I struggle with this too. While I think there’s value in telling these stories from the Yankee perspective in order to agitate against enlistment, it certainly feels very dehumanizing for the author to completely exclude any mention of how much more those on the other side of imperialist aggression are suffering.

Also, this paragraph seems to drastically contradict itself.

Melonie grew up in South Georgia in extreme poverty where food scarcity was a common experience for her. Her father served in the Air Force, and in her household, the military wasn’t just a job — it was the clearest path to stability.

^emphasis mine^

Then there’s this.

While she never deployed, she was responsible for intelligence that “ended up with a man dead.”

“I felt responsible for a human being’s death,” she said.

The imperialist death machine is creating death. How surprising.