UJM-I am sorry that I overestimated your sense of logic and reason. Please correct me if I am wrong but you seem to imply that
1) The army is just a silly invention created by the chilinim and is not really necessary at all since the people who are learning are all the protection we need
2) The Chareidim owe zero hakoras hatov to those who are killed or wounded in the army because they had no business going into battle anyway (refer to point #1
3) Having an army is not really a form of hishtadlus or an at best it is overkill. After all who need more than one security guard to protect a bank vault?
4) Jews fighting in an army is just some 20th-century Zionist creation. We do not see anywhere in Jewish history that Jews fought in wars and if they did they were bad people who should have been in the Bais Medrash.
Please tell me if you disagree on any of these points