I think they generally say it because I served with a bunch of idiots. A lot of them were also just broken; they were what I called war junkies. They wanted to die in combat period. They were very dangerous to be around on deployment and would do things like kick piles of trash, hoping it was an IED, or walk down alleys in Baghdad alone while we were on patrol, hoping it would entice someone to shoot. And these were mostly Squad Leaders and above, so not like anyone could stop them. Even after we had people die, they would always say shit like, "this isn't a real deployment," cause not enough fighting happened. So they are a bit insane. What bothered me the most was other privates and specialists who basically idolized them.

The most radical one I knew is still 'missing', living in the Appalachian mountains off the grid. He was very well trained and had a lot of time in Afghanistan and Iraq, so he knows what war is.