Yes, of course they are free to make up their own minds. Everyone is free to do that. I'm just saying that empire loyalists are more likely to be found among some professions than among others. For instance, more military officers are usually gungho about a war their country is engaged in than the poets or singers are, wouldn't you say? You'll find some in either camp who will go either way, but I'm suggesting that the average response would not be the same, and anyone knows that is so.

When I speak of empire loyalists, you know perfectly well what I am talking about. Some people will rush to support any war their country is involved in...every time...no matter what the issues are. Others will not be so quick to do so. Some Germans didn't question what Hitler did, they just supported him without thinking. Others did question it. It's like that in any nation.

Now...you said that "their job and primary purpose is to defend their country from attack".

Yes. That is supposedly what their job is and should be...only it doesn't work out that way about half the time in real life. There is generally a pretty clear aggressor in a war and someone who receives the effects of that aggression. The soldiers who are fighting for the one who's been attacked are indeed doing as you say, legitimately defending their country from attack.

But.....it is invariably the case that the soldiers in the aggressor force also believe to their core that THEY are defending their country from attack (either an attack that has already happened...or one that they think is going to happen). They ALL imagine they are defending their country.

The error that supporters of the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan have made is that error. They have imagined...and they were TOLD...that Iraq and Afghanistan were a real threat to their country and either had attacked or were planning to attack their country.

And that was a lie. Afghanistan never attacked the USA and never planned to. Iraq never attacked the USA, never had the capability to, and never planned to. Someone attacked the USA on 911, all right, but it was not the governments or armed forces or agents of either Iraq or Afghanistan. It was someone else entirely, and it was not an act of war, it was a crime. It should have been responded to AS a crime, not as an act of war...by international police work....but not with armies, navies, and air forces, because it was not a military attack. It was an attack by a hidden group of conspirators, not by a nation.

So the soldiers who are honestly believing that they are defending the security of the USA or the UK by fighing in Iraq or Afghanistan have been lied to by their own governments and are being used as instruments of aggression on those nations...and they are greatly damaging the security situation in much of the world by so doing.

I don't blame the soldiers for this. They've been lied to and used. It's the politicians who sent them there...Blair, Cheney, and Bush, whom I blame. And Obama now...because he is simply continuing the folly.