The military is marketed far differently in the States than it is in the UK. The GI bill and college tuition help are heavily promoted, as are the training and later ease in job market. Ads tend to be toward skill and leadership rather than imagining oneself in combat or controlling a refugee situation. "Be all that you can be! You can do it, in the Army reserve!", for example. The first time I saw a recruiting commercial in a British theatre I was stunned.

My friends and I tend toward the progressive end of centrist, and I have a number of friends who were in the military at one time or another. Most got there through ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps), I believe, and some are stil in the reserve. National Guard are another group which for most of the last couple decades have been deployed to assist in natural emergencies rather than to shoot at anyone.

The news may not have made it there from over here, but now that there's a shooting war on, and people are over in Iraq for quite long periods of time with insufficient armour the military have been falling short of recruitment goals by close to 30%. The reserves and guard are also having recruiting difficulties, given that deployment pay tends to be rather lower than what many of the folks commanded in civilian jobs.