Definitely agree that this "truth in recruiting" stuff is beyond redundant. Anyone who thinks they can join an army at war and not see combat is probably too stupid to make it through training, likewise with anyone who thinks that seeing combat doesn't hold the distinct possibility of getting killed.

With regards to supporting the troops I agree that it's stupid but for very different reasons. Mainly that saying "I support the troops" has absolutely no meaning or impact on anything. It mostly just seems to be a way for people to avoid the guilt of not having to share the danger and sacrifice of being a soldier, or having a family member who is a soldier.

With regard to your reasons I wanted to make a couple of comments. First off, you emphasize that soldiers are killers, certainly true, which seems to imply that you find the act of killing repugnant in all situations. This in turn would imply that you believe the most important thing a person has is his or her life. Is it though? Couldn't a persons dignity or virtue of conduct be more important than more time in a life that is eventually going to end anyway? What I'm getting at is that there are lives that arn't worth living. Hitler is a prime example. Lets ignore all of the evils he was responsible for and just focus on him. Do you think Hitler lived a good life? Do you think he was happy? By all accounts he was a pretty unhappy and miserable man, perhaps he himself (nevermind the world) would have been better off had he died young. My point with all of this isn't that killing is necessarily right, but there are things more imporant to a person than his or her life and therefore a premature death is not always morally wrong.

With that established lets look at the profession of arms. All societies need security in order to function, without it life devolves into a Hobbesian state of nature (although not exactly an issue of security look at what happened in New Orleans for an example of how quickly society breaks down). This is frequently hard to believe for most Americans and Europeans simply because life for us has always been really good. That society could ever be seriously threatened for without or fall apart from within, does not seem to cross most Westerners mind. Therefore the need for security frequently seems superfluous, and the institutions that provide security a relic of an older time. Is security superfluous though? I hate to bring it up simply because it's so overused by politicians I have little respect for and has been used to justify things that it does not justify, but I would think 9/11 demonstrates that security is capable of breaking down and when it does life is all the more terrifying and unpleasant. There may be a day where the world community comes together and the need for a true army will disappear. The need for security will not however, and therefore law enforcement institutions will continue to exist. Since weapons cannot be uninvented it will always be necessary for security forces to possess weapons. Otherwise how would they provide security from a threat that possesses weapons? Given how essential security is to a functioning society, having a group of trained killers as you put it to provide security is at the very least the lesser of evils if not in some ways a good thing.