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I would pay taxes to maintain Armed Forces to prevent the invasion of this country by similar armed forces from elsewhere, but not otherwise. The members of our Armed Forces join up for pay (and adventure, I suppose), just like the private armed forces the US has used over the last 30 years. The normal word for this is mercenary, a derogatory term, but now it seems they are all 'heroes'.
Joining up implies being willing to kill people, some (many/most?) of whom will be innocent. In every day life, we see people who kill unflinchingly for their own advantage as psychopaths. I do not understand how, with the on-screen evidence from the ME and NI, this can draw such sympathy from people who would probably never volunteer to do the killing themselves (as was shown by the rapid discovery in WW1 that the number of volunteers rapidly diminished and had to be reinforced by conscripts).
We were very quick to punish those WW2 enemies who 'overstepped the limits' but government secretly condoned our (enthusiastic) National Service conscripts in colonial conflicts, thinking that documents had been destroyed which much later came to light and allowed elderly survivors to claim in recent years, with similar hostile responses from public and officialdom.
The country should face up to the actions of its defenders and pillory, not the claimants, but the politicians who, as ever, turned a blind eye to the evil inevitably released by their actions.