress disorder is no joke, and it doesn’t matter how strong or stable you are now, you cannot determine what effect war will have on you. Even being in the military changes people. I had a friend who was a distance runner and one of the nicest, most easy going guys I ever met. He joined the Marines and could run circles around most of them, so the physical part of boot camp was no big deal for him. But he came back from boot camp different. He was a jerk. He wanted everything his way and got very angry very fast about little things. To sum up, don’t just think about the Air Force as a job, or a set of financial or learning opportunities, but way the risk of utterly changing your personality (and not necessarily for the better) and of going to war, killing, being killed, and the effect that will have on you.