How should we view soldiers who have fought for the west in the 21st century wars of imperialism?

Coming into leftist spaces, whenever the notion of western (usually referring to the US) soldiers who have fought in the Middle East in destabilizing the region, people speak sympathetically of these as people who were/are “brainwashed by propaganda” and/or “forced to do so because of their conditions”. But every now and then I see opposition to these sentiments as liberal apologism to imperialism. To what extent does the claim that material conditions forced poor Americans to capitulate to supposedly unknowingly aiding western imperialism? via /r/communism https://ift.tt/3hbt5F0